As per a new marketing statistic, nearly 20 percent of small businesses don’t leverage digital marketing. What’s even worse, the same percentage of small businesses doesn’t have any online presence at all! That’s a sure-shot way of remaining behind the curve and losing a large number of potential customers to competitors.
This blog post discusses key digital marketing strategies and how they can help all kinds of businesses to boost their operations and performance.
why digital marketing is a must for every business in the digital age
1. Website design and development
In the digital age, the question is not “whether or not to have a business website?” it is “how to have a responsive, mobile-friendly, and well-optimized website?”
At a time when every three in five people in the world are using the internet and mobile devices accounting for the majority of the website traffic, every business needs to update their websites to work well on mobile devices.
It is crucial to use a responsive web design so that the website can fit into all types of devices. It is also important to compress images and have a load time of below three seconds. Many internet users are using voice devices to look for products and local businesses, so optimizing the website for voice search is also crucial for businesses.
2. Search Engine Optimization
After building a strong website, the next step is to enhance its visibility and rank it well on search engines. Search engine optimization (SEO) is among the most effective digital marketing strategies to drive online traffic to websites.
It involves using relevant keywords and crafting useful and informative website content so that search engine bots can find out how relevant and valuable the website is for a specific search query. To rank well, it is crucial to perform keyword research on search queries, short-tail, and long-tail keywords.
Apart from on-page SEO, which helps the website rank better on the search engine results page, businesses should also focus on off-page SEO. The latter includes writing guest posts, press releases, Google My Business profiles, listing on trustworthy and popular directories, and more. This enhances the visibility of the business and makes it appear on the search engine result pages. As SEO is a vast and specialized domain, taking the help of professional SEO services will provide better results and return on investment for small businesses.
3. Content marketing
Discuss the problems in the market
Show how its products or services can solve the problem(s)
Persuade target audience to try their offerings
Provide insights and useful information into the industry
Show expertise and build authority and credibility
The content that a business creates can go into its website or other forums such as social networks and third-party websites. Apart from that, businesses can also leverage video marketing and create videos for their target audience.
Some businesses may not have the expertise and experience of creating compelling and engaging content. Taking the help of professional content marketing services can help them craft valuable and informative pieces of content.
4. Social media marketing
With more than four billion users globally, social media provides immense opportunities for businesses to reach their target audience and showcase their products and services to them. Not only do the users are spending more time on their favorite social networks, but some are looking for products and services on the platforms. In the last 15 years, social media marketing has become one of the most popular digital marketing strategies.
It is extremely cost-effective and engaging. A captivating image on Facebook or a 10-second product demonstration on Instagram, or a crisply crafted tweet on Twitter can be more effective and engaging than long content. It also enables businesses to directly communicate with their followers and build communities of loyal customers and fans. Platforms such as LinkedIn serve as excellent lead generation tools.
5. Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing (SEM) is a digital marketing strategy that promotes websites through paid advertising. This is extremely effective to reach a particular group of prospective customers based on their search intent. By using it, businesses can make their advertisements appear only to those people who are looking for specific products or services and are using relevant search queries.
While SEO is more about key tactics to increase online rank and visibility, SEM is getting visibility and online traffic with the help of paid ads. Some popular and effective SEM platforms are Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Ads, and Bing Ads. A reputable and trustworthy digital marketing agency can provide professional Google Adwords management services.
6. Email and SMS marketing
This is the most direct and personalized form of digital marketing strategy that entails sending a commercial email or text message to a group of target audiences. Compared to all other strategies, it is more customized and relevant to the target audience. After taking recipients’ consent, businesses create and send them engaging and useful emails. The messages add value to the recipients in some way.
While email marketing gives a return of US$44 for an investment of every one dollar, SMS has an open rate of 98 percent. The two stats are sufficient to explain why both are extremely effective forms of digital marketing strategies.
7. Online reputation management
Online reputation management is a digital marketing strategy using which companies can understand what people are saying about them and erase any malicious publicity. Amid cut-throat competition in nearly all major sectors, a few players use unethical tactics to malign their competitors and show them in a poor light. Every business should adopt online reputation management to track the mentions of their brands on the internet and address any false or negative comments.
With effective online reputation management, businesses can find out what their customers and other people are discussing about them. It will help them to find out their names in user-generated content and address any concerns or feedback.
All in all,
In the age of the internet, every business needs to use digital marketing to their advantage or fall behind the competition. Though it is a specialized domain, businesses can take the help of professional digital marketing service providers to use the strategies that complement each other and help them reach out to their prospects and enhance their visibility.
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