Not very long ago, your business could pay the annual fee for a listing in the Yellow Pages and everyone in your community easily knew how to find your product or service: open the phone book, scan through the list of choices, and start calling. As phone books and newspapers increasingly grow obsolete, it’s far more important to incorporate effective digital marketing practices.
Caution: Don’t get caught in the small business trap that “if we build it (a website), they will come”. Credit the misleading commercials that promise “within 15 minutes you can have your website up and making sales!” for that one. Just as it’s never enough to have a beautiful business card that never gets distributed, neither is it enough to have a website that never has visitors.
What Does Digital Marketing Look Like?
Any digital effort that either drives traffic to your website or improves your ranking on a search engine is considered digital marketing.
Content Marketing
While the end-game of any small business is to make money, building trust and relationship with would-be customers is the only way to survive our digital marketing era. This demands ongoing, intentional, and strategic effort by your or someone you hire. Start with website content that potential customers are looking for online… and talk like they talk! Next, create a schedule for regularly adding to your website what your customer base would consider to be helpful and interesting content(e.g., community service news, how-to guides, Q&A articles, photos, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, statistics, polls/surveys).
What happens to your website if you don’t use content marketing? Static websites – websites that are rarely updated – are considered by search engines to be less relevant and rank far lower on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Also, if your visitor is unable to immediately locate what they’re looking for or is bored stiff with your content within the first 10 seconds of visiting your website, you’ve probably lost them forever. Brief visits to your website do not help your rankings.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Keeping a website optimized is an ongoing task. SEO algorithms continue to evolve based on how search engines work, what people search for, how they search (typing or speaking), and the actual search terms (keywords) used.
What happens to your website if you don’t maintain SEO? Your website will still be listed in a SERP, but you might not show up until page five… or 10. Most users rarely search beyond page one.
Facebook Marketing and Optimization
Very plainly: Facebook is social media, intended to build relationships with your audience and not badger people to buy your stuff. If you’re not interested in building relationships, don’t bother with Facebook as it’s very time-intensive with no ROI guarantee. However, if you’re the kind of business that likes to help people get to know, trust, and rely on you as the authority in your field, Facebook is worthwhile.
What happens to your Facebook if you don’t integrate with a website? Far too many small businesses rely entirely on a Facebook page for their singular online presence. Not only does Facebook own your page, any helpful information you’ve shared gets quickly buried even on your own wall. The strategic approach is to maintain well-developed content on your website and then share that linked content to Facebook which drives traffic back to your website (which improves SEO) and gives the visitor access to the wealth of relevant information you’ve provided them on your site. You look like the hero!
Email Marketing
Email is alive and well and people are still subscribing for email updates! Much like social media, the strategic approach is to maintain well-developed content on your website and share that linked content within your email which drives traffic back to your website (which improves SEO) and gives the visitor access to the wealth of relevant information you’ve provided them on your site.
A successful email campaign can include: big announcements, timely updates, special deals, exclusive offers, customer recognition, testimonials, upcoming events.