Small business and digital marketing are terms that are not synonymous, although they should be. Consequently, 90% of small businesses fail within the first 5 years. Small business owners don’t understand the importance of marketing or how it can contribute to making your business more profitable. As a result, they rarely invest into a marketing campaign. When business owners choose to have a website developed they forget that it needs to be optimized for all of the major search engines.
SEO
Search engine optimization, also known as SEO is a process that involves structuring the pages on a website according to standards set by Google. Many SEO companies promise more traffic and leads but they do it in an artificial way using tactics that may get your website penalized by Google. We suggest that small business owners spend a few hours studying SEO on the internet. Within this small amount of time you will obtain a basic understanding of SEO principles and how to apply them to your business.
Social Media
Social media also plays a large part in small business marketing. Many companies use social media as there only form of marketing which can be effective for some business models. There are stats available for the different social media platforms that will let you know the typical profile of it’s users. The profiles include information such as annual income, gender, demographic and age. Armed with this information you will know which platform contains your target market and if its the best place to market your company.
Print Advertising
Last but not least important is print advertising. Print can include signs, banners, business cards, flyers and mail inserts. Depending on your industry there are probably areas available for marketing that you may not have thought about. Your local taxi cab company has signs on the top of each car. These signs can be leased and used to market your company. Most areas have free papers that go out daily near high traffic areas such as colleges and bus stations. These free papers offer advertising space at a very low cost. Simple flyers that are professionally designed are also a great option for marketing and letting the community know who you are and what you do.
Hopefully, you’ve found the information that we’ve written about helpful.
