Why small businesses should invest in Digital Marketing?
This pandemic has hit us like anything. We all are suffering from such a phase that no one ever expected. Small businesses got the hardest hit. Pandemic affected them so hard that their scope of growth and take the business on higher levels is in doubt.
All the strategies that small business owners have planned for the future are going in vain and have brought their businesses at the initial level. But there is still a ray of hope, as technology is increasing and people are moving towards digital platforms.
When a business comes into life, its main focus is to get the first set of customers. For achieving that they do marketing in a traditional way such as print ads and coupon mailers or even big signs on the side of the road. This costs them a lot of money and results are not even equal to spends.
Businesses are not aware of what digital marketing can do to their business with very less amounts of spending. They should consider the huge marketplace of prospects online. No small business, no matter how new, should overlook this vast marketplace.
You will find a larger set of potential customers online than you are likely to attract locally. Using digital marketing, you can reach an enormous audience in a way that is both cost-effective and measurable.
Other benefits of online marketing include:
- The ability to interact with your prospects and learn exactly what they are looking for
- The ability to reach a global marketplace
- You can save money and reach more customers for less money than traditional marketing methods
- Get to know your audience and allow them to know you personally which can help to create brand loyalty
- You can track responses to your marketing efforts immediately
- Take Advantage of a Higher ROI
While there are small businesses that are active in digital marketing, there are also small businesses that are still postponing it due to a variety of reasons like lack of time, lack of knowledge, or limiting themselves to one particular kind of marketing. Some also believe that as they are a small business, they need a small manageable number of customers. This approach is not appropriate and may become a hindrance to their growth.
Some ways digital marketing improves the “traditional” methods of keeping loyal customers are:
- Using digital testimonials from happy customers instead of the old “word of mouth”. These testimonials should be posted on your website and used in social media campaigns as well.
- Automated but personalized thank you and follow up email campaigns instead of the physical letters or pamphlets. You can reach larger audiences for a lot less money, and send an email in the right moment to the right people.
- Engaging customers on social media once they leave your store or buy your product online, to keep your product on their minds and have them come back next time.
- Re-marketing and re-targeting to have them try out “this other product” that compliments what they already bought.
Digital marketing is creative and helps you to keep up with the trends!
Video Marketing Tips for 2020
What is Video Marketing?
Video marketing is any type of video you record and post with the intention of moving you towards your business goals.
Simple, right?
You can use video marketing just about anywhere. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are also great places for video marketing content.
A study on small business marketer behavior reveals an increased focus on video marketing and as well as using videos to get found on search. The reports say video marketing is winning for small and medium-sized businesses business, especially during COVID-19.
According to the study, 64% responded that video is the most effective form of online marketing content. And almost half of the respondents agreed that they must create videos in order to grow their business. Reports are made on a study of more than 500 marketers and small business owners from around the world.
Below are more video marketing stats and facts:
- 70% of SMBs post videos to Instagram and Facebook Stories.
- 62% of respondents create up to 5 videos per month.
- 59% of respondents combine their own photos and videos with stock footage.
- 41% of SMBs spend up to $500 per month to promote their videos.
Now it’s time to talk about what goes into a single video with what we think are the most important video marketing tips to skyrocket your traffic and conversions.
- Keep Your Story Interesting
For starters, your story has to be compelling. You can only grab attention when your story connects with your customers. Don’t use the same content that you already have on your website and adding some video clips to it. You’re probably not going to be getting the results you want.
Videos give you more freedom than most other marketing formats to show off your values to your customers and potential customers.
- Get to the Point in Under 10 Seconds
Your potentially award-winning 3-minute video is worth nothing if you don’t hook people within the first 5-10 seconds. Your typical Internet user has a very short attention span. Make sure that your video answers the question “Why should I watch it?” within the first 10 seconds.
- Call to Action is Important
Most of your marketing content should have a call to action and video is no different. A lot of marketers tend to place their call to action at the end, this is an excellent place for a call to action in video content, but don’t limit yourself just to throwing a tag at the end of a beautiful video and calling it a day.
Many marketers have found great success with including another call to action somewhere in the middle of their video when the viewer is engaged with their content.
- Optimize Your Content
To that end, one of the best things you can do before uploading your video to sharing sites is to host the video on your own domain.
When thinking about search engine optimization of your videos (remember, YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine on the Internet), your video descriptions are a great starting point.
Including well-crafted descriptions serves two purposes:
- It makes your video content accessible to those who rely on screen readers or are deaf
- It allows Google’s search spiders to understand what your video content includes
Share Your Video Everywhere (That Makes Sense for Your Viewers)
You should know where your customers are consuming video content. Post your videos in those places. Simple, right?
That’s it! With these Simple video marketing tips, you’re basically an expert in video marketing. Check out our simple tips blog Easy Tips for Effective Content Writing
Source credit :optinmonster
How to increase your social media engagement??
Engage with right audience
Content is key to your social media engagement. There are 2 types of content. It can be directly posting about your products or posting about trending/relatable topics. It’s easier to use social media to shout about your products but for engagement, you need to post relatable content for your followers. Engagement is a key social media metric you need to track.
You need a plan to attract more engagement.
You might be thinking, “Do I really need a plan for something as simple as responding to people on the internet?”
Every engagement on your social media should work both ways. It should be beneficial for your follower and for your business as well.
Content will vary from business to business. However, there are a few key points that any good plan should have.
Define your goal
Business to Business social media engagement goals will change. It totally depends on your brand what kind of engagement will benefit your business.
Some more examples of good social media engagement goals:
- Getting feedback about products or campaigns
- Finding and nurturing leads
- Providing information that helps move customers from one point in the buying journey to the next
- Changing brand perception
Know your audience
Scratch your head to know your audience. Before posting anything, think about what your audience is looking for. What are their issues and how can you solve them by your social media content. Listen to your audience, learn where they are struggling, and give them what they are looking for.
Once you know your audience and their need, you are ready to post your content and open gates to tons of engagement.
Stay Updated
One simple, but a tested way to drive your audience is to post what is trending. By posting about any trending topics you will attract a lot of audiences. Ask them their opinion or throw a question on them so that they can interact. This can include things like trending hashtags, sporting events, pop culture news, and holidays.
Interact with the audience
Always find time to answer messages and comments on your post. People should feel that you are reading and actively engaging with them. Like, repost and tag some of your followers’ posts, this will make them belonging and loyal.
Set aside a block of time in your day to handle reactive engagement and another for proactive. You may also want to plan your day around specific social networks, depending on the size of your communities.
Social media engagement tools
Here are some tools which will help
Photo editing:
- Canva makes it easy to crop pictures to the exact specifications of different networks. You can also edit photos directly in the Hootsuite compose box and add text and filters to them.
GIFs:
- Giphy: “Type in a keyword like ’excitement’ or ‘dog’ and you’ll quickly find a batch of (amazing) animated GIFs that can add some entertainment to any engagement.”
Analytics:
- Hootsuite Insights: “This is the best tool for getting a general overview of your engagement efforts and reporting on specific keywords or topics.”
- Brandwatch: “Create in-depth reports that capture the entire social conversation around your brand and industry.”
Collaboration:
- Google Hangouts: “Hangouts helps keep me in contact with the rest of the company, so I can get a heads up about real-time events that could potentially be great engagement opportunities like conferences that our executives are attending, for example.”
Easy Tips for Effective Content Writing
Content that grabs everyone’s attention
People crave clear content, not complicated words. Write a copy that is easy to understand and delivers a clear idea about the product. Although there is no secret formula for writing high-quality content, these are several tips that can help improve the quality and quantity of your written material:
Simple and head-turning headline – You have three seconds to keep readers hooked after the headline. Heading determines whether the audience will read the full blog or not. The headline should be catchy, it should bring an eagerness to read more about the topic. It should directly relate to the audience.
- Imagine yourself as a reader – Create a framework and imagine yourself as a reader, what they will be interested in reading. Think about that and start marking the bullet points which you want to add.
The framework lays out a road-map of four components:
- The Character.
- The Problem.
- The Plan.
- The Success.
For each piece of writing, you supply answers to these components and create a one-liner (which doesn’t exactly have to be one line).
- Discuss It – Sometimes it happens that you have something in mind but you are not able to put it in words. Find a person who can give an unbiased review and try to explain to him what is in your mind. Sometimes those with zero knowledge of the subject can provide the best responses. You will get a clear understanding of how to write it.
- Focus on one topic – Don’t get distracted from your main purpose of the content. Roll around a single topic so that your audience will have a clear mindset about what they are reading. Don’t mix multiple topics together.
- Edit – then Edit Again, and Again – Read it out again, and again you will find unnecessary material quickly. Every time you will read you will come across some changes. Edit it multiple times before finalizing it.
Clarity and simplicity are key to great writing. These two elements help your reader arrive at the point quicker.
Tips to optimize your PPC in Google AdWords campaign
Managing a successful PPC (pay per click) campaign is no easy task. With plenty of resources out there, there’s always tons of information right at your fingertips – but it can quickly get overwhelming. First, you need to learn the basics of the Adwords campaign. There are some tips to optimize your PPC
- Target Audience
Demographic targeting is coming up as a very useful tool to get the exact audience. Predicting people’s behavior and interest and coming across the audience which will be interested in your product and services. This has increases the ROI of campaigns.
- Conversion Tracking
Google has a feature called “Pay Per Conversion” which means it’s now easier to get sales from the display. You simply set a cost per sale target. Then provide Google with your ad collateral. Creation of a conversion pixel that is loaded on your website to track the various PPC channels. Google, Bing, Facebook, etc. all have unique pixel conversion tracking codes and you need to make sure you are using them to get the most from your online marketing PPC budget.
- Single Keyword Ad Groups
Google recommends you 10-20 keywords. The tough part about this is creating a good ad relevant to each. If you’re really struggling, your Quality Score can suffer. With a single keyword ad group, there is only one term of which can trigger an ad.
Doing so will give you a better chance of improving your quality score. The higher you rank, the lower your cost-per-click.
- Ad Extensions
Use the extension to tell the audience more about your business. Extensions include things like phone number, address, links to landing pages, and more. This will add more visibility to your ad. And the best part is these extensions are FREE.
- Negative Keywords
Keywords play a crucial role in a good AdWords campaign. By choosing the right keywords you can accomplish your half goal. When we audit our campaign, we quickly find bids on terms that would never convert. This will be a loss for your campaign because you will be reaching the wrong person and spends on that, which will decrease your ROI.
Google Adwords is a great platform to boost your business’s online presence and delivering your message across the interested audience. Keep experimenting to get the best results.
