Big brands spend thousands a day on their digital marketing with paid media, banner ads and huge Google Ads budgets. Digital marketing for small businesses is different as every dollar counts. Small businesses need to be able to quickly make a return on their marketing investments.
In this blog post I list digital marketing strategies for small businesses
- Laser target your audience: If you want your product or service to be for a specific group of people then research their demographics, find out their priorities. Think about what the people of your targeted audience likes or dislikes about your product or service. Spend a good amount of time on your research because you want to make sure you are laser targeting the right audience.
Facebook ads manager offers tons of filters where you can drill down your ideal prospect by age, location, interests and much more. As a small business you need to reduce wasted ad spend and by laser targeting your audience you will be only serving ads to the people that are most likely to engage or make a purchase.
- Network with social media micro influencers
The way I network with social media influencers for my clients to work out a marketing deal is by reaching out through direct message. I specifically target micro influencers who have anywhere from 5,000-50,000 followers. Right off the bat I let them know this message is in regards to business at the top of the message. The reason for this is because your direct message is not going to go into their typical message inbox, it’s going to appear where messages appear from those you are not friends with and you want your message to stand out.
The main reason I target micro influencers to work with is because many are new and just starting their brand on Instagram. Most are willing to provide free content and promotion in exchange for free product.
To further prove my point, research has shown that micro influencers have some of the best engagement rates. Many of the big influencers with millions of followers don’t have great engagement rates for the reason their accounts get so big it’s difficult to monitor ghost and fake followers which some of their audience consists of.
- Collaborating with influencers: There is also power in association. The people your brand associates with will help your customers create a certain perception about the brand. You can create hype for your product or service by collaborating with popular social media influencers who have thousands of followers. There are different types of collaborations you can do with social media influencers depending on your goals.
If the goal was to increase the brands following you could run a contest collaborating with the influencer and within the post caption list the instructions to enter the contest. A typical promotion like this on instagram works something like this. You must like the post, tag 3 friends and follow both yours and the influencers account.
- Facebook ads
Once you master how to create and launch Facebook ads, you will be in total control of your campaigns and won’t need to work with a digital marketing consultant thus saving your small business money on consulting fees. Facebook ads are seriously undervalued and I believe someday they will be priced out and too expensive to run for small businesses. This is because I anticipate the big brands will be bidding so aggressively driving ad costs up.
The good thing is Facebook and Instagram both run off the same platform so once you have a grasp on how to use the dashboard for Facebook when you decide to serve ads on Instagram it will be simple.
- Content writing & marketing
For a small business content marketing makes perfect sense. Producing content is inexpensive and the potential return on investment is huge. Customers want products they can relate to and this is where content marketing comes in. Content helps you connect with your customers on a more personal level by providing solutions to your audiences most common problems. By doing so you are looked at as a trustworthy expert in the field.
With content creation you should be focusing on quality over quantity. When I say quality, I am talking about an informative article that covers all about the subject in detail.
For instance, if I was to write an article on, “How to brew the perfect cup of coffee.” I would further break the article down and include subtopics such as the different types of coffee makers like a Keurig or French press. You can even take it a step further and discuss the perfect water temperature or using fresh coffee beans vs pre ground beans.
Another important factor is long form content tends to rank better than short content. I try to aim for no less than 1,500 words per blog post.
Conclusion
These 5 digital marketing strategies for small businesses will help keep your brand on your audience’s mind, engage with potential customers and build relationships.
Author
Lorenzo Gutierrez went to college and has been working in the Silicon Valley for his entire career. He enjoys the fast paced area and being able to help the many local startups and companies with their digital marketing. Connect with Lorenzo on his social media accounts LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.