When small businesses get started, they often focus on how to get the first customers through the door and rely on traditional advertising, such as brochures, print ads, or even outdoor advertising.
While this strategy may bring in a trickle of business, there’s a better and easier way. Small businesses should consider the global online marketplace and benefit from using a combination of traditional and digital marketing to leverage every avenue available.
After all, 76% of consumers look for a company online before visiting a store, while 45% are likely to visit after finding a strong online presence on a local search page, according to research by Visual Objects.
Every small business, no matter how new or established, should look at digital channels as a way to generate leads and convert interest into customers.
In this blog, we’ll look at 6 ways you can use online channels to promote and grow your business (along with 3 great examples from small brands for inspiration).
- Conduct competitor research
- Leverage SEO
- Be proactive and reactive on social media
- Target existing customers
- Reach out to influencers
- Focus your marketing budget
What are the benefits of digital marketing?
The potential customers you can find online are a much larger group than you’ll ever be able to attract only locally. By using digital marketing techniques, you can reach a massive audience in a way that’s cost-effective, scalable, and measurable.
Some of the key benefits of using digital channels include:
- Increase your interaction with prospects and learn exactly what they are looking for, i.e., get to know your customers better!
- Reach out to anyone in any location and at any timezone as there are no geographical boundaries with digital.
- Target the right audience at the right time through hyper-personalization.
- Communicate with your prospects and customers at every stage of the buying process.
- Save money and reach more people for less.
- Understand your audience and drive engagement to boost customer loyalty.
- Track and monitor campaigns in real-time so you can optimize or tweak content or targeting.
- Offer better customer service using social media platforms like Facebook or X.
Getting started on digital marketing for small businesses
With endless opportunities, digital marketing can seem intimidating if you’ve never used it before. There are a variety of platforms and strategies that may make it seem like a bigger project than it is.
But the online marketplace is competitive, and while word-of-mouth marketing and customer recommendations can help drive traffic, customers will struggle to find your business unless you show up in the places they spend time.
That’s because online shopping has exploded in recent years as people flock online to research and purchase. This has resulted in the global ecommerce share of retail sales going from just 18% in 2021 to an estimated 23% in 2027.
This makes building a presence online crucial to any small business that wants to survive, especially when 20% of businesses fail in the first year, 30% in the second year, and 50% by year five, according to Forbes Advisor.
So let’s look at some simple but effective digital marketing tactics you can use to build an online presence and get found by the people who have an interest in your product or service.
1) Conduct Competitor Research
For your business to be successful, you need to pay attention to what your competitors are doing and learn from it. Look at what your competitors are doing online, and that will get some idea of what is and isn’t working.
Conduct a competitor analysis and do your research with these types of questions in mind:
- What type of content do they use (e.g., a company blog, videos or visuals, custom landing pages, original research, or user-generated content)?
- How do they communicate their brand, and what makes them unique?
- How well do they engage with the audience and how (e.g., social media channels)?
- What platforms do they use?
- Do they have any brand advocates or influencer partnerships?
- Do they have a loyalty program, and if so, what does it offer?
Luckily, there are some great tools that can help in your research so it doesn’t become a drain on your time, such as:
- Semrush – great for keyword ranking and keyword traffic
- Ahrefs – useful for discovering competitors’ most linked content
- Moz – another platform for keyword ranking
- BuzzSumo – track popular content types and influencers
- Google Alerts – a tool for tracking mentions of any competitor you choose to track
- Ontolo – a great tool for backlinks and content marketing
- Similarweb – gives you insights on digital channels used, website traffic, keywords, and social channels
You should also take advantage of platforms for customer insights to feed into your persona development and content marketing, such as:
- AnswerthePublic
- Ubersuggest
- Statista
- SparkToro
There are also plenty of useful artificial intelligence (AI) marketing tools and ones for copywriting using AI.
2) Leverage SEO
Whatever product or service a person looks for, they will most likely start their search with a search engine like Google. If you have an online presence but your competitors are easier to find as they rank higher in search, you still might not be found.
So, along with creating an optimized website, you need to understand the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to outrank your competitors.
Keywords are crucial in making this happen, so make sure you research the best keywords (long-tail and short-tail) for your business. This will help you identify and keep phrases that have good search volume, disregard keywords with poor volume, and find content gaps that you can fill to build authority.
Local SEO is important here for a small business. While you can aim to inform and sell to people across the globe, local SEO can help your business be more visible in search results on Google based on searches aimed at specific locations.
You can also use Google Business Profile, which is a directory that offers you a way to display business information on local searches and Google Maps.
Also, tap into simple questions prospects may want quick answers to by including FAQs on your website or writing a blog that targets specific long-tail phrases. For example, if you are a bar that specializes in local beers, you could write an article that covers “The Best Beers in X (& Why They’re Great)” and include information about where you can get them, e.g., your place!
Don’t forget, AI tools like ChatGPT can help with SEO, so make sure to check out the platform and see how it works. It’s easy to create prompts with target keywords and ask ChatGPT to come up with some content specifically for Facebook or X.
3) Be Proactive and Reactive on Social Media
Social media is one of the most powerful digital platforms for a small business. With over 5 billion users representing 62% of the world’s population, according to Datareportal data, it’s a great channel to get your brand seen and heard.
The big challenge may be which social platform to use for your business as there are many to choose from, and each has a different audience and relies on different content types.
The secret to being successful on social media is to pick the right platform/s for your business. This means you need to understand who is active on what platform and what type of content they consume.
- YouTube – Video content (including YouTube Shorts) and popular amongst the 25-44 age groups
- Facebook – Text, image, and video content can be used, and the platform is most popular with 25-44 year-olds
- Instagram – A platform made for image and video content and used by influencers, it’s most popular amongst 18-34 year-olds
- TikTok – A video-based platform (and fast becoming a search engine) it is most popular amongst 18-34 year-olds but is also widely used by 12-17 year-olds.
- LinkedIn – Used for text, images, and video content, 60% of LinkedIn users are between the ages of 25-34.
- Pinterest – Coined as a visual discovery engine, images can be grouped into themes as “Boards,” Pinterest is popular with women (76% of users) and the ages of 18-34 years of age.
- X – As a news-oriented platform, you can post images, text, videos, and polls, and it’s popular with those between 25-34 years.
You can also make a decision based on active users as this will guarantee you an audience.
Social media should not only be about posting content about your business (self-promotional content), it’s also about sharing the content of others and providing information that your audience would find useful.
Consider encouraging your audience to create user-generated content as this can help share reviews or endorsements of your brand (while not doing it yourself). Don’t forget that social media should also be used to respond to customer queries or complaints. It can demonstrate your commitment to customers and also provide quick and transparent responses to solve issues quickly.
4) Target existing customers
It’s great to have an email marketing list, even if it’s not that big, it’s important to nurture people on it. After all, they are there for a reason, whether that’s due to a purchase or taking advantage of a discount offer.
Just bear in mind you need to be aware of data protection laws and legislation for sending emails via Google and Yahoo to ensure that you’re protecting your customer’s data.
Before your email database gets unmanageable, it’s good to put some structure on it. Segment your customers or prospects so you can target them with relevant and personalized content. These segments could be:
- Action (e.g., purchase or download)
- Gender
- Age group
- Location
- Abandonment cart
- Interests
- Purchase history
- Engagement
It’s also important to look at how to grow your email list. The more people you have on it, the more opportunities you have to engage and convert. Here are some simple
