Whether you're in the process of launching a new business or already have one, having a strong online presence for your brand is extremely important. With the constant growth and popularity of different technologies, social media platforms, and online-based communication, it’s more important than ever that business owners invest in the right digital marketing strategies to promote their brands and remain competitive in the marketplace. In this post, we'll help you build and optimize your marketing strategy using inbound marketing, setting you up to attract new clients and ultimately grow your business.

Know your audience

A key mistake is thinking that "anyone" is your buyer. The more you know about your audience, the easier it will be to market your business in an effective manner. 

Being active on social media and on your company blog is great, but you need to be sure that you’re creating content for the right type of people if you want your content to resonate and connect with all of your potential customers. 

You must understand their pains, problems, triggering events, and priorities. What is pushing them to make a purchasing decision? What does it look like if they succeed? Knowing these things will help you craft messaging that resonates and makes a compelling case for your solution.

Start by thinking about your existing customers and who you'd like to work with. Then, create a buyer persona to start the process of getting into the head of your ideal client.

Emphasize your value proposition

If there's no difference between you and your competitors, there's no reason for a buyer to work with you. Your value proposition is what will differentiate you from others in your space. 

Competitor research is important. Google Search is a great place to start. You can see how your competitors are positioning themselves within their ads.

You must answer those questions: how could your business differentiate from all the other plumbers who more or less provide a similar service? what could you do better than anyone in the industry?

Make a list and prioritize your business marketing goals and objectives

In order for your marketing to be meaningful, your marketing goals need to be tied into a business objective. So, when setting goals, select ones that will drive business results, and not just produce impressive-sounding numbers that aren’t actually relevant. Next, prioritize what matters most to your business strategy, identify where the biggest impact will be. Figure that out first, and then get your business priorities and goals in order, focus your resources on the activities and tactics that will achieve that performance goal. 

Marketing is all about goals. In other words, it is about how you want customers to see your business and the benefits that you offer. Without them, you have no way of knowing whether or not your work is worthwhile.

Take advantage of free Google marketing tools 

Google has a range of products to help your business grow. 

Google Analytics, for example.  It lets you see how visitors interact with your website and where they are coming from, which gives you the tools to create content that is better targeted at those sources, and focus your efforts on the websites, blogs, and other places where your audience is coming from. It’s also vital to react to events in real-time, as they can help you get more eyes on your social media posts. 

Google Trends is a free Google tool that helps you stay on top of buzzwords and trending topics so you can join larger conversations while drawing attention to your business.

Google My Business is a simple feature that enables customers to find your business on Google Maps, access your hours, and learn more. It is a great way to improve your visibility, get more information about who is looking for your business, and even improve your SEO and AdWords strategies to get more out of every dollar spent.

The right marketing tools can help you build brand awareness and stay ahead of your competitors.  But paying for tools and software costs you a lot of money. If you’re a startup or have a limited budget, try to save money by taking advantage of those marketing tools.

Stay active on social media business pages

Social media is a great way to connect more directly with customers and show off the more playful side of the business. These platforms give you a chance to respond to customer feedback in real-time and show how much you care about their experience with your business. Posting frequently to your social media channels also keeps you relevant and at the top of your audience’s minds. 

As a SMB, you probably do not have enough resources to manage more than one channel effectively. So, handpick social media channels that make the most sense for the brand and focus on those, rather than try to expand everywhere but no one is effective. Whatever social media platforms you focus on, it must be ones relevant to your business the most and where your customers are most active. Plus, your decision should be based on several different factors including your target audience, industry and social media marketing strategy. 

Create Facebook Groups (And Stay Active)

For SMBs with small budgets, joining Facebook groups, as well as groups on other social platforms like LinkedIn, can be an extremely budget-friendly method. 

By this way, you could offer valuable information and advice to your audiences for free. If the group members begin to see the true value in the information that you’re providing, they’ll gradually begin wanting to learn more about you, your business. 

In addition, consider using a Facebook video ad maker app to help produce promo videos to share in Facebook groups is also a great and inexpensive marketing tool for your businesses. 

Video is a central part of marketing today, as more consumers prefer to watch short clips and make purchasing decisions based on them.

Invest in ads

Organic traffic takes a while to build. It is hard for SMBs who want to invest in short-term plays. Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing that targets buyers with high intent are great for short-term wins and is more suitable for SMBs. 

There are many different types of online ads including the ones featured at the top and sides of a search, promotions that run before videos, or ads that show up in mobile apps or while browsing online.

Some benefits of PPC marketing are that the business only pays for results and that ads can be targeted towards a specific geographic location.

The cost of PPC marketing can vary significantly depending on how much the company is willing to invest in advertising. Pricing is based mainly on keyword competition—popular keywords that have high competition will cost more.

Boost your Google ranking with SEO

This portion of marketing is critical for a small business. It gives you a chance to compete with larger companies by being more visible in search engine results. 

Since people use search engines to find products both online and locally, it is important that your company places high in search results for words that relate to what you are selling. 

There are a lot of factors that play roles in why a certain site or page appears in the top spots on the Google (or another search engines) search engine results page (SERP). When it all boils down, Google essentially tries to find the best piece of content to present to the person searching. 

SEO strategy usually consists of a few things. These include buyer persona research, keyword research, and on-page SEO research. These three areas can help you learn how your target market is searching online, and position your business to get discovered by the right people.

Professional internet marketing firms offer this service through search engine optimization (SEO), which can help your website rank higher on search engine results pages through methods such as:

• Keyword research and volume
• Internal link building
• Optimizing content to produce high-quality, relevant information

Email Marketing

This form of marketing can be crucial to a small business’s online or offline success. Essentially, email marketing is promoting products and services electronically—through newsletters, updates, promotions, or general messaging—and is reliant on building a list of existing and prospective customers. This list of names and emails consists of people who are interested in your business, and you know this to be true because they have opted into this list themselves.

Perhaps they were offered future updates on products as well as coupons to sign up. As this list grows, it becomes more valuable. Many marketing professionals consider this a very important, long-term small business marketing strategy. But remember that you should be careful not to bombard those who sign up for your email list with too many emails. Send just enough to keep your prospects informed and engaged. 

You could also consider some affordable tools to create and send an email with a professionally designed template. Plus, many email tools offer basic analytics that allows you to track open and click rates.

Conclusion

You probably have a long road ahead to build your online presence, but any steps you can make will have a huge impact on your business.

Above are some ideas to help you build and optimize your marketing strategy. They are not all but the main areas we think you should take into consideration. 

Don’t be afraid to test out a few different methods when deciding which digital marketing strategy is best for your business. Take a look at the results to see which methods are the most effective with your client base, and make sure you’re getting a positive return on investment (ROI). 

You can have professionals help you or outsource if you don't have the manpower to handle marketing obligations in-house. Many online marketing strategies are outsourced, because unless you have time to dedicate it's difficult to stay on the multiple changes that transpire when it comes to strategy. With content and email marketing, you can do much of it yourself, but it never hurts to ask experts for strategy advice to help get you started.

Start Marketing Your Business Today! If you’re still not sure which direction is the perfect fit for your business, contact us for consultancy.

We - Printcart offer full-services for Digital Marketing which help to grow your business. 

Our digital marketing team is always ready to help.

Rose Helen

Shop Owner