If you own a local small business, digital marketing should be part of your marketing strategy. This doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, when using the Internet for marketing your small business, you don’t have to feel like it is an overwhelming, daunting and expensive task. There is so much that encompasses digital marketing, that you only need to take on what works for you and your small business. Don’t try to do everything, just the specific strategies that bring in leads, meaningful actions, and profits. Many local, small business such as plumbers, electricians, law offices, HVAC services, cleaning companies, restaurants, retail shops, car service shops, dog grooming businesses, and more can benefit tremendously from digital marketing. Read on to learn how.
Keep Your Website Simple
When using digital marketing that links to your website, this is your opportunity to make a good, lasting first impression that keeps the users interest and results in a meaningful action, like a sale. In fact, in the digital world, your website is the face of your company. Think of it as a way to brand your service or products and let potential customers know what you stand for, what your vision and mission is. Your website should contain important information that lets the user know who you are, what you offer, and why the potential customer needs your product or service. To achieve this, it is important to keep your website simple. If you haven’t created your website yet, you can find many local website designers to help you with this task.
In order to keep a website simple and easy to navigate, here are a few tips you can follow. Just be sure that when designing your website, you also keep search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. This is how potential customers will find you.
Here is an outline for what pages and information your website should contain:
- A Homepage
- Individual Service/Product Pages
- Testimonials and Reviews
- Resources when applicable
- A “self-help” or “how-to” section for certain business types
- About Us Page
- Contact Us Page
- FAQ Page
- A Blog
When designing your website, it’s important to add valuable imagery and copy to your website pages. You can choose to use stock images but it is better for a company to use their own, unique images of products and/or services to help brand your company. Here are some tips to make your website have the “personality” you want to convey to visitors.
Add images of products or services you have already completed. Take your time with this and don’t rush to include imagery that is just “ok”. In fact, you may want to hire a professional photographer to get the perfect pictures of services and products for your website. Striking imagery produces emotion in the viewer that leads to meaningful actions.
When it comes to writing copy for your website, it is best to hire a copywriting professional who is familiar with your industry. It’s also important to give the copywriter as much detail as possible about the tone and content of the copy that will go on each website page. Make sure, also, that you hire a copywriter who is well versed in SEO principals and practices so that users can find your website on search engines.
Most people use their mobile phones when searching for a local business. For this reason, it is paramount that your website is responsive to mobile searches. This means that your website will fit whatever screen it pops up on, whether that be a desktop, tablet, or phone.
One local site that has done well in both categories is Sampair Law Group. They have done a great job of making the site very easy to use and give the user simple ways to contact them.
Once your website is completed, test it. Put in the keywords that your copywriter used to help you show up on the search engines and see where your website lands. Is it on the first page? If not, more SEO work should be done to bring land your business in on the front page of the search engine. Moreover, your goal should be to reach one of the first three spots on the search engine page for keywords that relate to finding your business online. If you’re not in the first three spots, it’s time to amp up you SEO inclusion.
Positive Reviews Will Bring in More Business
You can not underestimate the power of reviews for establishing your companies online reputation. Even negative reviews can be helpful when handled the right way.
If you receive a negative review, the potential customer will see how you reacted to this negative review, which can be a huge deciding factor for pursuing your services or products. For this reason, you must respond to every review, whether they are positive or negative. When you do this, the user can see the human element in your company by showing that you care about what customers think. For a positive review, give them thanks. For a negative review, respond to the feedback with a positive tone.
You can’t go wrong when engaging with customers via reviews, whether they are five star reviews or one star reviews. In fact, by consistently using this stratagem you are better able to gain repeat customers. When responding to a bad review, go a step further than just giving an explanation. In fact, it makes sense to ask the reviewer to contact the company so that you can further learn about their negative experience and figure out a way to resolve the issue. Finally, reviews are also helpful for SEO purposes. How? By encouraging customers to review your business on Yelp, Google, and Facebook. These reviews can easily lead to the reader visiting your website and taking a meaningful action, like inquiring more about your products and services, or making a sale.
Here is an example of a company that does a good job replying to their Google Reviews. Most business owners know you can’t make every customer happy, but you can be diplomatic and professional in how you handle negative feedback .
Grow Your Audience with Social Media
Your digital marketing campaign should include social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram no matter what size your business. Start by creating a company page on Facebook and update it regularly with posts that drive traffic back to your website. Include viral copy, great images, videos, and other information that is relevant to your business. Through social media, your objective is to gain a following by keeping your followers engaged. This way users are more likely to like, comment on, and share your posts, thus growing your audience even more.
It is possible that some websites, like Google, have created a page for your business. To find out, explore all the local business profiles online to find yours. Once you’ve found the sites that contain your profile, you can ask to take ownership of these profile pages so you can keep them updated. The sites you need to investigate include, but are not limited to:
- Yahoo
- Bing
- Yelp
- Kudzu
- ShowMeLocal
- Angie’s List
- The Better Business Bureau (BBB)
- YP.com
- Merchant Circle
Once you’ve found all your profiles, take the time to update them with correct information and don’t forget to add quality photos whenever possible.
Email Marketing
Using emails to reach quality leads and paying customers is a great way to start marketing your services and products. Keep your emails short simply by highlighting the most important information, such as sales that are going on, new blogs that have been written, and new resources that have been added. You can also send out a monthly newsletter that gives customers and update about your business and what can be expected in the future.
Email marketing has proved to be one of the best ways to convert sales. The shorter you keep them, the better chance readers will read the entire email and then make a meaningful action, like clicking on a link to your site. You need excellent, engaging copy that includes a call to action for the user. If your business has a new deal or promotion, tell them exactly what it is and how to get it via this email.
Also, when it comes to email marketing as a digital marketing strategy, you don’t want to overdo it. If you send out too many emails, people will start to get annoyed or uninterested and may simply delete your email without ever opening it. They may even choose to unsubscribe from your email list. Sending out too many emails can certainly have a negative effect that causes you to lose email subscribers and potential customers.
Here’s a great example of a short and to the point email offering a valuable coupon to get new business in the door:
The Importance of Content Marketing Across the Internet
Content marketing is an important digital marketing tool for a number of reasons, such as:
- Organic and paid social media promotion
- Link building through bonding with bloggers and other online influencers
- Expanding your online footprint by being active on Q&A sites, forums, and sites like Reddit and Quora. Other industry specific sites can include AVVO for lawyers and HOUZZ for any home and garden businesses.
- Constructing thought leadership by answering various questions around the web that are related to your industry.
This is one strategy that includes a learning curve and should be done when you have the spare time, since it not the most important digital marketing technique out there.
To start with, it is important to determine which websites you should employ when it comes to discussions and content that engages potential customers. Furthermore, this is a great way to get ideas for your own blog and other topics for your website content. For example, if you find a user question that depends upon you supplying a longer answer, you can write about that particular topic on your website blog. Then you can refer this person to the blog piece you just wrote so they can get a full answer to the question they seek. Take into consideration that the same question has most likely been asked by other users. Find these users and direct them to your website blog for the answer they are looking for. This can easily lead to gaining more quality customers.
Conclusion – Let Us Help
Finally, here are a couple of more things to keep in mind before beginning your digital marketing campaign.
To start with, insure you have very specific goals. For example, your goals could include gaining more organic (unpaid) traffic to your website, grow your social media presence to gain more followers, and getting qualified leads. By taking this step to identifying your goals, you can implement the right digital marketing strategies to meet your goals successfully. Furthermore, remember to Keep It Simple! Don’t overthink these digital strategies and don’t overdo it.
Now is the time to start including digital marketing into your marketing campaign. The sooner you start to do this, the faster you will see your efforts rewarded.
To learn more about carrying out these digital marketing strategies, you can rely on the team at Search Control. Serving the Scottsdale, Arizona area, Search Control focuses on effective online digital marketing strategies that bring results. From social media management to website design and best SEO practices, Search Control handles it all so you don’t have to. They are the experts you need to take care of your digital marketing campaign while you focus on running your business and satisfying your customers. At Search Control, it’s our job to bring you those customers through a digital marketing campaign.
To start with, Search Control will give you a free webscore and analysis to see how your website is performing among the various search engines, like Google, Bing and Yahoo. Once this is completed, the team at Search Control will set up an appointment to review your current web presence and how it can be improved to promote your business. Next, the team will customize a plan to fit your business needs. No two marketing campaigns are the same. For this reason, Search Control will take a unique approach to make you more visible online. Finally, Search Control will build a custom “Control Tower” that you can access 24/7 to monitor your website rankings as well as engagement from users visiting your site. To learn more about having your business reach its fullest potential, call the Search Control team today at 480-378-0246.