Why Use Digital Marketing? – 5 Reasons Digital Marketing Can Help Your Small Business
Many small and medium business owners are finally beginning to realise that the online side of a business is becoming essential for gaining new business and interacting with potential or existing clients.
With current trends showing that more people are researching companies, visiting their websites and social media profiles and checking company reviews, before making contact with a business, it’s obvious that digital marketing can really help a business to grow in the online world.
Here’s just a few of the top reasons and digital marketing strategies that your company can take advantage of:
Social Media
Social Media comes in many shapes and forms and deciding which one suits your business best is only half the battle.
Depending on your business niche some platforms can work wonders for driving traffic to your website, showcasing your products, engaging with customers, increasing brand awareness and generating leads through messaging.
The number one thing to consider when posting to social media is whether or not you’re bringing value to people reading/seeing the post?
If you can provide unique and engaging content to which people want to read either on social media or your own website, then people are more likely to come back for more, and may even turn into valuable customers.
Customer Reviews & Testimonials
Many people will now check businesses reviews before choosing to use them or buy any of their products. They offer an excellent way of validating a companies customer service and product or service quality.
Often, a potential customer can see reviews when searching online, these are usually shown in the map pack or company profile and can be pulled from a number of sources, including, Google, Facebook, Tripadvisor and Booking.com.
Wolfberry Media Map Pack Listing
Customer reviews can also be a great way of building customer rapport by responding to reviews, both positive and negative, this shows that you’re open to feedback and have actually spent the time to read their review.
Google My Business
We’ve covered Google My Business in pretty great detail in an earlier post (Harnessing the Power of Google My Business), but if your business isn’t using it, then there’s a good chance that you’re missing out on lots of website traffic, in particular from mobile traffic and location-based searches.
Google My Business can offer a number of ways for customers to find out more information about your business, including showing your business details and contact information in the ‘map pack’ in search results (including ‘near me’ searches), and on Google Maps.
Other reasons to use this free tool is that it can be used for collecting and replying customer reviews, displaying photos and blog posts, and even mobile messaging is available for some business niches.
Email Marketing
Email marketing might not be relevant for many businesses, especially a lot of small to medium service based companies. Where email marketing can be used though, is for online stores and anyone offering online services such as courses, ebooks or for providing newsletters to your customer base.
We use MailChimp for our email marketing, and for many of our clients too. In our in-depth guide to email marketing (Email Marketing Tips for Small Businesses)we wrote a while back, we provided a range of tips, suggestions and email marketing software comparisons, so why not take a look and see if email marketing is something that your company could be using.
Consider Online Advertising
Those annoying adverts you get at the top of your Google search results? They could be an excellent source of selling your business online.
Both Google and Facebook ads can be used to help drive qualified traffic to your website, with the ultimate aim being for them to purchase your products, become a client, take a course you offer, or whatever it is that brings your company value.
Google Ads (Adwords) is an auction-based setup, where you bid against other companies for the number 1 spot in a Google search result for keywords that you choose. The cost for these bids can vary massively between business niches. You can set your bid to whatever it is your willing to spend, allowing you complete control over your budget.
Facebook Advertising doesn’t use the keyword model like Adwords, however, you can still target your desired audience by using factors such as location, age, interest, Facebook pages and groups that people have interacted with, or with a Facebook Pixel installed on your website, you can even target people who visited specific pages on your website.
Much like Google, you can set your budget for an ad campaign to what you can manage, and can start Facebook Ads from as little as £3 per day.
Find out how we can help you with your local digital marketing, or contact us for more details.
