Digital Marketing

Are you looking for a digital marketing guide to grow your small-sized business?  

Then you are on the right page. In this article, you will learn the basics as well as advanced digital marketing tactics to grow your small business.  

But first of all, let’s have a detailed understanding of ‘Digital marketing’.

 

What is Digital Marketing? 

 

Digital Marketing is the act of advertising your business and selling products and services online. Digital Marketing is any form of marketing that involves the internet and online-based digital technologies such as social media, web applications, mobile apps, websites, email, and search engines.  

Digital marketing is a dynamic process that allows two-way communication between a business and its customers. Traditional ways of marketing that use newspapers, Print-ads, or billboard ads are starting to become a rare sight. With Startups growing significantly every year by 10% in our country, it is important to create a solid digital marketing strategy to build a successful digital presence for your brand to expand your business.

 

Why Digital Marketing?

 

Social media platforms like Facebook and Google generate more revenue than traditional media companies because they control more eyeballs. Today, online and offline worlds are coming together. In the future, traditional devices will be modernized to leverage digital media. A digital marketing strategy helps your business reach digital goals. That is why digital marketing matters.

If you are a local business owner still postponing your digital marketing plans due to reasons like lack of knowledge and limiting yourself to a particular kind of marketing strategy?  

Then better read this article till the end to discover the benefits of digital marketing for small businesses.

 

What is Digital Marketing Strategy for  Small Businesses?

Digital Marketing strategy involves many different channels such as online ads,  blogs, and social media for promoting small businesses to a wide audience of prospective customers. It is an online marketing strategy designed to optimize the promotion of business online. 

Here are a few commonly used digital marketing ideas: 

• • Search engine optimization (SEO) 
  • Search engine marketing (SEM) 
  • Social media marketing(SMM)
  • Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising  
  • Content marketing 
  • Email marketing 
  • Affiliate marketing 
  • SMS marketing

 

1. Search engine optimization (SEO) 

Search engine optimization is a  practice of improving your online content’s search engine ranking on major search engines like Google. It can be achieved by prioritizing certain keywords and phrases.  

2. Search engine marketing (SEM)

Search engine marketing is used in conjunction with SEO. It leverages paid ads to improve visibility within the search engine.

3. Social media marketing (SMM) 

Social media marketing is the practice of utilizing social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. to promote business products and services. 

Influencer marketing is a type of SMM that involves product mentions,  product placements, and endorsements from top social media influencers.  In simple words, influencer marketing is used by companies to collaborate with social media influencers to create sponsored content and giveaways to educate people about their products and services. 

4. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising 

Pay-per-click is an online method of advertising where a company pays the publisher only when a person clicks on the advertisements. 

5. Content marketing 

Content marketing focuses on creating, distributing,  and promoting relevant and attractive content to improve engagement at the website. Examples of content marketing are texts, blogs, podcasts,  webinars, videos, e-books, case studies, infographics, etc. 

6. Email marketing 

Email marketing helps businesses to send promotional content and offers directly to the inboxes of prospective customers via email. Automated Newsletters are most commonly used in Email marketing. 

7. Affiliate marketing 

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy in which a company pays a commission to an external website for traffic and sales generated by its referrals.  

8. SMS marketing 

SMS stands for ‘Short Message Service’. SMS marketing allows a company to directly send text messages about offers,  promotions, news updates, and campaigns to their customers via SMS. 

There are two types of SMS messaging:

• • Transactional messaging

    It delivers information like order confirmation or shipping details. It helps to keep the customer updated and thereby builds customer loyalty. 

  • Promotional messaging

    It sends messages that include promotions of an offer, new product, or service. It helps to drive sales.

Now, the next question knocking for an answer must be  

 

How Much Digital Marketing Will Cost  A Small Business?

Well, the cost of digital marketing varies as per business size, business revenue,  and business goals. For example: 

• • Basic Digital Marketing – For Startups and Small businesses • Intermediate Digital Marketing – Mid-sized businesses 
  • Advanced Digital Marketing – Large or enterprise businesses 

 

Startups and small businesses have a low marketing budget. So, they focus on cost-effective and basic digital marketing plans that include blogs, websites, and social media to drive traffic and generate revenue at a low price point. The cost of a basic digital marketing plan is several hundred dollars a month. Smaller businesses can start with the basic digital marketing plan and look forward to developing methods to reach the intermediate and advanced levels of digital marketing strategies.

 

Top Benefits of Digital Marketing  Strategy for a Small Business 

A digital marketing business plan is one of the best formulas for small businesses to engage and build connections with existing, new, and future customers. 

Utilizing smart digital marketing methods, you can reach a wider market of potential customers.  

Let’s discuss the advantages of using digital marketing strategies. 

1. Global reach

Traditional forms of marketing strategies are restricted by geography while digital marketing happens online. It means that this online marketing strategy helps you to reach globally. Even a small business owner can reach the global market through his online store.  This online accessibility has opened a gateway for small local businesses to grow locally and globally. 

2. Local reach

 Small local businesses rely on local customers staying in their neighborhoods. A digital marketing strategy provides local visibility and brings nearby customers to their doors. 

3. Effective targeting

Digital marketing allows you to extract data that helps you to find important information like the nature of the audience,  performance metrics of different campaigns, events, and so on. It helps you to modify existing strategies and set them as per business and customer needs.  

4. Lower cost

Digital marketing is cost-effective. This point is one of the biggest benefits for small businesses running on a low budget. Digital marketing helps to generate more leads and also saves money. Small companies can use highly targeted digital marketing strategies to find out cost-effective solutions to compete with large enterprises. Some digital marketing strategies like social media marketing and SEO won’t even cost you a penny. 

5. Multiple digital marketing strategies

Depending upon the nature of a  business digital marketing provides different types of strategies. A small business like B2C might be a local business selling clothes that aims to gain local visibility. Every business owner needs to find out their business goals and choose an appropriate digital marketing plan to transform their business. 

6. Multiple content type

Digital marketing is not limited to traditional marketing, it provides you with more coverage. You have a wide range of content types like blogs, podcasts, webinars, infographics, e-books,  visual content, emailers, and whitepapers. You can choose any type of content, and reproduce it to fit as many platforms as you want. 

7. Increases engagement

Digital Marketing or online marketing is highly engaging by default. Half of the world’s population is online every day.  The more you engage online, the more numbers of loyal customers you can reach. Users can share their blogs, save videos and engage with websites. This helps you increase brand awareness and drive sales.  Nowadays customers generally conduct online research to evaluate reviews before making a purchase. The first step starts with a search engine. In this way, small businesses with developed search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and pay-per-click strategies can connect with customers immediately and increase engagement rates. 

8. Analytics

Web analytics helps you to measure the performance of digital marketing campaigns in real-time This helps you to find out the flaws, optimize future campaign strategies and fix any possible errors on time. 

 

How to Create a Digital Marketing  Strategy for Small Businesses?

Digital marketing is crucial for all types of businesses and choosing the best marketing strategy is the key to success. Let us learn how to create a digital  marketing strategy for small businesses step-by-step

• • Determine your goals
  • Evaluate your existing digital marketing presence
  • Build your customer persona
  • Locate your customers at all funnel stages
  • Implement specific guidelines to reach your goals
  • Incorporate automation and personalization
  • Track your results

1. Determine your goals 

Companies marketing objectives must be tied to their major business goals. For example, if a business objective is to raise their online revenue by 30% then the marketing team’s objective might be to generate 60% of more leads through the website than the previous year.  Monitor the progress of your goals and modify your marketing strategy to improve the results. 

2. Evaluate your existing digital marketing presence

 Even if your digital marketing presence is close to “zero”, it is important to find out what your business has accomplished till now. Before building a digital marketing strategy, is it essential to know your digital presence in the market?  You must understand your main marketing channels like website, SEO,  email marketing, or Pay per click advertising to find out which of these are driving more leads and traffic to you. Start ranking each channel from most effective to least effective. 

3. Build your customer persona 

Once you know your business goals the next step is to know your target customers. But, how will you do it? Well,  simply put yourself in your customer’s shoes. This will help you to understand what would appeal to your customers from their point of view.  To create a customer persona you need to research, survey, or even interview your target customers.  

Firstly, create narratives like what does this person shop for? Where is he from? What does he read? Which social media channels can you find him on?  

Secondly, get more specific about their need. Ask yourself What do they need? What are their preferences? How can you help them meet their expectations?  

Combining quantitative information (location, age, income, job title) and qualitative information (goals, challenges, interests, priorities) can help you build an accurate and effective buyer persona that will be highly valuable to your business. 

4. Locate your customers at all funnel stages

Now that you know your audiences, the next step is to know how and where to find them. To locate your audience, you need to again refer to your analytics and cross-reference it with your customer’s persona.  

Let’s say, for instance, you are a room designing company. You decorate all types of rooms from a baby nursery, Girls/boys’ room, living room, or even classrooms for schools. There is a chance to have a diverse audience looking out for you. 

For example:  

• • Someone who is taking a lot of time to remodel his daughter’s room might discover you by googling phrases like “Best décor ideas for a  girl’s room”. If they find your work featuring in a blog post they might reach you. 
  • Someone interested in a low-budget living room décor finds your sponsored Facebook ad about discounts on your services. 
  • Someone who has already hired you once, and who you now include in your email campaign featuring offers that you are providing only to the old customers. 

 

Once you have all this information you can start to target different groups of customers via different channels.  

5. Implement specific guidelines to reach your goals

 Now that you have understood how and where to find your target customers, the next step is to tie everything together and create a specific plan to reach your goals. For example,  

• • Place lead magnets on the sides of all blogs, along with a call-to-action button at the end of your post. 
  • Share influencer content on social media to increase visibility and brand recognition. 
  • Encourage users to submit reviews on Google business to improve their local SEO score. 

 

6. Incorporate automation and personalization

As your campaign starts running, you need to find out more ways to make it as impactful and effective as possible. There are two ways – personalization and automation. Sometimes personalized messages are automatically delivered to the customers as a result of their actions. 

For example, if you purchase a product from Amazon, you might see a list of similar products as ads on your social media channels. 

Personalization and automation can take your marketing strategy one step further. 

7. Track your results

Once you have the strategy in place, the final step is to look for holes in your digital marketing plan. If your strategy is up and running on a long-term basis, you must evaluate how your strategy is working. Monitor the progress chart of your campaigns at the end of every month. Note down which strategy is performing like a superstar. To keep track of multiple elements and campaigns, maintain a spreadsheet to compare the results of your campaign. Use metrics tools that are available on social media. Keep a habit of frequently engaging with your users. 

 

Conclusion 

Marketing without a strategy is like driving with your eyes closed. Trust me – only the right strategy and the right content in place can help you get better results.  

Are you still looking for more help with implementing your online marketing strategy? Get in touch with us and see how we help you grow your small business to the next level.  

How do you create your digital marketing strategy? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

In the past years, LinkedIn has changed a lot. Earlier LinkedIn was known as just a job portal website but now it has grown as a social media platform for professionals. You can use LinkedIn to find the right job or internship, connect and strengthen professional relationships, and learn the skills you need to excel in your career. You will also get to know conversion rate optimization. You can also use LinkedIn to organize offline events, join groups, write articles, and post photos and videos. LinkedIn has become so feature-rich that now it’s also a big platform for marketing especially Business to Business (B2B) marketing.

This article focuses on conversion rate optimization in B2B LinkedIn marketing. In fact, 80% of B2B social media leads come from LinkedIn. If you are a B2B business house looking to reach more leads, it’s time to start optimizing your ad campaigns to improve your LinkedIn conversion rate.

 

Why choose LinkedIn?

Do you know that the average conversion rate for LinkedIn ads is much higher than on other social media platforms? Let’s have a look at conversion rates of different social media platforms:

PLATFORM	CONVERSION RATE
LinkedIn	6.1 %
Facebook	4.7 %
Instagram	3.1%
Pinterest	2.9%
Twitter	0.9%

As you can see, LinkedIn contains the potential for you to earn more conversions if you do the right advertising. By looking at the conversion rate for LinkedIn advertisements, you will get to know what you can expect and achieve.

 

LinkedIn conversion types

It’s not that only conversion on LinkedIn is all about sales. Many businesses will use different types of conversion for their LinkedIn ads. On LinkedIn, you can earn different types of conversions like:

• Completing forms
• Downloading content
• Registering for events
• Making sales

 

How to do Conversion Rate Optimization in B2B LinkedIn Marketing?

Let us discuss in detail LinkedIn marketing strategy. For a better conversion rate in LinkedIn marketing, you need to have an effective strategy in order to successfully generate tons of warm leads and convert them into new business. Below are some points to consider:

• Target the right people

To get more people engaged with your ad, you have to target the right people. It’s not very difficult to understand that people will click your ad only if they feel it is relevant to their profession or interest. Targeting the right audience is the best practice in B2B LinkedIn marketing strategy. Many businesses make the mistake of targeting the wrong people with their advertisements. As a result, LinkedIn shows their ads less.

Hence it leads to fewer conversions and higher costs per lead. To avoid this you should target people based on demographic information, career and professional interests, and more. Setting up the right audience will help you reach more people interested in your products, which will deliver a better conversion rate for your LinkedIn ads.

• Create professional and creative ads

Creating professional and creative ads is a must in your LinkedIn marketing strategy once you have established your target audience. Advertisements and sponsored content appear in the LinkedIn newsfeed just like other posts. If you want to get people to stop scrolling and check out your ad, you need creative and compelling ad copy. The LinkedIn audience expects to see content, like industry news and posts about professional topics in their feed. The context of your LinkedIn ad plays a fundamental role in determining whether your audience engages with your ad. You can make your ad more attractive by using video or eye-catching graphics in it.

• Test your ad copy

It’s always a good practice to test your ad copy first. If you are not testing your ad copy you might not get the best results for your business. Test your ads to get the most out of your LinkedIn advertising campaign. Create multiple versions of your ad and deliver them to different people. Monitor how your audience engages with the different ad types to see which one gathers the most engagement. That will help you to find out which version of your ad is best and will be your final lead generation ad.

• Create landing pages that are informative

Creating informative and relevant landing pages helps in improving LinkedIn conversion rates. A creative ad with a weak landing page won’t get people to convert. You need to keep the momentum going by creating an excellent landing page to go with your ad. Keep your landing page simple, clean, and easy to follow. Include all the essential details on your landing page to ensure your audience feels informed.

• Ad content should be posted organically

If you are new to advertising on LinkedIn then you can try testing your ad copy as an organic post first. It will help you to see whether your ad copy connects with your targeted audiences or not. This LinkedIn marketing strategy can help you to determine if you should run a paid campaign with the same information or not. If you see higher responses to a post, you can promote that content and turn it into an ad. This strategy will be helpful for you in two ways. First, you can manage your ad budget efficiently, and second, you will have a real insight into the type of content that will get leads and engagement.

Every business owner wants to put their products or services in front of their potential customers. And to get customers every business owner needs to promote his/her business. In this article, we will get to know how to promote your small business in 14 steps. For business owners, the ways that you can promote your business and attract customers have changed dramatically in the past decade. Earlier, this was a matter of deciding between a flyer, a brochure, a postcard, or an ad in the local newspaper. But in today’s digital era, the possibilities are endless.

 

14 Tips To Promote Your Small Business

Actually, more than half of all spending on advertising has now moved to online mediums. We are going to look at 14 incredibly simple yet highly effective ways to promote your small business in 2022. You can implement all of these without needing special expertise or significant investment.

1. Create a Website

Every business needs a website, no matter how old-fashioned your business or clients may be. A user-friendly and informative website can help you establish your business and ensure consumers can learn more about your product and services. You should optimize your website for both computers and mobile phones to make it easy for customers to find the information they need regardless of the device they use. Depending on the type of your business, you should have the following information available on your website:

• • • Store operating hours
    • Location
    • Range of products and services
    • Contact number and email id
    • Customer contact form
    • Mission and values
    • History and background
    • Employee’s information

 

 

2. Create a Business Blog

Writing blogs will expand your website and enable you to connect directly with your customers. Blogs can also help to increase your search engine rankings. You can regularly write about business topics that relate to your product and services and encourage customers to leave comments or contact you for more details.

 

3. Develop Social Media Presence

Nowadays almost everyone is active on at least one social media platform. Promoting your brand on social media is very effective if you continually create posts, which helps you regularly connect with consumers and gather more followers. Try to post something which includes information about discounts and offers, updates about new products, and fun and quiz content. This is known as social media marketing in which you can promote your business at a very low cost or budget.

 

4. Connect with Your Community

Connecting with your community can help a lot because many communities help small businesses to grow up. These communities offer a low-cost way to spread information about your business like they can offer a strong customer base, spread your brand by word of mouth, and much more.

 

5. Build relations with your vendors

Developing relationships with your vendors can provide several benefits. Your vendors can help you get some business partnerships because these local vendors have strong connections with other local businesses. If you have very good relations with your vendors they can help in your hard times also.

 

6. Get your business listed

To increase your ranking on search engines, get your business listed on major listing services. Listing on major listing services will help consumers find your business when they search for a specific term.

 

7. Email Marketing

Depending on your market, sending emails to consumers is still a good option. Email campaigns can help to keep your products and services top of mind for your consumers.

 

8. Press Releases

Whenever your business does something newsworthy, it is a very good practice to send it out for a press release to your local and regional news outlets. The press release is a powerful media tool to use to help generate publicity. You can also use websites for press releases such as PRLog and 24/7 Press Releases.

 

9. Influencer Marketing

Influencers are people who have a large follower base on social media like Instagram and also on YouTube. You can collaborate with these influencers to promote your business digitally. Influencer marketing can help to both grow your brand reach and offer sales incentives.

 

10. Advertise on YouTube

Advertising on YouTube is a paid strategy that you can follow to promote your business. YouTube advertising can be an investment that pays off if it’s done in a proper way. You can advertise on YouTube by creating video ads that play before videos in relevant categories.

 

11. Form Partnerships

Partnering with a non-competitive business that serves the same clients can be a great way to promote your small business in your local area or network. Once you have established a relationship you can help each other to grow your respective businesses.

 

12. Sponsor Local Events

Even in today’s era of digital promotions, hosting or sponsoring events in your community is a great way to promote your business. Sponsoring or hosting local events will strengthen your connection with local customers.

 

13. Advertise Locally and Offline

You can also advertise on traditional platforms such as newspapers, magazines, radio, and television to promote your business if your budget is good enough.

 

14. Exhibit at Trade Shows

Trade fairs attract a mass group of buyers and sellers from every particular industry. If you can afford to get a slot in trade shows, go for it. It will showcase you in front of many industry leaders and will also help you get your business promoted to a large number of quality customers.

Do you know why, how, and when to do market research and then how to analyze market research? Let’s understand the term ‘Market Research’ first. Market research can be defined as the process of evaluating the feasibility of a new product or service, through research conducted directly with potential customers.

Analyzing market research is the process of conducting research to know how current or potential markets may receive a product, then analyzing the results of the research to determine a marketing strategy. Analyzing market research is an important part of your business and of course a larger part of any company’s marketing team job duties.

 

Why Conduct Market Research?

The purpose of conducting market research is to understand the market associated with a particular product or service and to decide how the audience will react to a product or service. Doing market research helps you position yourself in the market so that you can differentiate yourself from your competitors and also identify unmet needs in potential customers. Conducting market research can also help you understand what other potential markets you can move into and continue to grow your business.

 

Reasons for Analyzing Market Research

Here are some reasons to analyze market research:-

• • Helps in strategic planning

    Market research analysis can help you draw conclusions about your company’s financial health and where you can continue to grow, whether it is into new markets or with new initiatives. You can analyze the strength of each plan and determine the strategic benefits.

  • Identifies trends

    Analyzing your market research can help you to identify relevant trends before your competitors and stay ahead of the market. Research work will be very easier when you will identify the current trend of the market.

  • Clarify your position

    Market research data analysis can help you to place your product or brand in a better position as compared to your competitors. You can clarify how to best position yourself to potential customers.

  • Forecasts business projections

    Analyzing your market research data can help you create an idea of what the future of your business might look like. You can plan your or your company’s future growth by it.

 

How to analyze market research?

Here are 6 steps explained that you can follow to analyze market research.

1. Set an objective

You should have a clear goal or objective in your mind. To have a successful analysis, it’s helpful to start with a clear goal or question that you want to answer to help you focus your research. Understanding what you want to know can also help you determine how you go about conducting your market research. When conducting marketing research, you can gather data that will answer the following questions:

• • • Who are my potential customers?
    • What are the common shopping habits of these customers?
    • How large is my target market and how many competitors are there?
    • What are the price points in this market?
    • How do I compare to the competition?

2. Develop a research plan

Develop a plan to execute your research. In this step, you can determine if you want to conduct your own primary research, if you can rely on secondary research or if you want both. You can find out which markets you want to reach out to and how to contact your target customers in a better way. You can also determine what parameters you would like to set for the research.

3. Collect data

Collecting data is very important in market research analysis. During this step, you gather the data you can analyze later, so you want to be as thorough as possible. You might put together a team to conduct various types of research and for the collection of research data. You may also want to look into different technologies or web services that can help you conduct your research in the most organized way.

4. Analyze the data

After the collection of data, it’s the turn of analyzing it. You can organize the data into categories and look through them to identify patterns. You can use any of the analysis models listed above for this portion of your research analysis. During this step, you look for any information that may help you answer your objective or key question.

5. Present the findings

Once you have identified the patterns, you can organize the data into a presentable form and share it with your team. This will help you communicate what you learned during your research and analysis. Additionally, you may want the input of other teams and managers when creating an action plan based on your market research, which is why presenting it to them can be helpful.

6. Draw conclusions

This is the final step in which you can draw conclusions from the market research analysis you have done. In order to draw a conclusion, you can follow the steps appropriate for the type of analysis you used, including the feedback from your team and coming up with an answer that fulfills your objective. You can take help from these conclusions for your next research.