As a small or local business owner, taking full advantage of digital marketing is no longer voluntary. In fact, small businesses who neglect their digital presence risk being left behind and overtaken by the competition, so it’s crucial to make this a priority.
Many small businesses struggle to include digital marketing into their overall marketing plan. When you’re attempting to cope with day-to-day operations, hiring and retaining great employees, customer service, and everything else which comes along with running your own company. Before you know it, you’ve missed the boat on what could have been an effective way to get more customers through your doors.
Digital marketing has become an ever more viable and essential way for businesses of all sizes to market their products and services online, as well as attract new customers and generate new revenue streams. However many small businesses don’t understand the ins and outs of digital marketing, so they struggle to utilise it effectively in their business development efforts.
Here are some great digital marketing ideas for small businesses.
Create A Free Google My Business Account
For local businesses in particular, a Google Business Profile has become one of the most efficient free marketing strategies that are available. This must-have piece of marketing collateral gives your business the opportunity to appear on Google Maps, the local section of Google Search as well as the right-side Knowledge Panel for branded searches.
However in order for your Business Profile to display higher on Google Maps or local results, you have to optimise your Business Profile. In order to optimise it, you need to have verified ownership of it — which is done through your Google My Business account.
Keep Your Customers In The Loop
As we said previously, digital communication is more important than ever. Many companies have made significant changes in how they interact with their customers. Sharing community updates that are related to your business and proactively making sure that your customers are kept informed is crucial to growing your business.
Whether you’re starting to sell your products or services online, or just offering extra communication and engagement, you’ll further improve trust and knowledge of your brand by continuing your digital communications.
Leverage Social Media
For small businesses which have just launched, social media is the ideal place to market because it’s free, easy to set up and also has a huge potential in terms of reaching to the right audience. With so many social media channels out there for you to choose from, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are always good places to start. People can find everything from the latest news to FIFA World Cup 2022 odds on social media, so you need to go where the traffic is.
Get Your Website Basics Right
Customers call the shots and users are becoming increasingly demanding in terms of the experience they expect from a website. They want a fast loading website and ease of use as a minimum requirement. As a local business, you may not have the same budget as the bigger, national or international firms, however you can at the very least get the basics right.
