8 Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Business Owners
No matter the size of your business, you can’t afford to ignore digital marketing. For many businesses, it’s the main driving factor behind their success, revenue, and growth.
These days, growing your business past the plateau of a small, local business requires a solid digital marketing strategy that will help you make an impact.
However, to see the desired results, you must consider applying various digital marketing strategies that can help your small business stand out in your industry.
So, in this article, we’ll walk you through 8 digital marketing strategies for small business owners that you must implement to get your growth out of a rut.
The Importance of Digital Marketing to Small Business Owners
Digital marketing has become an essential tool for reaching customers and increasing sales. But these are not the only two benefits of implementing various digital marketing strategies as a small business. Here are a few more:
1. It Boosts Brand Awareness
One of the best ways for small businesses to build brand awareness is to implement various digital marketing strategies, such as social media or email marketing.
This way, businesses can inform potential customers of the products or services, raise brand awareness, and build trust by showing off their expertise in the industry.
2. It Helps You Reach New Customers
Another benefit of digital marketing is that it allows you to reach new customers who may not have heard of your company.
It’s a good way for small businesses that don’t have brick-and-mortar locations — such as restaurants, cafes, or retail shops — to connect with potential customers.
3. It Helps You Engage With Existing Customers
Digital marketing is an excellent way for you to keep your existing customers engaged. It can be as simple as sending them an email with a special offer or an update on new products.
When customers feel like they’re being heard and taken care of, they’re more likely to stay loyal and continue purchasing from you over time.
Reach customers beyond the limits of your storefronts
8 Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Business Owners
Now that you’re fully aware of the importance of digital marketing, it’s time to discover some of the most effective digital marketing strategies for small business owners.
1. Content Marketing
Digital content is a powerful tool to influence your audience. An effective content marketing strategy should be divided into pillars based on where your customers are in their buyer’s journey. This way, you’ll be able to inform, educate, and guide them towards eventually converting into customers.
You can then repurpose content across various marketing touchpoints, for example, converting your blog posts into YouTube videos and Instagram captions.
Another great content strategy is motivating your existing customers or fans to create user-generated content – because what’s a better way to promote your brand than when your happy customers promote it for you by posting about it on social media?
2. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a relatively new area of digital marketing that’s gaining in popularity and importance. In short, it’s a digital marketing strategy that uses social media influencers to promote your products or brand.
It’s similar to affiliate marketing, but instead of using bloggers or other writers to promote your products, you use individuals with a large social media following — sometimes millions — to do the same thing. The influencers are paid for their posts or reviews, and this compensation can take the form of cash or free products. Make sure that the post design matches the style so it stays on brand.
For small businesses, it’s a highly effective way to get new eyeballs on their products and gain recognition fast.
3. Email Marketing
Even though many people think email is an obsolete communication tool, email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to reach your prospects and convert them into customers regardless of whether you run an online coaching business or a large eCommerce store. It’s also one of the most cost-effective ways to generate sales.
Emailing your audience lets you reach customers directly, and it’s a great way to engage with them on a personal level – but don’t forget to design an email signature that shows off your professionalism and personality!
But there’s more to it than just sending out mass emails. You should use email as part of a larger email marketing strategy — one that includes automation, segmentation, and testing.
4. Online Event Marketing
Online event marketing is an excellent way to build your brand, generate leads and create new business opportunities.
You can raise more awareness about your products or services by creating an automated webinar, launching a podcast, or hosting live events on your social media platforms.
It’s also a great way to serve your audience by discussing a topic important to them or educating them on how to solve a problem they’re facing.
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Since half of the world’s population is now using Google as their primary search engine, SEO has become a must-have digital marketing strategy for any business.
Well-implemented SEO strategies will help you get discovered by your target customers who are already searching for what you’re selling on Google.
However, SEO is a long-term game. Many techniques, such as link building and using targeted keywords in your content, can take months to show results. Having a strong strategy from the start is important, and working with an SEO and link-building consulting agency can help.
But a long-term game is better than no game at all! And it’s easy to see that if you’re not putting any effort into optimizing your SEO strategy, you’re missing out on thousands of potential customers!
6. Pay-per-Click (PPC) Marketing
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is one of the most popular and effective digital marketing strategies for small businesses. PPC ads are placed on search engines, social media sites, and other websites participating in the advertising network.
PPC ads are highly targeted, meaning you pay only for people who click on your ad. This type of marketing can be expensive if you don’t have a large budget and don’t know how to optimize your PPC campaigns. But it’s also one of the best ways to raise brand awareness and increase sales quickly.
7. Location-based Marketing
If you advertise, you might as well make it as targeted as possible. That’s the thinking behind location-based marketing, which means using GPS or other tracking technology to send ads only to people who have recently visited your store or website.
The ads are based on the products your customer looked at while in the store or the products they added to their shopping cart when browsing your website.
Location-based marketing is a great way to get more bang for your buck out of advertising because it allows you to target people who have already shown an interest in your brand or products.
8. Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is currently one of the most effective digital marketing strategies for small businesses. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer business owners countless opportunities to reach broader audiences at no cost.
The key is knowing which social media platforms are most likely to reach your target audience and using those platforms skillfully to drive organic traffic to your accounts and website.
With that said, if you want to be successful with your social media marketing efforts, you need to learn how to use each social media platform effectively – and that means paying attention to different social media image sizes, algorithm requirements, and best practices.
Focus on the areas that make your business grow while we handle everything else
Bonus Tip: Use a Software
One of the main issues when using various digital marketing strategies as a small business is the money and time needed to implement them. In that scenario, using software like Desygner can be the optimal solution to the limited marketing budget and time.
Desygner is a one-stop-shop platform for managing and creating content, as well as protecting your brand assets and identity. With Desygner’s flexible subscription plan, you’ll be able to create any kind of design without graphic design skills and keep your brand, marketing, and content assets in one place.
In addition, you’ll have access to the Guest User feature, which allows you to invite guests to collaborate on your brand assets and marketing materials. Your guests can be influencers you’re paying to promote your brand, occasional content writers, or podcast guests.
So, instead of spending hours designing your marketing materials and storing them on multiple platforms, you’ll save time and money on production costs.
This, in turn, will help you market and grow your business. And as your business and content creation demand grows way past your current plateau, you’ll be able easily to upgrade to Desygner’s Enterprise Solution to cover those rising needs.
Wrap Up
Hopefully, by now, you have a pretty good idea of what you need to be doing to market your business effectively. The great thing about digital marketing is that there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach.
All businesses are different, and they need marketing strategies that are tailored specifically to them. So, don’t be afraid to experiment with different strategies! After all, that’s the best way to find out what works for you.
