Perhaps you are a Small Business owner that has stuck to traditional marketing and is a little weary about jumping into the digital marketing game. OR you know that it is needed, but you can’t visualize exactly how it will work for you.
This article is a breakdown of how a general digital marketing campaign can work for your Small Business.
Website
The center of all things in digital marketing is where you are sending people. It could be the homepage of your website or a specific service or product. It might be a “landing page” made specifically for your current promotion or even a blog. Where you are sending people all depends on your end goal.
Throughout the rest of this article I will use the word “website” to stand for all or any of these.
Think about your end goal when making your plan. What does “success” mean to you? Are you branding? Are you bringing people information to help them? Are you selling?
Basically, you want to have your website setup just right so that when people arrive there it isn’t a waste of time.
Have your website looking sharp and telling your story. Have it laid out correctly with a call to action so that people know what they are supposed to do. Honestly, sometimes people need to be shown in the right direction. Your website needs to be fast and easy to navigate.
Head here if you would like to know about what is needed to start with your website.
Now on to how digital marketing will bring people to your website. In this case it will be a general branding campaign.
Social Media Posts (Organic)
Your social media posts need to be engaging, entertaining or educational. They need to be more about your target audience and less about you. Think 80/20 rule here. This is where you will be branding yourself, but not being overly aggressive in driving people back to your website.
Bring people value and every once in a while ask them to come back to your website to check things out.
Have some fun with these. Don’t be afraid to fail with social media posts. Everyone does. Try different things and lean towards what works. It will be a grind, but well worth it in the end.
Blogs (Organic)
You write a blog as a new post to your website. It should be informative, entertaining and it naturally has something to do with your business and your target market.
(In fact you are reading one right now! To see all of the blogs head here).
These blogs will help your website rank on Search Engines (Google) because you are putting fresh content on your site for Google to find, you are giving reason for more people to go to your site, you are linking your website to other pages on your site as well as other websites and you are naturally using wording that people are searching for when it comes to a business like yours.
I could go on and on about blogs. I think every business should have some variation one.
Social Media Ads (Paid)
Paid social media ads should be of interest to your target audience. Not just pushing your product or service. Get into the details as to why your target would want to know more about it. You want to make sure that the people clicking on your ad are the people that are going to convert on the other end.
The actual targeting is just as important as the visual ad. Do not rush through this part. Take your time to decide who it is you want to target. How old are they? Where do they live? What are they interested in? What do they do for work? Etc.
You are using this to purposely drive someone you have targeted to your website. See the results from it and continue doing what works well.
Google Ads (Paid)
For Google Ads you are driving people to your website that are searching for things in the Google search engine. Your ad could also show on the website of a partner of Google’s, depending on how it is set up.
You have the option of an ad in the search results or as a “display” (image) ad.
You can get very detailed with the type of person you would like to target with these ads. You can look at location, interests, age, things they have been searching for, and of course specific words they are searching for.
With the 4 above methods you have successfully brought people to your website.
Pop-up
Finally, they have arrived to your beautifully designed website!
Someone has walked in the door and hanging out on your website to see what you are all about. Let’s greet them with a subtle pop-up. Something engaging that is of interest to the visitor. It is possible to set it up so it is the same for everyone coming on the site OR you could make it different depending on where they are coming from and how many times they have been to the website.
If you would like to build up your email list, it is a good idea to offer the visitor something in exchange for their email.
But this pop-op that has form for the visitor’s email in it is the beginning of your automated email campaign!
Email Marketing
Once someone has filled out the form on the inviting pop-op you created on your website, it will trigger your 3 part automated email campaign.
The first email could be a Welcome email with the offer that you mentioned. The second could be 3 days later and the email reminds the customer to use their offer before it expires and it could also suggest a blog to read. Then the third email could come a week later with another offer in entice them even further.
From here the customer could be sent to your list of people to email with your weekly/monthly emails.
You can see that from a general Digital Marketing campaign focused on bringing people to your website to understand what you are all about could keep them involved in your brand and coming back for more.
Also, once they have been on your website you could start re-targeting them with ads specifically pertaining to a product or service they were interested in. But that is another blog.
I hope this helps you understand how digital marketing could help your small business as we brush across the surface in this article.
It all starts with a LOOK!
