A good digital marketing strategy for small businesses can be an opportunity to talk on a level playing field with the bigger players and with far fewer resources.
This is an exciting challenge, which can mean the difference between subsistence and exponential growth. However, we must also bear in mind that this is not magic. The digital marketing for small businesses It takes time, as the investment usually cannot be as high as in their competitors, and perseverance becomes the key.
However, the reward is worth it. It is a journey full of surprises, with enormous learning for the company and its employees. There is clearly a before and after working on marketing.
The way of working and optimising processes often ends up being transferred to other departments and the benefits are seen even earlier than expected.
In this article I will tell you the key points from which you will be able to create your digital marketing strategy. If you have a small business and are thinking about improving your strategy, then you've come to the right place.
Be clear about the big picture
The marketing world is immense. That is why the first thing I would advise you to do is to be clear about the business overview. It is very common in small and medium-sized companies that the stress of day-to-day business prevents them from stopping for a second to think about medium- and long-term objectives and strategies.
Nor to analyse the current situation in depth.
However, it is worth taking the time. It will help you to avoid a lot of blind steps and it will help you to establishing your marketing strategy. Even if you hire a digital marketing agencyYou have to know what you are going to ask for and what you need.
No one knows your business better than you and you will be the one in charge of translating that vision. Once the marketing team knows the vision and the goals to be achieved, then they can work on the details that will make it a reality.
Still, the first thing is to know where you are and where you want to be or what you think you need to be there. Then you may find that your marketing team believe that the path is different from the one you had thought of, but the final destination must be clear to everyone.
Optimising time and resources
Secondly, you have to understand that the world of marketing is very broad. There are almost endless possibilities of things to work on.
However, if we have a small business, it is very likely that we do not have infinite resources to work with. Therefore, you need to know how to optimise and focus the strategy.
We may want to be present in all the social networks, work on the SEOthe SEM and the emailingfor example. However, you may have a choice between SEO or SEMand add the leads you get to a automated email flow.
Or, on the contrary, it may be that the core of your business is in the social media. Or that, before anything else, you have to invest in improving usability of your website and create an ecommerce to sell your products.
Surround yourself with professionals
A very common problem when it comes to making digital marketing for small businesses is to think that anyone can do the job. Yes, you might be able to promote a Facebook post with just two clicks, but are you targeting correctly? Do you know what copy to use? Do you know how to optimise your ad to get better results?
When it comes to making a SEO content strategydo you have the tools for the keyword researchAre you able to analyse the work of your competitors and know where you can gain an advantage?
In my experience, when you try to do things that you are not trained to do, you end up blundering around and wasting time and money. A SEM campaign that does not take into account the parameters of Google Ads optimisation is doomed to failure.
A SEO content produced by someone inexperienced is not going to stand out from the competition. On the contrary, it will be full of SEO errors that can penalise the entire website.
Not to mention the feedback aspects, such as the SEO web designIf you want to make your website look good, you not only have to make a cool web design, but you also have to make sure that it does not harm the positioning of the page.
It doesn't matter if you hire a external digital marketing agency or you create your own department internally, but you need to have people in charge who know what they are doing. Otherwise, and it happens all too often, we will be investing for no result, or at least an acceptable result in economic terms.
Measuring investment and results
Another of the most important keys to working on the digital marketing for small businesses is to take into account the investment and the results that you hope to achieve. In aspects such as online advertising it is very simple, we only need to calculating the average profit per leadThe conversion of the conversion rate is a very important step in the conversion process, so we can see how much we can spend for each conversion.
To this price we have to add the cost of hours/staff or the fee of the agency we have contracted.
In other aspects such as the SEO or social media, the results are long-term, so you can't expect an immediate return. Even so, it is important to always manage the figures so that we know how much we can invest and what we can expect. return on investment we need.
If we want our marketing work to be profitable, we need to have exhaustive control over what we do, even if we do not have a clear vision of what we are doing. respecting the times depending on the type of marketing we are going to use.
Working with SMART objectives
The best way to implement the above point is the SMART objectives. These objectives are characterised by being specific, measurable, time-bound, realistic and achievable.
That is, if for example we are going to work on SEO, examples of SMART objectives would be:
- Improve our organic traffic by 30% in 6 months.
- Position these 5 products on the first page of Google in 4 months.
- Generate 75% more organic leads in one year.
- To have 50 keywords in the top 3 of Google in six months.
Once the time period has elapsed, we can see if we have succeeded. It is important that it is realistic and achievable otherwise there is no point in setting targets and it can be demotivating for the team.
On the other hand, if we have achievable objectives, achieving them and even improving on what was planned will be a extra motivation.
We cannot establish general criteria how to sell more or have more followers on networks, we have to be specific and transforming it into concrete figures. This way, with the numbers in front of us, we can better monitor the project.
Understand the types of marketing and their objectives
Among the questions for a digital marketing campaign The most important successful ones are always the one of how best to approach a targetWhat type of marketing is the most interesting?
It is often a lack of knowledge that prevents us from answering this question correctly. That is why the first point is so important to be clear about the overview. If we are not marketing experts, knowing where we want to go, your team will be able to advise you on the best way to get there.
Don't just say I want to do CRO, SEO, SEM, UX, social media, emailing... stay with what you want to achieve. I want to sell more, I want to have more subscribers, I want my brand awareness to grow, etc...
And, also, keep in mind that many objectives require prior steps. Normally, the objective is always to growing in salesbut to grow in sales we probably need to grow in visits if we are an ecommerce or e-commerce company. brand awareness and our value proposalfor example.
Equally, it should not be forgotten that this is a sector in continuous transformation. For this reason, it is necessary to keep up to date with the latest innovations. It may be that what really makes us stand out has just been discovered or is a newly added functionality of a working tool.
Learning from mistakes
Finally, I have to tell you about learning from mistakes. In any case digital marketing campaign for small businesses There will be errors and there will need to be. In the end, you have to try different solutions and iterate according to the results you get.
Prior knowledge of the professional team can help to reduce these mistakes and shorten the road to success, but it should be borne in mind that unforeseen things can always happen.
In this regard, the adaptability is a key feature of the success of the sector. Moments like the Covid-19 pandemic showed that unforeseeable things can always happen that can transform our sector forever.
Thanks to the marketing digitalThese crises can also be new opportunities to try new things and to grow our business model.
If you want help with your digital marketing for small businesses and you want to surround yourself with the best professionals, at Ddigitals We will be happy to help you.
