Small businesses need to invest in quite a few areas if they want to see growth, with marketing being one of the more notable. It’s one of the main areas to consider early on, as it can have a significant impact on how much growth and success you could see.
With the right digital marketing strategies for small businesses, you can expect:
- Increased brand awareness.
- Improved industry authority.
- More customer interest.
- Increased sales and revenue.
But, that begs the question as to which marketing strategies can actually help your small business see these benefits. Not all strategies offer the same results, after all.
While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, more than a few digital marketing strategies could stand out. Not only should they be relatively cost-effective to implement, but they should offer much better results than you would’ve thought.
Five of these can be great to start off with because of the impact they should have.
Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses: 5 Top Picks
1. Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is one of the more obvious digital marketing strategies you can go for. But, there’s a reason why so many companies focus on this. No matter what industry they’re in, businesses should end up seeing quite a few results because of it.
By advertising on the right social media platforms, you should create a lot of brand awareness and online engagement. It helps to foster a community around your business, while giving you a more hands-on approach to dealing with customers.
2. SEO & GEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) has long been a great marketing strategy to invest in, but it’s gone through quite a few changes over the years. Now, it’s not just SEO you need to worry about, but generative engine optimization (GEO), too.
That’s where the likes of AI brand visibility and similar areas come in. While these take a little adjusting to, focusing on them should reap dividends as time goes on. By using both SEO and GEO, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t increase your brand visibility.
3. Referral Marketing
It’s always worth encouraging your customers to spread a positive word-of-mouth about your business. It helps generate more sales, as potential customers are much more likely to trust current customers. Referral marketing can be one of the better ways to do this.
This gives customers a reason to recommend your business to friends and family. While that could mean eventually needing to give customers free or discounted items, the increase in sales and revenue should more than compensate for that moving forward.
4. Email Marketing
Once you’ve already brought in customers, it’s worth trying to get them to sign up for your email marketing. This helps you drive more and more sales in time, as newsletters and similar emails keep your brand at the forefront of a customers’ mind.
This could help you increase your sales and retain quite a few customers, making it quite a cost-effective path to go down. It’s just a matter of balancing the more sales-oriented emails with more informational ones so you’re not off-putting to your customers.
5. Influencer Marketing
Social media influencers are often seen as trusted voices by their followers, and these followers are likely to buy the products or services the influencer recommends. That’s what makes influencer marketing so appealing for brands, especially retail companies.
It’s just a matter of finding the right influencers for your business. This doesn’t mean just going for ones with the most followers, however. Instead, you’re better off focusing on ones that have an engaged audience, as these are more likely to lead to sales.
Small Business Marketing Tips to See More Growth
These can all be some of the best digital marketing strategies for small businesses, as they could help you grow your company quite well. But, that doesn’t mean just implementing them and forgetting about them. You’ll need to know what you’re doing with them to see results.
Thankfully, that doesn’t mean this needs to be as complicated as you could think. More than a few marketing tips can make this a lot more manageable. Some of the more helpful include:
- Understand Your Customers – The better you understand your potential customers, the higher quality of a marketing strategy you can put together. Spend time on your market research so you can put together a strategy that actually works.
- Create Compelling Content – You’ll need to create content for most marketing strategies. Make sure this is as compelling as possible so it brings in customer interest and encourages them to do business with you.
- Be Mobile-Friendly – Most people browse the web using a mobile device, and you’ll need to keep that in mind. Make sure your website and marketing materials are mobile-friendly so they look well on any device people view them from.
- Make Use of Tools – There are plenty of marketing tools out there, and these can make creating and implementing a campaign much simpler. Invest in them early on so you can run your marketing as effectively as possible.
These should help you make sure your small business marketing is as effective as possible, no matter which strategies you focus on. You’ve no reason not to use them.
While that means putting a decent bit of time and effort into your marketing, it’ll be more than worth it as time goes on. The results you should see – increased brand awareness and sales, for example – make it well worth the work you put into it.
Summing it Up
There are plenty of digital marketing strategies for small businesses to use. But, that doesn’t mean all of them are as effective or practical as others. Some could stand out noticeably more than the rest, and for more than a few reasons.
Not only should they help you bring in more customer attention and sales, but they shouldn’t be too complicated to implement. Add in a few marketing tips to help, and you shouldn’t have anything to worry about. You’ll see the results before you know it.