Even though you are likely more familiar with the marketing campaigns of large corporations, small businesses make up the majority of companies and employers in the nation. Stepping up your small business marketing strategies and improvising all steps of marketing process can help you break into new markets online while making your offline customers feel seen and heard. You can do this by focusing on some best practices and remembering your long-term business goals.
Optimize Email Marketing
Marketing through email is one of the most often overlooked digital marketing strategies because of the bad reputation spam emails have gained over the years. However, a successful email marketing campaign is one that your customers sign up for and use to reward their loyalty to your company. For example, having an email newsletter with links to recent blog posts, relevant sales, and exclusive coupons inside can entice your website traffic to return for regular purchases. Remember to optimize your emails and website for mobile use because that is how most of your customers are likely to read them.
Set an Update Schedule
Fresh and relevant content is the keystone for Search Engine Optimization and other online marketing techniques, including improving your click-through and conversion rates. Your customers want to see new content, and you want their curiosity to hold long enough to stay on your site and make a purchase. A regular update schedule for your newsletters, blog and social media is a must when focusing on digital marketing efforts. Keep your long-term business goals in mind when setting and keeping this schedule. For instance, if you plan on increasing your online presence or rolling out new product lines, you will want to prepare for a gradual increase in the time it takes to update everything and more frequent updates as critical milestones approach.
Determine How To Target Your Audience
Finding your perfect audience and targeting them are fundamentals of marketing, online or off. Take the time to write down your ideal customers in as much detail as possible. This exercise will help you generate ideas on where those customers hang out online and where you should focus your marketing efforts. The picture of your ideal customer will also inform the tone of your website’s blog and newsletters because you will address both of them to that target audience. For instance, if you are selling princess-themed birthday party supplies, writing your blogs in the tone of a monster truck rally advertisement is more likely to drive customers away than bring them in.
Be Active on Social Media
There are dozens of social media platforms online, but that does not mean you have to have dozens of accounts to succeed in your marketing. You will want to find the one or two platforms where most of your audience gathers and build profiles before branching out to a couple of others. It is important to remember that you want quality over quantity when it comes to social media; having a profile on every platform available does little good if you do not have the time to keep them all updated.
Combine Online and Offline Strategies
Not only can you benefit from online and offline marketing, but the strategies you use for each should work together to make each more effective. Combining these strategies can include using your URL in radio or newspaper ads, directing customers to visit your brick-and-mortar store to use emailed coupons, and even having contests or events in your physical store encouraging customers to post pictures and reviews online.
The most important thing to remember about marketing best practices is that these are ongoing habits you want to develop, not one-and-done actions. Keeping your social media, website and emails updated will bring new customers in and entice existing ones to return for fresh content. Gear your content to your ideal customers and target your audience through the platforms and channels most used by those groups, both online and off.
