Smart small business digital marketing is critical if you want to get your brand in front of new customers. This article discusses how you can keep up with this constantly changing marketing avenue.
Now more than ever before, digital marketing is a key channel where small businesses can find space to get found by potential customers. Even after COVID-19 becomes less prevalent (hopefully in the near future), I see online marketing as an essential component of every business’s marketing strategy.
Updating Your Small Business Digital Marketing for 2021 at a Glance
- Optimize your website.
- Regularly update your Google My Business.
- Start a blog and use SEO best practices.
- Find the best social media channel for your business.
- Invest in digital ads.
- Incorporate video wherever you can.
If you are considering going digital with your marketing—or if you already have a digital presence and want to keep up with the changes that we have been seeing in our industry—this article will help you update your strategy for the rest of 2021 and beyond.
Small Business Digital Marketing in 2021
1. Optimize Your Website
If you don’t have a website, now is the time to create one. Without a site, you are virtually nonexistent online.
And even if you do have a website, if it is not optimized—for desktop and mobile—you could be scaring away leads. Slow load times and poor design are often enough to keep a visitor from staying on your site and becoming a customer. According to the digital consultancy firm Perficient, 68.1% of web visits in 2020 came from mobile devices. Don’t let that statistic convince you that desktop is unimportant, though: desktop users drove 53.3% of time spent on websites in the U.S.
Website optimization is not a one-time fix, so it’s critical to devote time and resources to maintaining your site and keeping it user-friendly while Google and other search engines continue to update their algorithms.
2. Regularly Update Your Google My Business
It’s no secret that Google dominates search, so making sure that your business shows up how you want people to see it is critical. The best part about Google My Business is that it is free. However, you do need to spend some time setting up your profile and keeping it fresh if you want to attract web visitors.
Take a look at our listing below. On the right side of the page, you will see how the ZenChange Marketing profile looks clean and well maintained. This is critical for people searching online for your business:
As you scroll down, you can see the updated posts that we have recently added to provide value for our visitors:
Google My Business is a great way to provide potential customers with information about your business. Learn how to claim or edit your GMB here.
3. Start a Blog and Use SEO Best Practices
Content marketing is a major part of digital marketing, and if you do it right, it can attract a massive amount of new visitors to your site and drive sales. One of the easiest ways to launch a content marketing campaign is to start blogging.
Your blog is a space to have fun and provide your audience with solutions to their problems while demonstrating your expertise in your industry. Not sure what to write about? Think about the questions that you hear most often from customers and use your blogging platform to answer them.
If you want people to find and read your content, though, you need to incorporate SEO best practices into your strategy. Optimize your posts for keywords that your site can rank for, and don’t forget to consider going after some of the SERP features that Google provides to help your business get found online, such as Featured Snippets.
4. Find the Best Social Media Channel for Your Business
Did you know that 74% of consumers rely on social media to guide purchasing decisions? According to Fundera, the vast majority of consumers research comments and social media reviews before deciding whether to buy.
What this means for your business is that you need to not only have complete profiles for your channels but also post regularly and engage with your followers.
Your business may not need to be active on every single social media platform out there. Depending on your industry and where you get the most engagement from viewers, you could choose to post to only one or two. But you do need to have at least one channel where potential customers can learn about your business and communicate with you.
5. Invest in Digital Ads
Aside from the money and time you will need to spend creating content for the above small business digital marketing options, the marketing options I have talked about so far have been free.
Now let’s talk about your online paid advertising options. Digital advertising is an excellent way to put your brand, services, and products in front of potential customers. If you are willing and able to invest in digital ads, you could see some serious ROI. To get started, you need to determine which platform you want to use. For instance, Facebook Ads allows you to reach people scrolling on Facebook based on the criteria that you list when setting up your ad.
6. Incorporate Video Wherever You Can
Video is huge right now for small business digital marketing, and it will continue to grow as platforms like YouTube and TikTok continue to find ways to keep people engaged. To tap into this quickly expanding form of marketing, you may want to invest in some video equipment and video editing software, but all you really need is a smartphone with a decent camera.
Decide what type of video you want to create and go for it. You can choose between short-form content to educate your viewers about your business…
…and long-form content to give them insights into how you do things…
You can livestream what’s going on with your business on Facebook Live, create scripted content for YouTube, or post the videos you create to your website to keep people interested.
Ready to update your small business digital marketing strategy?
At ZenChange Marketing, we are always thinking of new ways to get your business found online. If you are considering starting or expanding your small business digital marketing strategy, get in touch with us today to set up an introductory meeting.