9 Digital Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Intro

Want to boost your visibility, engage with a larger audience, get higher conversion rates, and ultimately increase your bottom line? Consider applying these 9 digital marketing tips to take your business to the next level.

In This Article

• Optimize Your Website For Mobile
• Create Your Google My Business Listing
• Know Your Target Audience Better
• Content Is King
• Focus On Your Local Market
• Don’t Sleep On Email Marketing
• Start An Insightful Blog
• Leverage Social Media Channels
• Encourage Customers To Leave Feedback

One of your biggest challenges as an entrepreneur might be to generate demand for your product or service.

But figuring out how to get customers for your offerings can lay a strong foundation for your business. One of the most cost-effective ways to acquire new customers is by leveraging digital marketing.

Here's the truth: Whether you run a brick-and-mortar store or own an e-commerce business, you need digital marketing to stay competitive today.

For many years, smaller businesses have struggled to compete with larger brands in their industry.

Digital marketing has become the great equalizer – businesses of all sizes can now compete on a more level playing field.

In this article, we'll share 9 super-actionable digital marketing tips. Leverage these to unlock your business's true potential.

1. Optimize Your Website For Mobile

Mobile marketing is now more relevant than ever – 60% of internet users access the internet using their mobile devices.

Investing in mobile-specific marketing may require significant capital. If you're a digital marketing newbie, start by optimizing your business website for mobile devices.

Website builders like Squarespace or Wix and dedicated e-commerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce have made it easier by providing mobile-friendly themes and templates.

Use these templates, but be sure that your website looks and functions well on mobile devices as you add or change content.

If your website builder or e-commerce platform has already been paid for, optimizing your website for mobile won't cost much. You may only need to spend more money to invest in a paid theme or use other non-included tools.

2. Create Your Google My Business Listing

If you're looking for a powerful tool to boost your business's online visibility, sign up for Google My Business (GMB). Your business will appear in the Google Local Pack, which is highly visible on the first page of search results.

Your GMB listing will help potential customers see essential information about your business at a glance, such as location, contact number, store hours, and a star rating.

To begin, create a Google account and enter your business information into the form. If a listing with your name already exists, claim it as your own.

Once your listing is live, start collecting reviews from customers. Positive reviews will improve your business's visibility on Google and boost its ranking in local search results.

Great reviews will make your business stand out and provide valuable feedback that you should use to improve your services and offerings.

Also, GMB provides insights that give businesses helpful information, such as the number of views, search queries, engagement, and audience.

Optimize and utilize GMB to improve your online presence, reach your target audience, and drive more sales.

Check out this great post where we discuss the basics and importance of Google My Business in detail.

3. Know Your Target Audience Better

Understand your target audience and their behavior online to be a successful digital marketer. Your digital audience has different preferences than those you target through other marketing channels.

Conduct research and gather data on your target audience's online behavior. This includes their preferred social media platforms and websites and the type of content they engage with.

Tailor your digital marketing efforts with this information to effectively reach and engage your target audience.

Say you operate a microbrewery that ships and distributes products nationwide. Your digital marketing initiatives may concentrate more on the customers you don't normally meet through your physical store.

In this case, you must understand your non-local target demographic and determine which tactics are more likely to reach them and encourage them to buy from your company.

Remember, your target audiences may have different characteristics and behaviors across different platforms. For example, your audience on Facebook might be different from the one on Twitter.

Research and tailor your marketing strategies to fit each platform and audience accordingly. Use different types of content and messaging for each platform to best reach and engage your audience.

4. Content Is King

Effective content creation and distribution are essential components of digital marketing. Use various content channels to attract new customers and engage with existing ones.

The demand for content creators is at its peak now more than ever. Your competitors are creating unique and compelling content that showcases the value of their products or services, and so should you.

Build trust with your audience, develop stronger relationships with them, improve your conversion rates, and generate leads for your business doing so.

Quality content is critical, regardless of the format. Your content must be engaging and concise, whether you're creating blog posts or advertising videos. It also needs to capture your audience's attention and maintain their interest.

Establish yourself as an authority in your niche for your audience to take you seriously. To do that, you'll need to deliver valuable and insightful content.

Consider your audience's perspective and ask yourself, "Why would they consume your content?"

People are generally focused on their own interests and will only invest their time and attention if they see a clear benefit.

To provide valuable content, consider creating various forms of content. These could include blog posts, infographics, podcasts, checklists, reports, whitepapers, eBooks, videos, etc.

Share your best insider tips and tricks without holding back. Build trust and make yourself a natural choice for potential customers when they're ready to purchase.

Even if you give away your knowledge for free, it can lead to recommendations and potential sales in the future.

5. Focus On Your Local Market

If your business primarily operates in a local market, you should use digital marketing strategies designed to appeal to and engage that audience.

Besides creating a Google My Business listing, claim and customize your business listings on other local search directories. Consider having a solid presence on Yelp or Bing Places for Business.

Also, consider other local marketing tactics such as:

• Create Google or social media ads that target your geographic area.
• Implement a direct mail campaign in your local region.
• Host or participate in community events.

Some of these strategies may not fit squarely into the digital marketing category. But you could easily tie them in by including your business's website and social media handles on any materials or information you distribute in your local community.

Plus, you need to perform a local SEO audit. This includes a Google My Business audit, a Google Search Console audit, an on-page SEO audit, a citation audit, a competitor analysis, and a website audit. See where your website stands and what you must work on to achieve your goals.

Improve your internal linking structure to boost your SEO rankings. This helps with website navigation, information architecture, and website hierarchy and distributes page authority and ranking power among pages.

To optimize your content, use high-volume keywords in the URL, title tag, header, meta description, and body.

If you have more than one brick-and-mortar location, create location pages that provide readers with your name, address, phone number, and store hours.

Remember to include unique store descriptions, parking/transit information, promotions, and testimonials from happy customers. Avoid duplicating content across multiple location pages.

Also, create local content to improve your local SEO. Write about local or industry news to attract a local audience and be seen as a local authority in your industry.

Say you're a local security company. In this case, you should create a helpful resource for businesses new to the area, including a map of local service providers or a calendar of city-wide events.

Keep an eye on your local competitors by conducting systematic research. Constant research is essential to stay at the top of the pile in digital marketing. This research includes monitoring your competition.

Use a VPN on your mobile device or whatever device you use to monitor and test landing pages privately to gain insights into your competition's strategies.

A VPN allows you to browse the internet anonymously without your competitors knowing about it. With this information, you'll develop more effective tactics.

6. Don’t Sleep On Email Marketing

Email marketing yields the highest return on investment among other digital marketing strategies. For every dollar you spend on email marketing, expect to see a return of $40.

Almost everyone checks their email, regardless of age or whether they're a consumer or business buyer.

To leverage email marketing, build a reliable email list. Your email marketing efforts won't yield much success without the right audience.

If you don't have an email list, use lead-generation techniques to collect information from potential and existing customers, including email addresses.

Once you have a solid email list, use it for your marketing efforts. Create a monthly email newsletter or send regular messages with special offers, news, and discounts to keep your subscribers engaged.

Here are some tips for successful email marketing:

• Personalize your campaigns by collecting relevant customer data and using it to anticipate their needs and send timely, relevant emails.
• Remember that email marketing aims to establish and nurture healthy relationships with your customers, not just promote your business.
• Use marketing automation to increase conversion rates, improve efficiency, and save time.
• Segment your customers based on common attributes to create unique customer journeys and send personalized content.
• Always A/B test essential campaign elements to continuously improve and optimize your results.
• Unsubscribes can be beneficial as it cleans your list of those not interested in hearing from you.
• Only send emails when you have something valuable to share; otherwise, don't send them.
• Use email marketing in all customer acquisition channels, not just in marketing efforts.
• Integrate email marketing messages into different channels to reach a wider audience.
• Optimize email efforts for subscriber lifetime value, not just campaign activity.

7. Start An Insightful Blog

One of the simplest ways to set foot in content marketing is by creating a blog on your business website.

Through your blog, share your knowledge on topics related to your business to establish your expertise and provide valuable information to your audience.

Optimize your blog posts for SEO by using relevant keywords, and even invite industry influencers to contribute posts and share them with their communities.

Find low-hanging fruits with our keyword finder to achieve quick results.

With blogging, you don't necessarily have to spend money to promote your content. If your content is good, it will naturally rank in search engines, and you could also share it organically on social media for broader visibility.

For newbie business bloggers, here are a few pointers:

• Choose a subject: The subject should be relevant to the business or group that publishes the blog. A clear focus helps visitors find what they are looking for.
• Get your message through compellingly: Creating a “buyer persona” or ideal customer profile can be valuable. This advice helps set up a blog with a consistent voice, and most blogs are written in a conversational tone.
• **Be flexible with sub-topics: **Repeatedly using the same subjects can lose the SEO effect. So be flexible with sub-topics. The buyer persona can provide sub-topics that mesh nicely with the primary subject.
• Lengths of the pieces differ: Text length affects search engine optimization and the site visitor's experience. Long reads of over 2,000 words significantly impact a site's search engine rankings. Visitors and search engines benefit from a mix of short blogs and in-depth extended readings.
• Publish Evergreens content: An "Evergreen" blog post is still relevant months or years after it was first published. Predictions for the near future are less likely to become outdated than past topics.
• Always include a date: The publishing date is not always included in the content of every blog, but some context is lost without a date. It's not always apparent whether the information on the website is still accurate or relevant.
• Share blogs on Social Media: Publicize new publications throughout all of your platforms and, where feasible, link them to other blogs and websites. This is highly recommended when blogging for commercial purposes, in particular.
• Make sure it's not too commercial: While it's okay to advertise a product on a blog, a well-known site isn't often a repository for ad material.
• Guest blogging: Guest blogs are a great way to expand your customer base in markets where your business cannot have a strong presence. Two examples are having a guest blogger write a post for your blog or an article for an external blog with a link back to your company's website.

8. Leverage Social Media Channels

Social media marketing is a crucial part of digital marketing – 76% of consumers buy products they see in social media posts.

Focus on one platform instead of trying to excel on all of them. Identify the best social media channel for your business. Then focus your energy there to save your valuable time, effort, and resources.

For instance, if you're starting an online boutique, Instagram, emphasizing images, is the most suitable platform for your digital marketing strategies, unlike Facebook or LinkedIn.

Use social media marketing to connect and interact with customers. Don't overwhelm them with constant ads and promotional content in their faces.

To have a successful social media presence, follow the steps below:

• Create a strategy: Understand each platform and tailor your content and engagement to reach your target audience. Consider why you are using the platform, who your target audience is, and what kind of content works best on each platform.
• Be consistent: Posting regularly and following a content calendar will keep your brand image and message consistent. If you're new to social media, focus on posting quality content on one or two platforms rather than spreading yourself too thin.
• **Create engaging and exciting content: **Good content should be newsworthy, visually appealing, include storytelling, and align with current trends.
• Engagement: Engage with your followers by responding to comments, live streaming, and creating polls and quizzes. Build a community and make your brand more personable.
• Track and analyze metrics: Analyze social media analytics to understand your performance and refine your strategy. Most social media platforms have built-in metrics for business accounts to track your progress.

9. Encourage Customers To Leave Feedback

To enhance your business's position in the market, regularly check in with your customers and ask for their feedback and reviews.

This feedback is valuable for improving your business's reputation and rating. So be sure that customer reviews and feedback are a priority for your business.

If a customer reports an issue, your technical team should quickly and efficiently address the problem. Customer satisfaction is directly proportional to the level of customer service and responsiveness provided.

Be responsive and attentive to customer feedback to identify areas for improvement and address any flaws in your business model.

To gather customer feedback, proactively ask for it. There are many creative ways to do this, such as printing QR codes on your products if you run an e-commerce store.

Wrapping Up

As you implement these digital marketing tips, remember that not every strategy will work for every business.

But don't be discouraged! Instead, embrace the challenge and think outside the box. Trust your instincts and try something new, even if it seems unconventional. Remember that success often comes from taking risks.

The beauty of digital marketing is in its constantly evolving landscape, with new opportunities and trends always on the horizon. Adapt to the change, stay curious, and keep learning.