You’re the owner of a small service business or professional and find that your digital marketing is not working as well for you as you’d hoped.
Let’s cut through the technical jargon and social media hype and look at the fundamentals to ensure you have a solid, business foundation for your digital marketing.
Secret 1 – Results take work, but work smart
Digital marketing is everywhere and the process of writing a blog, inviting people to connect on Linked In or posting a Tweet is simple but takes effort. Ensuring these activities achieve the results you want is not a function of luck but of the investment of hard work.
However, there are a number of things you can do as the owner of a small business to ensure that you work smart so your hard work delivers business results.
Secret 2 – What are you trying to accomplish?
Ensure you have a primary objective for your digital marketing approach.
Ultimately you may want to generate more revenue for your business, generate more growth for your business and increase your personal level of income – all good general aims.
This may translate in digital marketing terms to, say;
- Generating more leads for your business through web traffic;
- Getting that web traffic to complete an action (that makes money);
- Converting that web traffic at a lower cost.
This means that for every digital marketing activity that you perform you can ask yourself will this contribute to;
- More leads;
- Greater Conversion;
- Increased Cost Effectiveness.
Secret 3 – Micro Testing
The brilliant aspect of digital marketing compared with many traditional forms of marketing is that you have the capability to test what you are doing – based on data – not opinions or guesses: you can track it.
Small businesses are now able to compete with the big boys. You can measure the effect you are having and don’t need a big budget to do it – this is the beauty of digital marketing.
For example, which colour should a Buy Now, Sign Up or Contact Us button be? You can test which colour works best for your customers. PayPal and Amazon use orange, not a lucky guess I suggest.
You have the tools (many of them free) to monitor and measure not simply your activity but the results which directly relate to your business objectives.
Secret 4 – Digital Marketing is even bigger, yet smaller, than you think
In the UK today, more is spent on digital advertising than on TV.
Why?
It is more targeted, cheaper easier and trackable. You are able to see proof that you are delivering results and if not, optimise what you are doing and move to the most cost-effective approach for you.
Here’s some statistics;
Google has over 3 million advertisers and an income of over $66 billion (2014), yet has the capability to help you target your specific locality.
Twitter has over 316 million monthly active accounts but allows you follow just “your people”.
Facebook has over 1 billion users and over 1 million advertisers which nonetheless lets you target by location, age and a host of other specific factors.
81% of retail sales are influenced by the internet and 88% of business uses research and find suppliers via the web.
Digital marketing is both massive yet able to be closely targeted, ensure you find and target “your people.”
Secret 5 – Digital marketing is 24/7 and on all devices
The internet is always on and is accessed via multiple devices, not simply PC and desk top but mobiles, tablets and TV: over 50% of internet connections are made through mobile devices.
People can pretty much always be on-line but they are looking at the social and personal, whether it’s a direct sale or something which influences that sale such as a price comparison, product review or recommendation/testimonial.
So ensure your digital marketing adheres to the principles of responsive design so that whatever device is used to pull up a site or email it can be easily read and used on that device.
Think mobile – it is becoming the dominant form of interaction.
Secret 6 – It’s not about you
You can stop talking about yourself and start being useful to others. By ensuring your content is useful, adds value, is unique and authentic you will be able to show how relevant and useful you are.
Give away your knowledge and expertise to win trust by informing a purchase or solving a problem.
Secret 7 – You can do it!
As the owner of a small business or professional you can take control of your digital marketing to get results;
Work hard but work smart by;
- Ensuring you have clear digital marketing business objectives;
- Testing what you do and making informed decisions as a result;
- Target your efforts towards “your people”;
- Design for results not just good looks for all devices;
- Giving away relevant and useful content.
You can do it.