Whether you are starting a new business or rebranding an existing one, creating a good marketing strategy is key...

Why Digital Marketing?

Unlike the more traditional marketing like face-to-face sales pep talks, billboards, newspapers, etc, digital marketing strategies are very cost-effective for small businesses.

• Digital marketing is measurable and trackable.
• You can reach a wide audience and
•  engage directly with your target customers which is impossible to do with traditional marketing.

Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses

Marketing technology is a vast and development space. It’s hard to know where to start. We’ll help you out. Here are the five essential technology categories for preparing, executing, and analyzing your modern strategies.

To get exposure as quickly as affordably as possible, learn your target audience, and build an engaged following, you need these essential digital marketing tools:

1. Social Media Marketing

With social media marketing tools, your marketing team can manage and track community engagement, interact with your target audience in real-time, participate in necessary conversations happening online, and divide important content property strategically. Social media platforms also allow you to analyze these efforts, helping your team evolve and hone social initiatives earnestly.

And it’s not hard to understand why when almost 3 billion people use social media platforms. That’s approximately a third of the world’s population. This huge number includes people from all age groups young and old.

SMM is almost guaranteed to improve your level of engagement and brand awareness. Social media networks include Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter,  Instagram, and many more.....

No matter who your target audience is, you’ll be able to reach them and interact with them.

Social Media Marketing is easy to use, low cost, measurable, but it's also competitive, and time-consuming.

2. SEO

SEO refers to free and organic traffic to your website. Basically, if you get to the top or at least page one of the search engine result pages, then you’ve succeeded at SEO.

A study from July of 2018 revealed that only 44% of businesses invest in SEO, perhaps because many businesses are looking to social media advertising rather than Google. While social media marketing is important, SEO should not be put on the back burner.

A study by Mozrevealed that over 70% of searchers click on a website on the first page of SERPs (search engine result pages). This means that almost all of the traffic on search engines goes to websites on the first page of results. SEO can help your website receive some of that traffic, leading to increased brand awareness, leads, and profits when those leads convert to customers.

This may prove challenging because there will always be competitors who will observe your SEO strategy and try to copy it. Therefore, you should always stay up to date with the latest SEO tips and changes.

Most consumers research online before buying. Therefore, online visibility is key and this is done using SEO, and this means more revenue for your business.

Consumers will trust your business if you rank on top of the search result pages. If a customer is looking for a business and they don’t appear in the first results for the related keywords, that may send up red flags. They could think that your business is not the best in your field, or that you’re inexperienced or irrelevant. 

SEO can give you continual free traffic to your website, and that's why it is effective, efficient, and popular.

If your business’ digital marketing plan does not include SEO, you should consider changing your strategy today.

3. PPC

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is costly, but the return and conversion rate is worth the cost. Basically, you pay a fee each time one of your ads is clicked

PPC is popular because it's promoted by Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and these companies want you to succeed so that you’ll keep using their advertising tools.

PPC is widely considered to be one of the most successful forms of online advertising. It offers quick results, and reliable returns, and it’s also one of the most popular styles of advertising. PPC advertising can give marketers results as soon as their ads go live.

Because these platforms have a huge wealth of user data, they can give ads the options that are based on things like:

- Age, gender, language, and other demographic data.

• Global, national, and even local locations.
• User interests, hobbies, careers, etc. 
• Previous shopping habits, brand interests, and web browsing. The device
• , mobile vs. desktop use, and cross-platform browsing habits. 
• Education level, income, and employment. 
• Life events.
• Political affiliations.
•  And more.

4. Email Marketing

Email marketing is a highly effective digital marketing strategy of sending emails to prospects and customers. Effective marketing emails convert prospects into customers and turn a one-time buyer into loyal clientele. 

Email marketing works far better than its traditional counterpart. Gathering email addresses is much easier than gathering mailing addresses or phone numbers, and the costs are much lower. Sending emails is practically free.

Email marketing is still effective in customer acquisition, economic and effective, personal and customizable, and measurable.

Even though email marketing sounds great but it is very competitive. Digital marketing strategies have a lot of competition, but that’s because they work so well!

Competition is inherent to email marketing. Most people get hundreds of marketing emails every day but used effectively could generate prospects and leads, and help your business grow.

5. Content Marketing

Content marketing is a marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a targeted audience, and to drive customer action.

Marketing is impossible without great content. Regardless of what type of marketing tactics you use, content marketing should be part of your process, not something separate. Quality content is part of all forms of marketing.

Content marketing comes before social media, SEO, or PPC.

• Successful CM strategies address issues readers care about.
• For PPC to work, you need great content behind it.
• Content is key to driving inbound traffic and leads.
• C
• ontent strategy is part of most marketing strategies.