Digital Marketing tips for Small Businesses

Building an online presence for small businesses is not easy and is a technical skill that must be practiced, developed and refined. 

Large brands engage in digital marketing because of its flexibility and cost-effectiveness. In fact, over $389 billion was spent on digital ads over the course of 2021. Staying up to date with trends and tips for small businesses is key to achieving success. 

Today, we will be looking at digital marketing trends and tips every small business needs to take action on.  

AI (Artificial Intelligence)

The use of AI (Artificial Intelligence) has completely revolutionised the digital marketing industry. Using AI, a small business can gain better insights into customer behaviour and even more accurate data on customers and clients.

Small businesses can then implement specific campaigns and strategies rooted in measurable data. Furthermore, AI can be used to craft personalised and relevant messages for your audience to help advertise your product/brand more effectively.

Go Live: Get more engagement

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have become the go-to for live videos. Massive brands use live videos to keep their target audience informed. They also use regular live videos to showcase new products and lines easily as well as running raffles, competitions and UGC-focused contests.

Interacting with followers and commenting alongside consumers establishes an identity for a business. For small businesses, being active on live videos can help form a structure of authenticity amongst the local community. Live videos also help develop a level of trust between consumer and business as the company façade falls away, in favour of a conversational public image.

Social Media Marketing for small businesses

There are over 3.2 billion active users across social media platforms. The online landscape is a vast and loud space. Small businesses can get swallowed up by the constant chatter if they do not use social media to their advantage.

Social media marketing is very quick, requires minimal funding and can be extremely effective. Small businesses can very easily create business profiles on Instagram and Facebook. They can then quite simply automate social posting by planning out a social calendar and reposting old content for more exposure.

Armed with intelligent social media marketing, small businesses can tap into otherwise unreachable user groups. It also increases your businesses chance of ranking high in local business discovery searches. With social media marketing, it is paramount to understand trending hashtags as well as effective posting times. 

Narrative Marketing

Consumers inherently love stories and narratives. The most successful brands will sell their products with carefully planned and curated storytelling. The nature of social media today, which is very video heavy, lends well to narrative-orientated content. 

There are so many avenues you can go down to tell a story. You can post a well written blog post, plan out an amazing 24-hour story, spark a discussion using a poll, discuss goals and stories on podcasts and live sessions. The options are endless.

Small businesses should use Geofencing

Geofencing is an effective marketing tool for attracting customers based on their geographic location. The software sends pop-up notifications to consumers entering a specific location or region. Geofencing uses GPS or WiFi to identify these individuals.

This is a great choice for small businesses as they are usually local businesses as well. Small businesses can use Geofencing to target a local audience. However, one must plan out intelligent pop-ups and maybe even personalised messages to convert these potential customers. 

Mailing List

Making and keeping an email list is one of the most effective ways to market directly to your consumers. Much of digital marketing is via social media platforms and is detached as a result. Email marketing holds a consumer’s contact information and lets you come back to the same relationship and audience time and time again.

Furthermore, a mailing list can yield a higher return on investment than any other form of digital marketing. This is due to the flexibility of targeting email lists. With email lists, you can divide your subscriber base and target specific groups with specific products and deals. You can also fiddle with email lists to personalise your messaging and form a relationship.

Website Optimisation

Did you know that one of the reasons consumers turn away from small businesses is the rigidity of their websites? Mobile and online commerce dominate the holiday season and your site must be ready to capitalise without failure. 

Regularly test your site’s speed and troubleshoot your various pages to make sure your consumers don’t hit a digital brick wall. Without a well-managed website strategy, your business will have difficulty retaining visitors. 

Small businesses must present a fast and responsive website to ensure a seamless shopping experience and drive more online conversions. 

In Conclusion: Small businesses and digital marketing

The holiday season is the perfect time for small businesses to re-evaluate and maximise their digital marketing strategy. There are many small and big things small business owners can do to optimise their online presence: from website management to geofencing, running an email list to regularly going live, indulging in AI to telling narratives. 

What does your business’s digital marketing look like?