All small businesses need to carry out digital marketing campaigns. Sure, physical marketing can still go down well. Major brands still make use of billboards, television advertisements, radio advertisements, posters, leaflets and more. But when you’re a small business owner, digital advertising and marketing campaigns tend to be the way to go. They’re low cost and they’re effective. At the end of the day, the majority of us are spending a lot of time on our phones, tablets, laptops and computers. If your customers are staring at their screens, this is where you should be targeting your advertising!
What Exactly Is Digital Marketing?
First things first, let’s determine what digital marketing actually is. Put simply, it’s any form of marketing that employs the use of electronic devices or the internet. It replaces more traditional forms of advertisement. But generally speaking, it is a lot more ideal for small businesses. We’re living in an online age, so it gives your brand an opportunity to spread some serious brand awareness and expose you company and products to people around the country and even the world. It’s absolutely essential that you make sure to engage with it. Everyone else is and you need to keep up with the competition.
SEO
If we’re going to talk about digital marketing, we need to focus on SEO. This is a term that you may have heard flung around lately, but it’s being focused on by many companies – big and small – for a good reason. But what actually is it? Well, SEO stands for “search engine optimisation”. It’s an increasingly popular and common business practice that essentially revolves around getting your site to appear as high up in search engine results as possible. Now, if you’re wondering why this is important, just take a moment to think about how you go about buying something when you shop online yourself. Unless you have a set item that you’ve seen and want to buy, you’ll probably have a vague idea of what it is you’re looking for. A baking tin, a pair of sunglasses, a pyjama set or whatever else it might be you want. You will generally put a few keywords into a search engine and browse the results until you find what it is that you want and then you’ll buy it. But think about it. When’s the last time you went beyond the first, second or third link before finding whatever it is you want and buying it? Probably a long time ago, maybe when looking for something particularly niche. Now, think of your customers – they’ll be doing this too. So, it’s absolutely essential that you rank highly to maximise your chances of being the link they click and the brand they shop with. You’ll need to focus on SEO to achieve this.
Outsourcing
SEO requires specialist knowledge. So, if you don’t have an SEO specialist in-house, you may want to consider outsourcing. An agency will be able to do everything you need to help your website scale the rankings. Find a good, recommended agency and let the bulk of the weight of this campaign fall into their reliable hands.
Pillar Pages
If you want to have a go at tackling SEO yourself, consider creating pillar pages. These are essentially long pages with lots of information that branch out into further sub pages. They’re great for SEO. For help with this, ESM Inbound’s guide to pillar pages is a good place to start.
Page Titles
Page titles allow search engines to see exactly what’s on each page of your site. For the best SEO possible, try to keep titles between 55 and 60 characters long. You should also use keywords and describe the page’s content in the most accurate and succinct way possible.
Page Descriptions
Page descriptions are also referred to as “meta descriptions”. Try to keep them under 155 characters long and they will help encourage people to click on your page.
PPC Ads
PPC stands for “pay per click” and is a popular type of advertising amongst those aiming to only get their money’s worth. When you get PPC ads up and running, you spread ads around the web and you only pay anything when someone actually clicks the link and is directed to your website. Your ads may appear on banners on websites, in sidebars, and scattered through articles or blog posts. As you can imagine, this is a pretty cost effective form of digital marketing!
Social Media Influencers
Social media influencers are rising in popularity amongst marketing departments. If you’re wondering what they do, they are essentially individuals who have gained thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of followers on social media platforms. Instagram tends to be the most popular. Their followers are influenced by what they post, so if they post your products, their followers are more likely to buy them. It’s as simple as that! Of course, they don’t come free. Those with many followers don’t come cheap. But generally, their posts are a good investment!
These, of course, are just a few different types of digital marketing campaigns that you might want to focus on. But they are some of the most effective that can help you to generate the most profit as possible! Make sure to know your target demographic and you’ll be good to go. You just need to put your ads in the online spots they’re spending time looking at and you should start seeing sales coming through before you know it!
