Brand identity and brand awareness are always two concepts at the forefront of every marketing strategy regardless of the nature of business or organization. Often at times, small businesses will struggle to make it to the radar with insufficient or ineffective attempts at making their brand known to the public.
However, thanks to the versatile nature of the tech, it is much easier to grow and expand the bounds of the business by knowing how to utilize the digital landscape properly and this is what we will be focusing on today.
An Effective Use of Time and Resources
One of the reasons why small businesses marketing can now and even compete to a certain extent with established and well-reputed companies is because digital marketing is not nearly as expensive or resource-heavy than traditional marketing (billboards, TV ads, newspaper and magazine entries etc.).
Furthermore, thanks to the many analytical tools provided by popular platforms like Facebook Audience Insights, Google Trends, and Google Analytics, every marketer regardless of the scope and financial position of the company can employ a sufficient strategy to target its audience and spread the word of the brand.
In fact, due to the highly affordable nature of digital marketing for business and the ease with which marketers can carry it out, almost 40% of the companies claimed that using a digital marketing strategy led to considerable savings for the money to be spent elsewhere. Furthermore, the results also reflect the success of such a marketing strategy as digital marketing helps companies have a 2.8 times better revenue growth expectancy. There’s also the aspect of internal growth of the company, as internet marketing is 3.3 times more likely to allow businesses to expand their workforce and user base.
So what exactly are the many channels made accessible via digital marketing?
The brand’s website
First and foremost, digital marketing for business is all about creating a digital ‘presence’. This is where the information hub for your brand as a business and as an ‘investment’ of trust and money lies. Your website must seamlessly integrate the latest design trends and optimum usability.
From the ‘About Us’ section for detailing the goal or vision of the brand to ‘Contact Us’ page for details to get in touch by proceeding forth with the deal, a website is a must even if the associated company operates entirely out of a physical store following the ‘brick-and-motor’ model.
Marketers know the real value of online presence since having a website more or less puts you on the radar when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Here it is when the valuable metrics come into play including traffic, click-through rates, conversion rates and bounce-rates, domain authority (DA). This puts the focus on optimizing both the desktop and mobile versions of the website to establish a user-convenient and streamlined platform.
From effective Call-to-Actions (CTAs) to an intuitive and interactive navigation bar, every little detail adds to the overall reputation and confidence among the users as well as the search engine ranking algorithms. Backlinks, which serve as references that redirect back to your company’s website, are especially significant when it comes to ranking higher in the organic search results.
Page load times are also an important factor that contributes to the overall user experience and such an aspect is especially relevant to mobile optimization as Google highly values the metric for ranking purposes. Of course, above all, a website is the personification or the identity of any brand when it operates in an online environment. With specific color palettes, patterns, design choices and page layouts, the website is the visual reflection and representation of what your brand is all about.
Social media and shareable content
We can’t host a conversation about digital marketing for business without bringing social media into the picture. As the numbers suggest, almost 71% of small businesses marketing utilize social media in one way or another in their digital marketing strategies.
Apart from the Audience Insight Tool for a segmented marketing approach, Facebook is ahead of the other social networking and media sites thanks to its video ads and live podcasts. As videos constitute to 135% more organic reach compared to image-based advertisements.
From a survey hosted by HubSpot, 76% company owners said that advertising via video content helped them increase their sales while 81% of the surveyed individuals claimed to have successfully convinced a visitor to purchase a product online via video content. It’s no surprise that YouTube is now the second largest search engine in the world after Google, and processes almost 3 billion searches every month.
Most importantly, 83% of consumers are likely to share content with their close friends and relatives if it’s in video format, which brings us to the next important aspect of online marketing: shareable content.
Apart from Facebook, other platforms including Twitter and Instagram are all about redirecting traffic to-and-fro between the business’ website and these social networking platforms. Twitter is especially viable when creating the buzz for any new arrivals or trending products for the business and any issues are addressed directly with satisfactory responses. An astounding 82% of users actively engage with brands on Twitter. With Instagram, we have the Insta Story or short videos that have 250m daily active users.
Why social media sharing is so important?
Sharing is important not just because of the awareness for the brand it creates, but the positive reviews and impressions you can potentially spread among the dear friends of the individual who made a purchase. This ‘social proof’ concept is relevant to business strategists because all individuals look forward to people with authority or experience, namely those who’ve tried a particular service and if it’s a close relative or a credible source, then the reputation and authenticity of the business also receive a huge boost.
OfferFactor is e-commerce specializing in clothing & apparel which, in addition to providing the social media icons on its product pages, will ask for permissions to sync the shopping cart with the Facebook Messenger app.
Source: Offer Factor
This is activated by default, so there’s a constant reminder to the individual of cart expiry which is good as an anti-cart-abandonment measure.
Source: Offer Factor
Email marketing
Finally, the fact that people regularly like to check their inboxes cannot be overlooked. This makes the channel, a primary one for daily or monthly reminders in the form of newsletters about any promotions, special discounts or voucher codes and customer services including electronic receipts. The numbers speak volumes as well since email marketing is reportedly said to have an incredible ROI of 3800%.
Then there’s the matter of email lists which you can utilize to promote a new range of products on every special occasion. Here the number of newsletters you roll out and their quality and relevance for the particular individual matters. PlayStation does a good job in this regard by constantly keeping in touching with its players, which is the core value they stand on as evident in their slogan: ‘This is for the players’.
Apart from handing out free voucher codes, communicating any advancements or purchases from the PlayStation store, the company will even congratulate the player on completion of a video game and sometimes, if you’re lucky, even get 10$ allotted to your account as a kind gesture from the company. As this year ended, PlayStation rolled out interesting statistics associated with every player that counted the number of hours they’d spent on a daily basis, which games they played the most and how many trophies they earned while doing so. This is an excellent case of when businesses are willing to nurture their relationships with their users and strive to continue improving and building upon it.
Source: Sony
Conclusion
An online environment houses just the right tools and tech that can help you understand the user’s behavior and patterns, target them accordingly and allow them to share the experience with their dear comrades ultimately helping the business gain traction, recognition, and credibility as it continues to expand and spend more resources on digital marketing for business via the social media and email channels.
Targeting the audience’s requirements is very important for online businesses. Social media is a great platform for marketing small businesses. Great tips Megan thanks for sharing them.
Hey!
Hi Megan, its such a wonderful value sharing post. It will help all the marketers to grow there business using digital marketing techniques. I run a digital Marketing institute and will share this article of yours to all my students and prospects. Thank You.