All of the approximately 33 million small businesses in America face a similar challenge. How do you attract customers in a largely digital age? The knee-jerk answer to the question is digital marketing strategies.
Of course, that answer is one of a peculiar breed in that it’s true but not necessarily helpful. There are many digital marketing strategies and tactics, but small business owners have limited budgets for their marketing efforts.
If you’re wondering which digital marketing strategies you should use in 2022, keep reading this articles from Wiredclip covers everything.
SEO
For business owners, SEO isn’t so much innovative marketing or anything new in terms of digital marketing trends as it is an unavoidable, foundational strategy. It’s foundational and unavoidable because search engines are, like it or not, the gatekeepers to online traffic.
Your website is often the hub on which all other digital marketing efforts turn. If it doesn’t perform well in search engine results, you won’t get much organic traffic. If you don’t get organic traffic, you’ll pay literally and dearly for every lead and every sale.
Search engine optimization is how you convert your so-so site into one that search engines will display high in their results. Search engines put out extensive guidelines for what they want from a website. There are a few key areas that should get your attention, such as:
- Page load speeds
- Mobile readiness
- Keyword relevance
- Unique content
- High-quality content/information
There are many other areas of concern, but the ones listed above are enough to set you on the right path.
PPC
Another area that most businesses embrace is pay-per-click or a similar form of paid online advertising. With pay-per-click, you don’t look for ways that you can entice good page ranking. Instead, you pay for ad placement on a search engine.
You typically pick a keyword with high relevance for your business or brand. Then, you put a bid on the keyword. That bid will largely determine when and where your ad displays.
Unlike SEO, you pay for immediate results. This strategy can help you drive short-term traffic, which is particularly helpful if you’re running specials or sales.
It’s also a way for you to control your marketing budget. Since you know exactly what you’re paying per click, you can set a daily budget on the search engine that won’t exceed your overall budget.
While often effective, it can also prove a pricey option. The cost per click for some keywords can get very expensive, with prices of $2 or more depending on your industry and the specific platform.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is one of the more recent additions to the digital marketing strategies list. It’s also still evolving with things like best lengths changing over time. The fundamentals of content marketing remain the same.
Good content marketing aims at enticing potential customers with the promise of high-quality content and then delivering on that promise. That means you deliver content that offers helpful advice, useful insights, and content with specific relevance to your audience. It also comes from an authoritative source.
For example, let’s say that you run a steak house. A blog post or video that details how you can get great pan sear at home hits the high points. It’s helpful advice and provides some insights. It’s also relevant to an audience of people who like eating steak.
A blog post about why the lastest superhero movie is terrible might meet the high-quality threshold in terms of writing, but it fails the other tests. It’s not useful for your audience, lacks relevance, and you are not an authoritative source.
What if you’re not feeling confident about producing high-quality content? You can always outsource some or all of your content creation to a third-party service, such as TheStorageAgency.com.
Social Media
Social media is the most dynamic type of digital marketing because tastes shift over time. Different social media platforms appeal to different market segments.
TikTok is huge at the moment, but its main users are teenagers. If your main target market isn’t teenagers, TikTok provides limited value.
With that said, every business should have some kind of social media presence. Look for a platform that caters to your target market and build a profile there.
Video
People like videos. They click on videos. They remember things they see and hear in videos.
That means that you should at least give video a hard look before you take a pass on it as a marketing avenue. Granted, some types of businesses will struggle to create accessible video content. It’s very difficult to produce videos about financial services because the work itself is so abstract.
If you make products or run a service that lends itself to video, though, it can help you attract and convert customers. Video can let you highlight benefits, demonstrate uses for products, or even do some brand building.
Podcast
Podcasting has gained a lot of ground in the last couple of years. It’s also a nice middle ground between text content and video.
Podcast listeners will often stick with you while you discuss a complex idea. That makes it great for things like finance businesses, health and fitness-related businesses, and real estate.
It can also work for businesses that deal in products or services that lend themselves to blogs and videos. You can do interviews with industry pros, talk about upcoming products or projects, or double down on branding your business.
Digital Marketing Strategies and You
Business owners have many options when it comes to digital marketing strategies. The catch is that you must pick at least one or two if you plan on sticking around for the long term.
Minimally, you must develop a website for your business. You don’t necessarily need something complex, but it must exist as a kind of social proof for the online crowd. With a website comes the need for SEO.
Beyond that, expand in directions that make sense for your business, such as content marketing, video, social media, or podcasting.
Ready for more tips? Check out our business section.
