Digital Marketing
Advertising has been around for decades and has been a great push for most of the business owners to be known about their services or products. But, not all business owners can afford to spend heavily on advertising.
In this blog, I’m going to talk about how small business owners can make the most out of digital marketing in Australia and be seen by their target audience.
If you have a small business or you’re a local business owner and want to reach more people and get more sales or even get leads for your business, you have to have an online presence, and a proper multi channel strategy to make the most of all your customer’s online touch points. See it like this, most of the time you’re online, you see so many ads and some of them are so enticing that you actually end up buying or learning about the business. You can do that too! But, before we get into the marketing part of the business, the following things are a must have for any business owner.
The Must Haves For Marketing:
- A user-friendly website – Yes, it might be a bit expensive to get someone to create a website but you can also get one for FREE! They have heaps of templates which you can choose from according to your business and taste. For the more savvy, there’s also Squarespace, Wix and other websites of a similar ilk that allow you to make a quality website on a budget.
- A Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn page/account. – A must have! (depending on your business/services) Most of the people you meet or see are either on their phone browsing Facebook or Instagram or Tik-Tok. If you want to reach your local audience or even the audience 100 kms away from you, you have to have a social media account. (Need some coaching? – I got you covered. Click this LINK – Thank me later.)
- Google My Business – Having a GMB account is essential as people who are looking for your business get all the information on their search result, such as opening/closing time, address, reviews, pictures. A great way of increasing your online presence.
Once you have these, then you have to start focusing on promoting your business/services/products. The finest advertising experiences are tailored to the target audience. They make it possible for the audience to learn about items and services offered by small businesses that may not be able to sell them on broadcast television or other kinds of media.
Ways To Market Your Business
Before we start talking about how to advertise your business, it’s important to have a set goal that you’d like to reach. Depending on the goal you can run various types of campaigns whether you want to get more traffic to your website, getting leads or selling your products online. (To sell products online you’ll require an ecommerce website)
Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn Ads: The quickest way to reach your local target audience is to do social media ads targeting people/businesses in your and surrounding suburbs. You can target them on the basis of age, gender, location, interests, average income, number of employees etc.
You can run campaigns sending traffic (potential customers) to your website – show them what you’re all about – what services or products you have to offer with as much information as possible in the content of the ad. You can also run remarketing campaigns (targeting people who have engaged with your website or posts or videos/images) making them take action.
Google My Business: Another great way of advertising is to have a GMB (Google My Business) account. This way people who are in your area and are looking for services/products you provide can reach and find you easily and can also check the reviews from other customers. It provides authenticity to the business.
Google Ads: Google Ads is one of the easiest way of getting on top of the search results on Google. Most people research about a service/product on Google, and by using some service or product based keywords on your Google Ads can help reach your potential customers. Hence, increasing revenue, leads and website traffic. Find more about Google Ads and how it can help your business here.
Must Have Marketing Tool
After you have started advertising you need to track your spending and see whether you’re getting results and the best way to track your results from multiple platforms is Google Analytics. You can learn more about Google Analytics here.
Key Tips
Content: Make sure the wording of the content you use for ads gives as much information about your business as possible.
Creative: The creative you use for the ads is the first thing your potential customers will see so make it engaging. Use your brand colours. Use your creativity. One of the best creative tools you can use is Canva.
Organic Posts: Even if you’re not running any ads, make sure you keep your social media pages active. Post at least 2 posts per week to keep the engagement going. (People who like your content – invite them to like or follow your page)
So use the resources you’ve got online without spending thousands of dollars and get results with some investment of time.
