The large majority of marketing efforts have moved online in recent months, and small businesses are wise to follow suit. Digital marketing requires a great deal of planning as well as an individual or team to implement your plan. Here are six expert tips to help get you started.
Establish Brand Identity
People buy your brand, not your products.
"Having a consistent brand identity to promote your business will make you look more professional and help you attract new customers. According to a study from Facebook, 77% of people are loyal to brands. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has described a company's branding as "what other people say about you when you're not in the room." In other words, your brand is the feelings and emotions people have when hearing your company name. It's is a combination of your brand name, logo, aesthetic, and the design of all your assets."
Optimize For Mobile
If you're not optimized for mobile, there's a good chance you're losing potential customers.
"With 80% of Internet users regularly browsing the web on a mobile device and Google's recent decision to reduce the search engine ranking of websites that aren't optimized for smaller screens, it's become essential that your website is mobile-friendly."
Create Visual Content
Video and other visual assets are far more likely to be shared online.
"Content is still king and content marketing is an industry in its own right. Your content will form an important part of your digital strategy. Video is an area that is growing at an incredible rate, and these statistics from HubSpot show why:
- 97% of marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service
- 76% say it helped them increase sales
- 81% of people have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand's video"
Leverage Social Media
Social media marketing has become a necessity in today's business world.
"Be a Savvy Social Networker. Create business accounts and participate in the big social media sites – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Add Instagram in there too if your business is image-oriented."
Prioritize Local Search
Focusing on your local area allows you to reach those with the most potential of becoming customers.
"Nothing rivals a solid local search marketing strategy for small businesses. Local search marketing consists of claiming and optimizing your business's online listings so that you show up in relevant local searches. There's a lot to local search, but when it's done right, it puts your business on the map so local consumers find you when they need your products or services."
Optimizing Local SEO
"Local SEO can do wonders for your business websites. Local search engine optimization is the process of optimizing a service, business, or product for a search query that is location-specific. Search engines like Google identify a user's location and then uses that information to display results that match the user's location and will give you places that are in close proximity to where you are. Optimizing your business for local search queries will improve your visibility on a search engine's result page, therefore bringing you more business. Local Google search results are based primarily on relevance, prominence, and distance. These three factors will have a significant impact on your local business ranking.
Local search rankings will favor businesses that have relevant, complete, and accurate information. This makes the small business easier to match with their corresponding queries. Use the attributes below in order to stay relevant:
- Physical address of brick and mortar store
- Business phone number
- Category
- Attributes"
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