A report from the International Council for Small Businesses, considers small and medium businesses the backbone of the economy and one of the largest generators for jobs. According to the United Nations, more than 2 million companies closed during the pandemic in which most of them were small companies.
And this is why it is crucial for them to bounce back and help professionals to earn their living and the United Nations is calling out to the online marketing agencies and business support organizations and non-governmental organizations to submit innovative ideas that help small, exporting businesses in going digital. Going digital is the only way to thrive in the coming future.
Below you will find some top online marketing strategies which will help them in their long-term growth.
Focus on SEO
Search engine optimization is the fundamental and important piece of advice you can apply to your business. First you need to know about the current SEO level of your business. This will help in making better decisions.
SEO will help in increasing the traffic and sales from your target customers and boost your site rankings on SERPs. In a survey conducted by Databox, 70% of respondents said that SEO is better than PPC for generating sales.
There are several ways to do this. One way is to monitor Google Analytics which will provide you ample information about how your keywords are performing, how you are influencing your customers and areas that need improvement.
Another way is to use some tools like SEMrush, SEO Analyzer tool which will provide your end information about everything like number of backlinks generated, how many keywords are ranking etc. If you are a small business then you can opt to hire a SEO agency for your and focus more on local SEO.
Understand your audience
The very basic yet powerful strategy would be to take time to understand your target audience. Not investing enough time on this would be a huge loss for your business. Understanding what your audience wants, what are their pain points and then creating strategies to provide them better than your competitions.
This will help in focusing on keywords that you want to target. You can take help of Google keyword planner, Ubersuggest, search results pages. These tools will help in narrowing your audience.
Do not ignore Social media platforms
Stats shows that more than 4 billion people use social media and on average internet users spend 150 minutes on social media sites each day. The number of global social media users is expected to reach almost 3.43 billion in 2023. (Statista, 2020) With such a large number of users, social media is a great platform and opportunity for any organization to leverage their business, to reach maximum number of customers, to increase traffic on their site, to create brand awareness on a low-budget.
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube are the most used social media platforms. These platforms require you to create pages, build and join communities, create paid campaigns according to your business needs. For small and micro business, they can hire social media marketing companies.
Web design & development
If the product aka site is not appealing to the audience, then marketing alone is a foolish way to grow your business. You need to have a mobile responsive, customer friendly website for your products / services / business. Digital marketing companies not only focus on marketing but also invest enough time and effort on designing and development on site. These internet marketing companies hire skilled and experienced professionals for website development and invest on training them and keeping themselves updated with the latest trends.
Having an appealing website creates more impression for customer service and is one of on-page SEO fundamentals. You can increase the efficiency of your website by creating more visual content, including call-to-action buttons, and an easy navigation process. Killer site design increases the site’s reputation, site’s engagement, credibility, convince users to trust and increase in search engine rankings.
Build an online store
A survey conducted by Wakefield Research for Square’s Future of Retail report points out that consumers do an average of 43% of their monthly retail purchases online. The global ecommerce market is expected to total $4.89 trillion in 2021 and Ecommerce will make up 22% of global retail sales by 2023.
The above facts are enough to prove that if you still think that going online is not a need you will soon be left behind. Start building an online store for your products and services now and real the benefits in the near future.
It may be one of the oldest forms of online marketing but is still one of the most popular forms of online digital marketing. With an ROI of $38 for every dollar spent, this is one thing that needs to be in the list of every online marketer. It is still ranked as the most effective marketing channel, much ahead of social media, SEO, and affiliate marketing. But getting into someone’s inbox is not easy. Here you need to provide quality content and clear goals.
No one will ever subscribe for something they don’t like or they don’t get for free. Providing genuine, useful content (via blog) is an effective way to build email lists. The new normal demands new marketing tactics. Be prepared with a trustworthy omni channel digital marketing strategy. It’s needed that you scale up online efforts now and embrace the new norm of online presence. Embracing the power of digital marketing is not an option but an essential.
