Increasing the Digital Marketing Presence of your Small Business in only 5 Steps.

A 5 step guide to enhance your digital marketing presence

For small businesses, digital marketing is often placed on the backburner or shuffled from desk to desk. This often leads to a disjointed message or worse, no message at all. So, first thing is first, decide on your company’s message and communicate that message to all employees responsible for marketing. Second, delegate tasks based on projects: Website, Facebook, Blogs and Email Campaigns. If it is just you, delegate them out by priority. Work your way through this list and you will have increased your digital marketing presence.

Step One: Find a Website Developing Company:

Your website is the virtual front door to your business and just like your actual front door you need to have one, it needs to be welcoming, and it needs to be functional.

With so many website building software options available these days, some people feel building a website can be as easy as signing up for a social media account. Besides needing to know about appealing aesthetics, your software developer needs to have a good understanding of how people tend to navigate sites. More importantly they need to know how to improve your SEO and make it easy for your users to find what they are looking for. Here are some simple things you can do to make sure your website developer has everything they need.

1. Decide on the goal of your website. Is your goal for the customer to come to business or buy products/services online? Perhaps you simply want to provide the user with information or a mix of all. Regardless, setting goals will help the developer know what to bring to the forefront of your website.
2. Gather Written Content. You know your company better than anyone. Share as much knowledge as you can with your developer so your brand comes across accurately and they can focus on optimizing your site to reach your goals.
3. Take high quality photos of your business and services. The more the merrier. Stock images are becoming more recognizable and leave the face of your business without personality. You want users who are clicking through your website to feel connected to your brand. Make sure all your images represent your business accurately and are high quality.
4. Compile market research. The less time your website development team has to dig for research, the more time they have to focus on the design of your website. Make sure you give your team the information they need.

Step Two: Update or create your Business Facebook Page:

If your website is the front door, then your Facebook page is the welcome mat, and no one is going to knock on your door if your mat says go away. Facebook should draw people to your website or location. Here are some simple things you can do right now to make sure your business says “come on in” instead of “no soliciting.”

Make sure your company has a Business Facebook Page. If your company is a personal account, not only will you confuse your potential client, your company will not have access to collected data privy only to business accounts. Analyzing data is incredibly powerful to understanding your customer.
Make sure all your contact and location information are updated and there is a link to your website. Having your information posted in multiple places and linking to your website from different locations on the internet not only makes for easy navigation but it increases your Search Engine Optimization (the likelihood of people finding your business online).

Focus on creating posts which add value to your customer rather than just pummeling them with promotions. If your digital marketing presence consists of 70% promotion and 30% content, flip it. Draw people in rather than pushing. As the proverbial ‘they’ say. content is king.

Step Three: Write a blog:

Fun fact, the word ‘blog’ is the shortened form of the phrase ‘web log’ and the practice has been around since the mid-nineties. It may have started with people simply journaling online about their daily lives, but now creating blogs is a way to drive people to your website and offer value to your customer for engaging with your brand. If you’re a car company write blogs about how to change your own oil or top five simple and cheap things to update your car. If you’re a marketing company, write about how to improve your digital marketing presence. Which reminds me, Kingston Webworks has already created a simple template for you to learn more about how to blog found here.

Step Four: Create an Email Campaign:

Now that you have everything set up and increased your digital marketing presence, let people know about it! Email Campaigns are a great way to let users know what is going on within your company and help them along the sales funnel. Here are some steps to help get you started:

Build a list of customer emails. Chances are, employees in your company already have explicit permission to email customers. Compile their lists with yours and you are on your way. Continue to gather emails by posting your blogs to Facebook with the call to action like: ‘Want to learn more? Sign up for our newsletter on our website.” This will drive traffic to your website while also building your email list.
Consider using MailChimp or another Email Management Tool. Like website builders, there are many options for software. These tools help to organize your customers based on where they are in the sales funnel and let you know who is clicking on your emails and reading your blogs. By having these insights, you can begin tailoring your content to your customers’ needs and behaviors.
Decide on the goal of campaign. Is your goal for the reader to sign up for a contest or to review your business? As always keep it simple and make sure there is only one call-to-action. Having multiple calls to action in one campaign can confuse the customer.
Create a newsletter people will actually open. Find more tips on writing newsletters with captivating subject lines here.

Step Five: Celebrate! (and analyze).

Congratulations! You have made your business more welcoming and approachable online by improving your digital marketing presence. Now sit back and watch your campaigns, crunch the numbers, and make adjustments. How is your website performing? What was the amount of likes on your latest post? How many people read your email and more importantly did it drive them to your website and lead to sales? Answering these questions will help you improve your outcomes.

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