Digital Marketing involves promoting a business through online means. Both brick-and-mortar and e-commerce stores can benefit from online marketing.
Customers often check out a variety of products and services online, and even if they eventually plan to visit a physical store, they do their homework online. To get started with digital marketing, there are a few steps you can follow.
1. Create a website
A website is the online home of a small business. It can post useful information such as opening hours, so you can introduce your products and services to potential customers.
With a well-organized and easy-to-navigate website, you can also build trust with your customers and enhance your corporate image and credibility.
2. Blogging
An estimation says 26% more young and teenage people in the USA read blogs and forums. Internet users spend three times as much time reading blogs as they do emails.
Starting a blog gives you the opportunity to establish your company as a professional in the relevant field. Providing useful information to your potential customer base helps build trust. And, if you add a CTA (call to action) phrase or button that encourages readers to learn more about your products and services, it can also be effective in increasing sales. Plus, you can use blog content for other marketing channels (like email or social media).
You can also Make A Wikipedia Page For Your Business and write articles or blogs on it, which will help you in gaining more and more customers you don’t have to worry about how to have a Wikipedia profile all you have to do is take help from any Wikipedia page and you can have a good audience for your online business.
3. Employ Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
With search engine optimization (SEO), you modify your website so that it ranks higher in Google or other search engines. For brick-and-mortar businesses and service providers operating in a specific geographic area, local SEO can help those companies appear in search results when users in that area search for keywords related to those companies.
When viewing businesses using local search, most users will only view the first few entries, so it’s important to have your business appear high in the search results. Google offers an informative SEO guide to help you get started with SEO.
4. Create a Direct Marketing Email List
Email marketing helps you stay in touch with new and existing customers. To build your own list of email addresses, you need to have customers sign up in person or online.
You can offer a discount or perk to encourage customers to sign up and share their email addresses. If you have an e-commerce site, at checkout you might as well ask customers if they want to be added to your email list. Having simple sign-up forms available over the counter in physical stores also goes a long way.
5. Offer discounts or benefits
Nearly three-quarters of Americans use at least one social media platform. With social media marketing, you have the opportunity to promote your products and services to people who might not have found your business naturally. Posting on social media can also drive traffic to your blog and website.
You don’t have to pay anything to post. To increase your reach, you can run paid ads on your preferred social media sites.
Start by creating pages and accounts for your company on the social media platforms your customers are most likely to use. For most businesses, creating a YouTube account and a Facebook page is a smart move, as both have large and diverse user bases.
6. Collaborate with influencers
Influencers can expand the reach of digital marketing campaigns. You can identify the influencers who have the most appeal to your customer base. Then, reach out to them to find out how you can work with them. Some may charge a fee, while others prefer to advertise your business on social media pages in exchange for a free product or service.
7. Create a Google Business Profile
Building a business page on Google is a critical step in digital marketing. Once created, your Business Profile page will appear to anyone who searches Google for your business.
If you have a physical store, this also ensures that the store appears in the correct location on Google Maps. To ensure that new and existing customers get accurate information when looking for your company, you need to keep your page updated with information such as business hours, products, and services.