Digital Marketing for Small Businesses: Why It Matters
In a world where technology is constantly evolving, it’s more important than ever for small businesses to utilize digital marketing strategies. Not only does digital marketing allow businesses to reach a wider audience, but it also allows them to connect with customers in a more personal way. In this blog post, we will discuss the benefits of digital marketing for small businesses and provide tips on how you can get started!
As a small business owner, you may be wondering why digital marketing is so important. Here are a few reasons:
Digital marketing allows businesses to reach a wider audience. With traditional marketing methods, businesses are limited to their local area. However, with digital marketing, businesses can reach customers all over the world! This is especially beneficial for businesses that can easily ship their products, or perform services remotely.
Digital marketing is more cost-effective than traditional marketing. Small businesses often have a limited budget, so they need to be strategic with their marketing spend. With digital marketing, businesses can reach their target audience without breaking the bank. Additionally, digital marketing tactics like search engine optimization (SEO) and email marketing can be very effective for driving traffic to a special offer or sale.
In addition, you can more easily track which campaigns are performing better than others using digital marketing analytics. Digital marketing analytics makes it easy to see which tactics are working and which ones need improvement. With traditional marketing it can sometimes be difficult to quantify results.
So, if you’re thinking about skipping digital marketing for your small business, think again. It is a vital part of any comprehensive marketing strategy. By neglecting digital marketing, you’re missing out on opportunities to reach new customers, re-engage your current ones, and track results in real time and engage customers through interactive content. .
Some of the most popular digital marketing products for small businesses include social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), geo-fencing, local SEO, funnel creation and email marketing.
Social Media Marketing
Let’s start with why social media marketing is so important.
- First, social media is a massive platform with billions of users.
- Second, it’s a great way to connect with potential and current customers.
- Third, social media can help you build brand awareness and create a community around your business.
Finally, it’s cost-effective and easy to get started. If you don’t have the time to manage your own social media accounts, Agency 8 can help you master this task!
Next, is search engine optimization, also known as SEO. SEO is important because it helps your website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), which means more people will see your site when they search for keywords related to your business.
Agency 8 offers a variety of SEO services, such as keyword research, on-page optimization, link building and content marketing. We are currently offering free SEO audits to help you understand how the internet currently “sees” your business and how you can improve your visibility. If you don’t want to tackle making the necessary improvements, we can help you with that too!
Geo-Fencing
Next we have geo-fencing. This is an amazing service that a lot of small business owners don’t know about, but are blown away with once they understand the power of it. Geo-fencing allows you to target people who are in a certain geographic area. For example, if you own a barber shop in Los Angeles, you can target people who are within a certain radius of your shop and serve them ads for your business. This is an extremely powerful tool because you can laser focus your marketing efforts to the cell phones of the people most likely to buy from you.
The possibilities are endless – Imagine if you could target the cell phones of everyone who has walked into your store or even your competitors store in the past 12 months? Keep in mind that this service only applies to phones who use location services and they have not changed their phone in the past year.
It is surprisingly affordable to get started with this service at Agency 8 and we can even assist with ad creation.
Local SEO
Local SEO is probably one of the MOST powerful free marketing opportunities for small businesses who MUST be see by the people in their community.
Here’s the thing:
No matter how good your product or service is, if people in your community can’t find you online, they won’t buy from you.
It doesn’t matter if you are the best hair salon, pizzeria, lawyer, chiropractor or car mechanic, most people these days use their phone, Siri or Alexa to search for “the nearest” business for what they need.
If you aren’t using digital marketing to make sure your small business comes up in these types of searches, you are missing out on a LOT of potential customers.
Here are some quick tips to get started with Local SEO:
- Make sure your Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) listing is set up and optimized.
- Make sure you include your address and hours of operation
- If you don’t already have reviews, be sure to ask your happy customers to review your Google listing.
- Add photos and also take advantage of the free mini website creator. Even if you have a website, use this platform as it’s basically free real-estate on Google!
Those are just a few of the things you can do, however, this is just scratching the surface. There are other directories besides Google you need to be listed in. If you would prefer to have us help you with this, Agency 8 has an affordable local SEO product to get everything dialed in so your business is seen online.
Funnel Creation
We are going to assume if you are currently a business owner, you have a website. If not, we can help you with that. But even if you have a website, you might consider a marketing funnel to help guide the buying process of a prospect.
Marketing funnels are basically a series of landing pages, with upsells that laser focus on marketing one big idea. Sometimes the funnel starts with a free offer of a tip sheet, webinar, or training booklet. As a prospect moves through the funnel, they are exposed to more offers.
For example, you could have an offer for a free 15-minute consultation that moves to a $97/month coaching program, and so on.
The point is that each level of the funnel is designed to increase the perceived value of what’s being offered while also moving the prospect closer to becoming a paying customer.
The funnel also captures the basic contact information of the prospect, so you are also adding to the names on your marketing list. A powerful marketing funnel will monitor the activities of the prospect as they progress through the funnel. An email campaign can be triggered to automatically follow up with the prospect based on their behavior in the funnel process.
Funnels are one of the most powerful marketing tools, especially if you have a unique service, product, or course/coaching offer. Agency 8 can help you determine if a funnel is right for your business and create a strategy and plan to build one out. Let us know if you would like to know more.
Email Marketing
Last but not least is email marketing. Email marketing can be used for a variety of reasons such as to cultivate relationships, give value, or make sales. No matter what your goal is, email marketing can help you achieve it. If you’re not using email marketing in your business yet, now is the time to start.
The best way to launch an email campaign is via CRM software. This will allow you to send out compliant emails, meaning your emails were sent out with permission by the customer/prospect. Gone are the days of copy-paste from a spreadsheet into an AOL email BBC list. In fact, you can have fines imposed on your business if you are not careful and violate the anti-spam rules.
Agency 8 can help you select the right CRM software for your business and provide training to get you started on broadcasting your list in a compliant way.
One last thing about email marketing – If you want to experiment with lead generation by broadcasting an email to a paid list, you might consider using an outside emailing service. The reason being, if you get reported for spam, the outside service will take the hit, not your primary CRM/mailing list. In addition, you usually pay for the contact capacity you use on a CRM. So importing a list of thousands random emails into your primary CRM system could increase your monthly CRM costs.. Ultimately you would just import the list of interested prospects. Agency 8 offers a 3rd party email blast service if you are interested in trying it!
Those are just some of the reasons why digital marketing is important for a small business. If you have any questions or would like help getting started, feel free to reach out to us. We’d be happy to help!
