The pandemic has accelerated the rate at which customers are changing their shopping habits and using the internet.
The massive growth in internet and social media usage has left businesses with two important questions:
How do you interact with your customers online?
And more importantly, how do they interact with you?
The good news is, getting going with digital marketing is fairly straightforward, once you know where to start.
What is digital marketing?
Overall, digital marketing refers to any online marketing efforts or assets.
Email marketing, pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing and blogging are all great examples of digital marketing - they help introduce people to your company and convince them to buy.
Before you start
When starting out online for the first time, you need to ask some fundamental questions.
What are your business’ objectives? What are you looking to achieve by getting online?
Is it to drive sales, is it to raise interest in your products or services, is it to help with recruitment?
Answering these questions will help point you in the right direction when thinking about what and where to post.
Next, consider where your customers are online. At the risk of overgeneralising: older people tend to use Facebook, whilst the younger audiences are more likely to use channels like Instagram and TikTok.
It’s important to be realistic about what you can achieve, especially if it is only you that is doing all of the work. Don’t overcommit and join every online channel going. Choosing fewer social media channels but posting more consistently is much better than starting dozens of accounts and forgetting to post!
How do I know what to post?
Consider the key messages for your business and put them into plain English.
Who you are, what you do, who you can help, what locations you cover, and what is that spark makes your business better than the rest.
If you theme your messaging around these key points and you won’t go far wrong.
Top priorities to get sorted online
The most important things to get set up online are:
A website (with basic optimisation for search engines)
A Google My Business listing
A handful of good reviews
A business email account
Social media account(s)
Once these are up and running, you can look at more advanced things like:
Video content
Branded graphics
Paid online advertising (PPC, search and social)
Blogs including keywords
Email marketing
Conversation rate optimisation
As you can see from the list above, there are loads of different ways you can promote your business online.
Need a hand getting started?
For a limited time only, businesses based in Carlisle and Brampton are eligible for 30 minutes of free marketing advice. Contact danmmarketing@gmail.com or visit www.danmmarketing.com for more information.
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