You probably already know how crucial digital marketing is for your small business. That’s because nobody will discover your business and learn about your brand without it.
Online advertising for small businesses involves the use of many strategies and tactics. As such, it can be challenging to know where to begin. There’s a lot to grapple with if you don’t focus on what matters, such as mastering SEO and content marketing to knowing the best data analytics tools.
As a digital marketer, you should be able to adapt and learn quickly. You must also be ready to pivot into different digital careers if old skills become less in demand. Remember that you will be working with diverse clients and team members. You must be able to know how to communicate and build strong teams.
What to Consider Before Starting A Digital Marketing Campaign For Your Small Business
The first step towards building a digital marketing campaign is understanding the different platforms through which you can build your brand. The challenge is that you can sometimes get lost in all the marketing jargon thrown around in the media.
That’s why we’ve come up with this guide. It will help you to know what to consider before you start your digital marketing campaign.
1. Brand Yourself With White-Hat Link Building
A personal brand is a critical step in any digital marketing strategy. Thus, you must ensure that every campaign you carry out shows your unique brand style.
There are different ways of expressing your brand. They include font styles, color schemes, and word choices. All these and more contribute to how people perceive your brand.
So, is your brand elegant and elite, or is it laid back and personable? Is it humorous and silly? Whatever it is, you must ensure that your marketing strategy conveys that.
What makes personal branding important is that it helps people to remember you. People will likely visit many websites in a day, and you want yours to stand out.
You must also use link building in your website when branding yourself. That’s because link-building provides credibility to your site. They act as third-party indicators of your domain’s authoritative strength.
You can use white hat SEO link building to drive organic traffic to your website. You just need to link to relevant pieces of content on the web while following the rules set in place by search engines. Search engines favor white hat link-building services because they focus on improving quality content. They also widen your content’s scope, offering more credibility and a better user experience.
2. Start Blogging
Blogging is one of the best ways of propelling your small business’s digital marketing campaign.
While blogging, you can focus on posts that are centered on specific topics in your industry. This will enable you to educate users on things that they might be interested in knowing. For instance, if you have a pest control business, you can write a blog post on the common types of pests to watch out for. You can also talk about how to prevent them from entering your home.
If you are a deep sea fishing charter, how about educating people on different fish they can catch or different rigging techniques? The benefit of having a blog is that your post can rank for relevant searches in Google. This means that people can be drawn to your website for answers to their questions.
3. Partner With Local Influencers
Influencer marketing isn’t only a preserve for large organizations. It’s not only meant for the fashion industry either.
Partnering with influencers and getting them to recommend your products to their following is very important. A restaurant owner, for instance, can reach out to a local food blogger to raise awareness in return for publicity.
Influencer marketing campaigns can take many forms, from giveaways to brand awareness to discounts and collaborations. That’s why you must start with an end goal in mind. For instance, what are your digital marketing goals, and what do you intend to achieve?
Being clear about what you want will enable you to reach out to the right influencers and develop an effective campaign. From insightful market research to social media strategies, you can work on many digital marketing techniques without investing a lot of money.
4. Your Target Audience and Purchase Behavior
Organizations need to define their target audience for every campaign. That’s because one campaign can have multiple audiences in the digital world, which calls for multiple ads.
People are hungry for personalization. Thus, you must be diligent and consider the various campaign touchpoints. This will help you ensure that your message speaks to the right audience.
The other factor that you must consider is purchasing behavior targeting. Instead of targeting a campaign at a specific age group or profession, aim to reach people who have purchased similar products. That’s because such people are likely to make another purchase.
Note that audience targeting is based on proof and not an assumption. It helps ensure that conversion rates rise and the bottom line increases.
5. Get it Right With Website Basics
Clients call the shorts, and users are increasingly becoming demanding in their experience and expectations. They expect faster loading speeds and ease of use.
As a local small business, you may not have the same budget as big organizations. But at least you can get the basics right on your brand’s website. Remember that the faster your website page loads, the more likely users will stick around and keep coming for repeat purchases.
Also, slow-loading websites can have a negative effect when it comes to converting new users into clients. Such a site will also affect your chances of converting new users into clients. A slow website will also affect your chances of achieving good rankings on Google. That’s considering that user experience is an integral part of search engine optimization.
6. Launch Paid Search Campaigns in Google Ads
Paid search ads are another strategy you can use to reach your audience. These ads usually appear at the top of Google search results. They look similar to organic search results, except for the “Ad “label at the top corner.
A paid advertising campaign can be launched in Google Ads, a must-have marketing tool for small businesses. This is where you can bid on specific keywords you want to target.
Brands can also focus their ads on a specific group of users based on certain demographics. These may be age and location, which makes the ads as relevant as possible. This is important because ads can lead people to the landing pages on your website, where they can convert. Even if they don’t convert, paid ads are a great way to spread brand awareness.
7. Use Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile (GBP) is essential for local digital marketing. Your GBP can and should include information like your name, address, and phone number.
Setting up a GBP will get Google to display it in local search results. This is important because when someone searches for your industry by including “near me,” Google displays a local 3-pack of relevant Google business profiles.
You may already have a GBP account automatically created for your business. In such a case, you just need to claim it by verifying the ownership of your small business.
8. Follow a Content Calendar
Sharing content on various platforms can make it challenging to keep track of everything. This can be detrimental to your digital marketing campaign if you fall behind or overlook a platform.
Without a content calendar, it can also be challenging to remember what, when, and where to post the content. This can cause you to send out infrequent posts making clients think that you don’t value your online presence.
Consistency is critical in any marketing campaign. A content calendar will keep your posts organized and on track. It will also give you a better understanding of the whole digital marketing process. This makes it easy to trace how every content works with the marketing campaign.
9. Speak to Your Clients
This strategy is crucial because you can’t build a successful marketing strategy based on guesswork. That’s why it’s recommended that you spend time speaking with your clients. If possible, you can also find potential clients and have a conversation with them.
Chances are that you already have a good understanding of who your clients are and what they need. But you must dig deeper to build a long-lasting and successful relationship with them.
Interviews and surveys are free and an excellent place to start. Focus on a few specific themes that you’d like to explore further. A few insights from your clients are infinitely better than none.
10. Utilize an Appropriate Strategy
There are a lot of tactics to utilize before starting your digital marketing strategy. However, one approach that’s worth considering is Business-to-Business marketing. You can do this through a business that provides products to other businesses.
This is about providing valuable skills and relevant content from one business to the other. Thus, you must adopt this strategy if you want an effective method that your small business will use to engage with others in the market.
This strategy helps to improve productivity and revenue. It will establish your small business as one of the reliable experts in the industry.
Conclusion
An effective marketing campaign requires careful planning. This usually depends on how well you know your target audience. It’s also dependent on how you allot time for preparation. It is best to ensure that you’re systematic. That’s especially when delivering content to gain attention. Considering these factors before launching a successful marketing campaign is crucial.
If you find yourself needing help with digital marketing for your small business, reach out to me today. Myself and the rest of us here at Cube Creative are experienced in helping small businesses with their digital marketing.
