It is no longer a secret that digital marketing has become an important part of businesses in our world today regardless of size.
In today’s economy, every business needs a healthy dose of digital marketing strategy in order to thrive, especially small businesses. As a small business owner, you should know the digital marketing strategy that works fine with your business because not every strategy is bound to work well with every business.
Is digital marketing important for my small business?
The importance of digital marketing cannot be overemphasized as it has proven to be one of the best practices you can incorporate when running a business online.
Digital marketing not only helps to build a solid online presence for your small business but helps to attract new buyers thereby increasing sales and revenue.
In this article, I’ll share with you five digital marketing strategies for small businesses and would implore you as a small business owner to practicalize them and choose the one that works well with your business.
5 DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR SMALL BUSINESSES
- THE CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY
Have you noticed that many businesses have a blog section where they share valuable information with their audience on their website?
In case you don’t know…
…. this is a Content marketing strategy.
This strategy doesn’t just focus on sales but also on value. It is understandable that everyone wants to make sales but how about you try a different approach to achieve that?
Offer value, meet a need and ensure relevance.
Offering value and meeting the needs of your audience without minding if they have patronized you before or not helps to portray your company’s customer orientation, expertise and helps you to build trust and confidence in your audience which is likely to help you make better sales.
- THE SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM) STRATEGY
The search engine marketing strategy is a critical aspect of marketing for small businesses as it helps to fast track their visibility in search engine results thereby giving them the opportunity to compete with top businesses.
One of the advantages of using the SEM strategy is that it connects you directly to your targeted audience.
The fact that someone out there is looking for your product or services qualifies him/her as your targeted audience and these are the kind of people that SEM will present your business to.
Unlike the SEO strategy where you have to wait for weeks or even months before your business gets ranked among the search engine results, SEM delivers faster results if it turns out successful.
The search engine marketing strategy is a great deal for small businesses to explore, especially retailers.
- THE AFFILIATE MARKETING STRATEGY
Have you ever imagined how awesome it would be to have people who take your business as a priority just because they aim at getting sales commissions from you?
A report from a business insider has stated that affiliate marketing and email marketing are responsible for 16% of eCommerce sales.
In case you don’t know what affiliate marketing is…
Affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy that helps you to advertise and sell your products or services through people known as affiliates and you get to pay them an agreed rate as commission.
This strategy works effectively with small businesses that deal with physical or digital products and desire a massive sales audience.
To incorporate this strategy in your small business and make people become your affiliates, you will have to work with an affiliate marketing network. It is either you join an affiliate marketing network or create your own.
The reason why creating your own network is advised is because of the huge fees that are required of you before joining an affiliate marketing network and we understand quite well that some small business owners will not be able to afford this.
While this can consume time to set up, It is one of the simplest digital marketing strategies to practice.
Have you observed the “email subscription thing” on most business websites?…
….that is the foundation of email marketing.
This marketing strategy affects the online success of a business as well as offline success. Email marketing involves promoting your products or services through newsletters, promotions, broadcast/commercial messages etc. and it relies on building a list of potential and existing clients – This list is built by collating email addresses through the email subscription strategy.
However, it is not advisable to just send messages about your product and services alone instead, offer value (maybe weekly) and don’t spam their mails.
- THE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING STRATEGY.
Social media marketing is very tricky as it would always sound simple to the ears but in the real sense, It’s not easy to integrate.
Social media marketing is not only about posting your products and services with hopes of making sales but it’s about publishing valuable content that drives engagements, listening to your followers and analyzing your results, then using the paid campaign strategy to advertise your products and services.
Also, you should consider studying your audiences and knowing what social media platforms you can find them so that you don’t channel your energy to a channel that will not yield results for your business.
As much as these strategies have been proven effective, It is advisable to pick at least two or three for maximum results.
If you think the social media idea is fine by you, consider backing it up with a content marketing strategy because it is when you give your audience great and irresistible content that they’ll be convinced to follow you on all social media platforms.
The same goes with email marketing, if there’s no content to attract your audience, they won’t be convinced to subscribe to your email list.
Fortunately, everything boils down to serving them with great content.
Try any of these strategies and I believe that with the right approach, digital marketing will work for you.
