Digital marketing is an essential component in any small business’s marketing strategy and can provide many benefits. But with so many different methods and tools available, which should you implement to help grow your business? In this article, we explore the types of digital marketing essential for small business growth online.
The importance of digital marketing
Whether you are a physical store or a fully online business, you’d be hard-pressed to succeed nowadays without a successful digital marketing strategy. When it’s estimated that 76% of customers look for a business online before visiting this shows why you can’t afford to miss out.
An effective digital marketing strategy tailored to your business goals and customers is a sure way to reach, engage, and attract people with your messages, content, and promotions.
Certain methods of digital marketing, such as social media, offer a direct way for you to interact and engage with customers. Not only does this allow you to grow your following, but it can also boost customer loyalty and retention, strengthen your conversion rate, and grow reach.
There are many benefits your small business can gain from a digital marketing strategy, including:
- Grow your online presence by ensuring customers know your business exists.
- Gain a competitive advantage to help attract more customers.
- More cost-effective than traditional marketing with a better return on investment.
- Attract new customers and increase sales.
- Build much stronger brand awareness.
- Better understand your customers and their needs.
- Communicate with customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey.
- Utilise personalisation to target customers at the right time.
With an array of benefits and opportunities, digital marketing can be a fantastic way to help grow your business. But if this is all new to you, it can seem overwhelming and daunting with where to begin. Don’t worry as we’ve got all the essential digital marketing methods to help your business grow online.
What digital marketing methods are essential for small businesses’ growth online?
There are many types of digital marketing, encompassing a range of different tactics. Not every digital marketing method will be beneficial to your business and may be unsuitable for your long-term goals. However, these are the most effective and popular types for small business growth:
Content marketing
The first type of digital marketing essential for small business growth online is content marketing. Content marketing plays a crucial role in allowing you to attract and engage customers.
Content marketing refers to any content you create or develop as part of a digital marketing strategy. This can range from blog posts, videos, infographics, guides, books, and images. However, unlike traditional advertising, content marketing is not promotional.
This means the content should not be created with the sole purpose of promoting your products, services, or business. Instead, it should seek to inform, educate, and influence your desired target market. Doing so will draw customers to your brand, converting them down the line to buyers and advocates.
For this method to work effectively the content you create needs to be high-quality, engaging, and tailored to your customers’ needs. Understanding your customers through buyer personas gives you a good indication of the content you should create, and which platforms to use.
Creating high-quality content can help you become an authority online for a particular subject, which in turn will help grow your online trust and reach.
Creating high-quality content that answers your user’s questions and solves their problems is a cost-effective method to draw customers to your brand. In return, you’ll benefit from a stronger online presence and greater online visibility.
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
Alongside content marketing, search engine optimisation (or SEO) is another digital marketing method essential for small business growth online. SEO is all about increasing your website rankings in the search results to drive more traffic to your website.
The higher your search rankings, the better for attracting targeted traffic to your site. The further down the listings you are, the lower your visibility and clicks. Data from First Page indicates that the top 3 positions gain the highest click-through rates:
- Position 1 – 39.8%
- Position 2 – 18.7%
- Position 3 – 10.2%
- Search results after the first page of results have a click-through rate (CTR) of less than 1.6%.
This means if your website fails to achieve a ranking on the first page, you’ll suffer from poor online visibility and low CTR. That’s why an effective SEO strategy is vital to ensure your website appears as high as possible in search engine rankings.
An effective SEO strategy is based on keyword research, creating high-quality content, optimising your website, and link building. Keyword research involves identifying the keywords and keyphrases your potential customers are searching for.
Then you can either create high-quality content around each keyword or optimise a piece of existing content. This provides a strong foundation for you to rank highly in search engines. However, you also need to optimise other elements of your website, including:
- Implementing a linking structure between pages to allow users and search engines to easily navigate your site.
- Optimise metadata, including page titles, meta descriptions, URL slugs, and image alt text.
- Take care not to overstuff content with a particular keyword to avoid adverse ranking effects. Try to use keyword variations.
Local SEO
Alongside SEO, businesses targeting local customers can also greatly benefit from local SEO. With the rapid increase of local and localised searches, an effective local SEO strategy is a great way to grow your presence. Unlike traditional SEO, local SEO focuses on targeting specific locations.
The first steps to creating an effective local SEO strategy are setting up and optimising a Google Business Profile and registering for high-quality online business directories.
The important thing to remember when setting up your Google Business Profile and online directory listings is consistency. Name, address, and phone (NAP) consistency is vital to ensure Google can easily match your business across different online locations.
Ideally, the NAP details you register with each online listing should be the same as on your website. This helps reinforce to Google that your business is legitimate while also making it easier for customers to find your business online.
An effective local SEO strategy will help you build a much stronger local presence by ensuring your business is displayed in the local search results. This is typically displayed in a 3-tier pack in search results. This also shows above the organic listings, highlighting the importance of a good local SEO strategy.
Search engine marketing (PPC)
Another type of digital marketing essential for small business growth online is search engine marketing. Search engine marketing refers to paid advertising on search engines. Another term used for search engine marketing is pay-per-click (PPC).
Paid advertising on search engines involves creating ads for keywords that you bid on. Paid ads appear above organic listings, so they are a great way for your business to stand out.
Unlike SEO, which is a long-term strategy that can take time to achieve results, PPC is an effective method to gain quick wins to drive traffic to your site. This is particularly beneficial for increasing awareness, promoting an offer, or boosting visibility.
If you wish to benefit from paid ads while waiting for the effects of an SEO strategy to kick in, there are some tips to consider. A good way to maximise your ad potential is by boosting your quality score. This is a score Google uses to determine how relevant your ad is to searchers.
Factors, such as ad relevance, landing page, and expected CTR, all affect your quality score. Ensuring you create high-quality ads that appeal to the needs of your customers is key. Combine that with a well-optimised landing page that delivers a positive user experience and you’re off to a good start!
Discover more about how you can succeed with search engine marketing
Social media
Social media is another method of digital marketing essential for small business growth online. Given how many people use social media every day, it can be a very effective way to connect and engage with your customers.
To create a winning social media strategy, you must choose the right social media platforms as each platform appeals to different audiences and content types. Ensuring you pick the right platforms while staying active and creating engaging and appealing content, is a surefire way to succeed with social media.
It’s important to remember not to be over-promotional on social media to avoid putting people off. Ideally, you should focus on creating 80% content that appeals to your customers and their needs, with the other 20% being promotional content. If you’ve created buyer personas, you’ll understand the type of content your followers will like best.
Here is an overview of the main social media platforms to help you decide which is most effective for your business and audience:
- Facebook – text, image, and video content that appeals to 24-44-year-olds.
- Instagram – image and short-form video content appealing to 18-34-year-olds.
- LinkedIn – text, image, and video content appealing to 25-34-years-olds.
- X – text, images, videos, and polls appealing to 25-34-year-olds.
- YouTube – long and short-form video content appealing to 25-44-year-olds.
- Snapchat – short-form video appealing to 18-24 years.
- TikTok – short-form video appealing to 18–34-year-olds (also used by 12-17-year-olds).
- Pinterest – image content appealing to 18–34-year-olds.
Email marketing
The last type of digital marketing essential for small business growth online that we’ll cover is email marketing. Whilst it may be considered ‘old fashioned’ email marketing is still an effective way of converting audiences.
With email marketing, you can target existing leads or potential customers. Whether you have a big email marketing list or not, it’s a vital method of nurturing people. If customers have signed up for your newsletter or other email marketing, it indicates they have a strong interest in your brand.
By capitalising on this interest, you can easily convert customers. Sending offers or updating customers on new or upcoming products are effective methods to use email marketing. In some cases, you can also send personalised emails to entice customers.
If you don’t already have an email marketing list, you’ll need to set up methods to capture this information. Content offers and special incentives are good methods for building an email marketing list.
You must adhere to data regulations and relevant email marketing legislation. Otherwise, you could end up in some hot water! However, don’t let this put you off as it can be an excellent way to convert customers by following these tips:
- Create a sense of urgency
- Personalise emails
- Allow customers to set their email preferences
With many different types of digital marketing available to you, your business is in a good position to grow online. Choosing the methods that align with your business, goals, and customers will set you in a position for success online. That way, your business can benefit from greater traffic, stronger brand loyalty, and a good return on investment.