Where and how do you spend advertising and marketing money? Which advertising and marketing channels should you use? These are two of the most important questions that an entrepreneur has to deal with year after year. And today you have so many channels and so many “expert voices” that cry out for your attention. Don't let the media hype sweep you away. Avoid making unprofitable decisions.
Don't forget that. Consider your options in light of what works for whom and why those options work. Try to better align your advertising and marketing expenses. Then think better about the results you can expect.
Every company today needs a digital marketing strategy. At least your small business needs a website. You will find these statistics shocking! Research shows that a little less than half of all US small businesses don't have a website.
Let's say you have a site. Now the first question you need to ask yourself is whether your competitors have websites or not. If not, you may just need to have a good website and keep it up to date. If you owned the only yoga studio in Anytown USA, you could be.
However, if you have competitors – and most of us do – then search engine optimization (SEO) becomes important. Good search engine optimization brings your company to the top or close to the search results. This brings us to the next question: Are your customers on site? If they are local, you should focus on local SEO optimization and long-tail keywords (words that you want to use on your pages). Scott Keever SEO uses a local plumber to illustrate local and long-tail keywords:
Closely related to SEO is paid search engine advertising. Almost every purchase today starts with an internet search. Buying ads on Google and other search engines that appear when users search for your long-tail keywords can pay off … or at least attract visitors to your website.
This leads us to a somewhat more sophisticated form of advertising: retargeting. When you sell something, there is an overwhelming chance that potential customers will not receive any purchase money the first time they visit your website. So you want to have your ad in front of customers a few more times. With retargeting, your ad is displayed while surfing the web.
Note, as I said, that retargeting is good for companies that sell something. This is not a very good strategy for companies whose customers make spontaneous buying decisions, e.g. B. Restaurants. In this case, geofencing or geo-targeting can be the right way. Nowadays, a large number of searches are carried out on smartphones. This strategy shows Google ads and social media ads when there is a prospect in your defined area.
Next, the role of social media is discussed. As mentioned earlier, you can advertise on social media, but your digital strategy can be further improved by establishing and maintaining a presence. In this case, you have to ask yourself whether your customers use social media and which channels they use frequently. Perhaps all of your buyers are seniors and only a few are ordinary social media users. However, this is probably not the case. Therefore, you have to assign the demographics to the preferred social media channels and edit these channels.
Let me first mention the golden rule of social media: Do you have something extremely tempting to say / show. The goal of social media is to create followers. If your posts are banal, no one will follow you in the long run.
I would also like to come back to our discussion about SEO because social media and SEO can work together. You see, an important element of SEO is how often your website or pages are visited within your website. The more visitors, the higher the ranking in the search results. In other words, instead of finding really great content, search engines simply follow the herd and assume that the herd found the great content. If you can direct the herd to your pages via social media – for example, your blog or your posted videos – search engines will assume that you have content that is worth highlighting in the search results.
Do not expect immediate social media payout. you try to build awareness you are your name and build your references / trust.
Social media influencers can charge this process somewhat. Paying for the right influencer or “micro-influencer” can present your product or service with many perspectives much faster than you yourself.
Digital strategies make up almost all the hype today, but don't forget how you can get your message across to your prospects in a traditional way. Even Google – which has every digital marketing tactic – offered me services in the mail.
Targeted local mailings can be extremely cost-effective, for example, and if they are carried out well, the return on investment – unlike some digital strategies – can be calculated to the cent.
Newspapers, magazines, radio and television advertising are worth considering. Local businesses may never have thought about TV advertising before, but with the latest tools, buying TV time is no different than signing up for a Google ad.
And before I leave the topic of traditional local advertising, I would like to mention one of my favorites: company vehicles. You see them all around the city all the time. It can be a truck with the company colors and logo, or a car that is “wrapped” with incredible graphics.
I know a landlord who has to replace the windows in a duplex that he owns. He talked about it recently and mentioned that he keeps seeing the Pella Windows Truck all over the city. This tells him that Pella has a lot of customers nearby, so they have to do something right.
I gave you an overview of most of the tools in the local company's advertising and marketing toolbox. Few owners can use all of them. The idea is to start with those you think work best, those that work, and then experiment with those you are less familiar with.
The result may surprise you.
Image: Depositphotos.com
