13 digital marketing tips for small businesses

If you are new to selling online, the phrase ‘digital marketing’ can sound a bit daunting. It sounds like something only someone with a degree or specialist experience can do, but in fact it just means using the internet to promote products and services.
 

For a small business, getting the word out about your brand, products and services can seem challenging. Your brand is small and relatively unknown and changing that will take time and money.

Digital marketing is something which everyone can (and should) be doing to promote their business. It takes a number of different forms, and the key thing is to choose those which will work well for your brand and products, and which will prove cost-effective, giving you the best possible return on your investment (ROI).

Read on for digital marketing tips to help your small business…

Focus on the quick wins

Digital marketing can be a full-time job, it could even be a full-time job for a whole team of people.  But the chances are, it is just one part of your job, so you can’t do it all.

Instead, focus on the quick wins – the areas which will work well for the target audience you’ve identified and which you know work well in your industry.

There are many potential quick wins, which we will look at separately in more detail, including pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media and email marketing.  You want to choose the ones which will generate the most sales for the minimum of work and financial investment.

Don’t forget existing customers

You probably already have a group of people who fit your target audience and have developed some loyalty to your brand – your existing customers.

Existing customers are very important to a business and it is essential to keep nurturing them. Research has shown that, on average, it costs five times as much to acquire a new customer as it costs to keep an existing one.

Your existing customers have already bought from you, so they are far more likely to buy again, as long as you have given them a good service.  Nurture them with special offers and opportunities for repeat purchases.

Don’t forget the power of word-of-mouth too.  If your existing customers are happy with your products or your service, they are likely to tell others, which is one of the very best promotional tools there is.

Online reviews

If your existing customers are happy with their experience of your business, encourage them to let others know through online reviews.  When a happy customer talks online about your fantastic brand, their friends and even total strangers are more likely to choose your business over a competitor.

You can claim your business on online review sites like TripAdvisor or Trust Pilot. Sites like these, as well as Google, Which? and many more, are a great choice for customer reviews.  Alternatively, customers could send reviews to you, which you could post on your own website, or they may choose to share them on social media.

Wherever they are posted, it’s important that you are aware of your online reviews and take the time to read and respond to them publicly.  By responding to your reviews, whether good or bad, you are showing that you care about what your customers think.  Just make sure to spend the time preparing a measured and polite response to any negative reviews, offering to remedy the situation.

Google Business Profile

A Google Business Profile, sometimes known as Google My Business, is a free way to claim your own physical business on Google.

A Business Profile for your store will help turn people who find you on Google Search and Maps into new customers.  Use your Business Profile to highlight essential information, such as your opening hours and contact details, and show what makes your business unique.  You can also include photos and your logo to really personalise your profile and make it stand out from the crowd.

A Google Business Profile is another way to connect with your customers and potential customers, by responding to reviews and sending and receiving messages.

Start a blog

Once you’ve got your website up and running, it makes sound business sense to include a blog as part of your website.

Blogging is a great way to attract organic traffic to your site, particularly for people who haven’t yet committed to buy from you.

Your blog will feature a variety of relevant subjects, from a focus on particular products to the history of your business, as well as comment and in-depth analysis on issues within your industry. If your industry is particularly niche, your blog is a way to show that you are credible and knowledgeable in that sector.

Publishing regularly – whether twice a week or twice or month – will help boost your website’s visibility online.  And a blog is probably the best way to boost your SEO.

Adding a call-to-action (CTA) to posts is an easy way to collect email addresses, which will help you to stay in touch with potential customers.

SEO

SEO is short for search engine optimisation.  It is about making your website more visible on searches on Google and other search engines, so that when someone looks for a product or service like yours, your brand is near the top of the list.

The key to SEO is to rank for the right keywords.  What are the important things which make your brand stand out and which people might search for? Clearly, you’re not going to rank on Google for really broad terms like ‘Garden’ or ‘Home improvements', so focus on the keywords which make your brand unique and be sure to use them in your content – particularly your blog. Google gives extra weight to keywords which are used in titles and headers, so make sure they are included in the right place.

If you are a local business, it is especially important to include local place names in your keywords, for example ‘Garden furniture Tewkesbury’.
To help you analyse your current SEO (and check on your competitors too!), Neil Patel has a free and easy-to-use SEO Analyzer Tool on his website. This will let you know which keywords you rank for, along with how often they are used.

Once you can see how your business is ranking against the competition, you can put the work in to improving your SEO.

SEO isn’t a quick win and it usually takes around six months for a piece of content to make a difference, but it is worth putting in the effort for the benefits it will bring in the future.

Start an email list

Email is the preferred form of marketing for many customers, yet can often be overlooked by businesses.

You don’t want to bombard your contacts with emails, but here are just some of the stats from Hubspot which prove why email marketing is a must-have:

•   Email generates £42 for every £1 spent, which is a 4,200% ROI
•   Across all industries, the average email open rate is 19.8%, the click-through rate is 11.3%, and the bounce rate is 9.4%
•   78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months
•   99% of email users check their inbox every day, with some checking 20 times a day
•   74% of Baby Boomers think email is the most personal channel to receive communications from brands, followed by 72% of Gen X, 64% of Millennials and 60% of Gen Z

Personalised emails are the most effective, so use a customer relationship management (CRM) system to store information about your contacts and track your interactions with them.

Use every opportunity you can to collect email addresses (from CTAs on your website to the till in your physical store) to build your email marketing list. The larger your email list, the more successful your business will be!

Experiment with different types of email and also experiment with the day of the week or time of day you send them, as it’s likely that some will be more popular than others.

Use social media

Every brand should have a social media presence, but it isn’t necessary or advisable to use all of them.  Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok give you more opportunities to share everything from special offers to your latest blog post.  They are also a great way to grow your brand’s followers and engage with your audience.

Focus on the top two social media platforms which are relevant for your brand and audience. TikTok, for example is a useful way to reach Generation Z, the very youngest generation, while Facebook has by far the biggest number of users – 2.93 billion worldwide at the start or 2022.

Before deciding which social media platform to use, consider:

•   Do you have resources for creating graphics or videos (especially for TikTok, Instagram and YouTube)?
•   Do you plan to use social media for brand awareness, to increase traffic, increase sales or all of these?
•   Will you need an additional staff member to run this platform, or will it be easy to maintain?

Social media can be a great customer service tool and it’s essential that someone checks comments and messages regularly and responds to them, to help build trust in your brand.

PPC advertising

There are a number of ways to advertise online, but pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, particularly on Google, is the most effective for many businesses. As organic traffic through SEO takes a while to build up, PPC advertising is a quick win to get your digital marketing off the ground.

Google Ads are the most effective for potential customers searching the internet for a particular solution or product.  As an advertising listing, your product or business will appear higher up on searches than organic content.
The key to making PPC work is to focus on keywords which are unique to your business, to make sure your company is visible and can compete with bigger players in your industry.

To make your PPC advertising as effective as possible, you will need to optimise your landing pages on your website.  When you are paying per click, you want to be sure that every click counts and increase the chances of customers going ahead and buying from you.

Alternatively, you may prefer to use social media advertising, with highly targeted ads for the right audience.  Most of the social media platforms offer affordable advertising and some will offer your customers the chance to shop direct through ads.

Use video

According to HubSpot research, more than 50% of consumers want to see videos from brands – and that percentage is even higher for a younger target audience.

Video is essential for TikTok and YouTube, but you can also create and host videos on your own website and other social media.  Making videos doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive – it just requires a smartphone.

YouTube is actually the second biggest search engine after Google, so to reach the biggest audiences, you should host your videos on YouTube, with a link to them from your website.  Hosting videos on YouTube also make sense in terms of SEO, as video can slow down your own website, which in turn is damaging for SEO.

Getting started with digital marketing, or making improvements to your existing digital marketing, can seem like a daunting prospect.  The online marketplace is huge and it can be hard for smaller brands to get heard.

Whether you are focusing mainly on social media, PPC or your blog, the key is always to think about your target audience and choose the keywords which will help to get your business in front of the right people.

By following these tips and focusing on the quick wins which work for you, you can make a difference, reach a bigger audience and ultimately improve your sales and your bottom line.s and set people straight with some facts.

Remember to keep it friendly and non-confrontational and to use language which is easy to understand.