The Dos and Don'ts of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses

Digital marketing has become essential for small businesses. It is replacing television advertising almost entirely for the younger generation, and it rivals print advertising and other marketing methods because people spend so much of their time-consuming media online. Having a website is only the first step in digitally marketing your company. Here are the dos and don’ts of digital marketing for small business.

Don’t Ignore Social Media

Too many companies still focus on perfecting search engine optimization for their websites and asking marketers to share press releases. Your company’s biggest mistake today is to ignore social media. Search engines reward companies that use a consistent look, feel, and structure across many different social media platforms with higher rankings because they trust brands more than they do SEO.

Sharing your company’s content via social media is a logical way to get the process of social sharing going and gives your customers a reason to follow you in the first place. You should build on this by putting social media sharing buttons and calls to share the content on every piece of content you publish.

Do Find the Right Channel

You will see the greatest return on investment if you find the right channel. There is no point in working hard and paying a lot for ads tied to key search terms that have a low conversion rate when you can pay for ads on less competitive keywords that bring in more customers. Marketers are abandoning the celebrity endorsement for influencer marketing, identifying their targeted customer demographics and then finding influencers whose channel matches that desired audience. The marketing message is placed in front of the desired audience and you pay less for the outreach effort while seeing a higher conversion rate than a generalized message. Digital marketing agency Single Grain can help you identify the right channels.

Do Create and Share Your Unique Content

Your brand creates value for its followers when you create and share unique content they cannot get anywhere else. Sharing content others create may fill in the gaps in your social media stream, but unless that content promotes your brand or service, it is actually helping someone else.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t partner with others to create unique, shareable content. Coke’s regular contests that reward people for taking and sharing pictures of themselves with a Coke product is one example of the company working with customers to create unique content the company then shares. Soliciting customers for advice or new uses of your products is another.

Don’t Overdo the Sharing

Creating more content than necessary is a waste of money while waiting too long causes customers to lose interest and drift away. Sending out advertisements and press releases on a daily basis is spamming your customer base, driving them away. Track metrics like subscription and unsubscribe rates to see what your content sharing interval should be.

Don’t ignore social media and its importance today. Find the right channel to reach your ideal customer segment. Work with a professional digital marketing agency if you don’t know how to do this yourself. Seek reviews on every relevant site and deal with the negative ones. Create and share unique content of value to your customers, but don’t share too often to avoid losing followers.

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