How to Demystify Digital Marketing for Small Businesses
Introduction
In today’s digital age, digital marketing has become an essential part of any successful business. With the rapid growth of technology, digital marketing has revolutionised the way businesses promote their products and services.
Simply put, digital marketing is the process of utilising digital channels, such as social media, search engines, email, and mobile devices, to reach and engage with potential customers. It’s an incredibly effective way to reach a large audience and build brand awareness, but it can also be overwhelming for small businesses and business owners.
In this blog, we’ll explore the hype around digital marketing, its importance for businesses of all sizes, and offer tips for small businesses looking to navigate the digital marketing landscape.
1. Understanding The Basics
Digital marketing provides companies with the ability to reach a wider audience and increase their brand awareness. Understanding the basics of digital marketing is crucial for any business looking to take advantage of this marketing strategy.
The different types of digital marketing include search engine optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), social media marketing, email marketing, and content marketing. SEO involves optimising your website and content to improve its visibility on search engines. PPC advertising involves paying for ads to appear on search engines, social media platforms and other digital display ad networks. Social media marketing involves using social media platforms to promote products or services. Email marketing involves sending marketing emails to a list of subscribers – extending it further by remarketing and reaching out to those who you have already had interactions with, allowing for more specific upselling and messaging. Finally, content marketing involves creating and sharing valuable content to attract and engage with an audience.
Successful notable digital marketing viral campaign examples include:
Dollar Shave Club’s viral video campaign, which showcased their brand in a fun and humorous way.
Airbnb’s Instagram campaign, which featured user-generated content to showcase their unique accommodations.
Old Spice’s Twitter campaign, which used humour and viral content to engage with their audience.
Volvo Trucks the epic split with Jean-Claude Van Damme.
In summary, digital marketing has become an integral part of modern-day business, and understanding the basics of each type of digital marketing can help small businesses increase their online visibility and reach their target audience effectively.
2. Setting Goals
Setting goals is a crucial aspect of any digital marketing campaign. It helps to ensure that efforts are focused and measurable, and that progress can be tracked over time. Setting SMART goals is an effective way to set achievable targets that can be measured and evaluated.
SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Specific goals are clear and concise, while measurable goals have quantifiable outcomes. Achievable goals are realistic and attainable, relevant goals are meaningful to the campaign, and time-bound goals have a deadline.
Common digital marketing goals include increasing website traffic, generating leads, improving brand awareness, and increasing sales revenue. To measure the success of these goals, key performance indicators (KPIs) can be used. For example, website traffic can be measured by the number of unique visitors or page views, while lead generation can be tracked by the number of form submissions or downloads.
When setting SMART goals, it is essential to consider the specific metrics that will be used to measure success. For example, a goal to increase website traffic by 50% within six months would be a SMART goal because it is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Measuring the number of unique visitors or page views over the six-month period can determine whether the goal was achieved.
In conclusion, setting SMART goals is critical for a successful digital marketing campaign. It allows marketers to focus their efforts and track progress over time. Understanding common digital marketing goals and how to measure success can help to set meaningful targets and ensure that campaigns deliver the desired results.
3. Creating A Strategy
Creating a solid digital marketing strategy is crucial for any business or organisation looking to succeed in today’s competitive online landscape. To develop an effective strategy, there are several key steps to follow.
Firstly, it’s essential to define your target audience. This involves understanding who your ideal customer is, what their interests and needs are, and where they are likely to spend their time online. By creating buyer personas and conducting market research, you can gain a better understanding of your audience and tailor your marketing efforts accordingly.
Once you have a clear idea of who you’re targeting, it’s time to create a budget for your digital marketing efforts. This budget should consider the various channels and tactics you plan to use, such as social media advertising, email marketing, content marketing, and SEO. It’s important to prioritise the channels that will have the most significant impact on your target audience and allocate resources accordingly.
Next, it’s essential to choose the right channels for your brand. This will depend on factors such as your target audience, budget, and marketing goals. Some popular channels include social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and Twitter, as well as email marketing, search engine optimisation (SEO), and paid search advertising.
To measure the success of your digital marketing strategy, you should establish clear metrics and KPIs (key performance indicators). This could include metrics such as website traffic, conversion rates, and engagement on social media. Regularly analysing these metrics can help you identify what’s working and what’s not, allowing you to adjust your strategy accordingly. Also, with the right marketing technology you can track the source of your leads (marketing attribution) and dial up / down your marketing spend in activities/campaigns that are working versus those that are not.
Finally, it’s important to stay flexible and adapt your digital marketing strategy as needed. The online landscape is constantly evolving, so it’s essential to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies. By monitoring your metrics and making adjustments as needed, you can ensure that your digital marketing efforts are always effective and efficient.
4. Tools and Resources
Digital marketing has become an essential component of any successful business strategy, and its importance continues to grow with the increasing use of technology and the internet. As a beginner in digital marketing or/and small business, it is important to be equipped with the right tools and resources to help you succeed.
One of the most important tools in digital marketing is Google Analytics, which provides valuable insights into website traffic, user behavior, and other metrics that can help improve your online presence.
Content Studio (and other suitable tools) is another helpful tool for managing social media content, allowing you to create, schedule, and analyse posts across multiple platforms.
Canva is an easy-to-use graphic design tool that can help you create engaging visuals for your website and social media channels.
For lead generation, marketing automation, customer relationship management (CRM), tools like Active Campaign, Constant Contact, HubSpot and SharpSpring can be highly effective in managing and organising customer data and interactions.
To use these tools effectively, it is important to take the time to learn and understand their features and capabilities. Many of these tools offer tutorials, online courses, and other resources to help beginners / small businesses get started. Additionally, it’s important to regularly analyse and measure the performance of your digital marketing efforts using these tools, and make adjustments as needed to improve your results.
Overall, having access to the right tools and resources can make a significant difference in your digital marketing success, and can help you stay ahead of the competition in today’s digital landscape.
5. Small Business Digital Marketing Learning Opportunity
Do you keep hearing all the hype around digital marketing, but you don’t know where to start?
Some business owners and small businesses in general are stuck in terms of their inability to market and grow their businesses.
Use our tool below to help assess your situation and shape the learning gaps in your marketing knowledge and skills.
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Take 2 mins to complete our survey and gear yourself up for future growth!
Final Reflection
In conclusion, digital marketing is a vital component for businesses that seek to grow their customer base, increase brand awareness, and drive revenue. As this blog has highlighted, the benefits of digital marketing are numerous, from the ability to target specific audiences to the ease of measuring ROI. With the ever-increasing use of the internet, digital marketing is becoming increasingly essential, especially for businesses looking to stay competitive.
The key takeaways from this blog are that digital marketing is cost-effective, flexible, measurable, and enables businesses to reach their target audience effectively. The use of various digital marketing tools and techniques can help businesses build their brand image, increase customer engagement, and drive more traffic to their websites.
We encourage small businesses to start experimenting with digital marketing and seek additional resources and help if needed. You are welcome to leverage our resource hub and webinars. There are plenty of online resources, courses, and professionals who can assist businesses in designing and implementing a digital marketing strategy that will work for them.
So why not take advantage of this opportunity and start exploring the world of digital marketing today?
About Autus
Autus provide Revenue Growth Platforms, Marketing & Sales Automation and Digital Marketing services to help sales and marketing personnel and teams build efficient and effective sales and marketing best practices and automate their marketing and sales processes by leveraging personalised content, various digital marketing tactics, segmentation and behaviour of their prospects and customers.
Autus recommend various products for automation, such as Active Campaign, Hubspot, Mailchimp and SharpSpring…it will vary on your requirements and budget the best option for your business.
Find out more here.
Our founder, Tom Berry, also provides selective fractional CMO services and is a member of some client boards.
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If our team at Autus can help advise further, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our founder, Tom Berry.
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