The Internet has significantly changed and continues to change the way people live and the way they make decisions. Shopping methods are no exception.
Life smoothly flows into online. This means that offline marketing is already less effective. Marketing today takes a different form, using digital technology.
The goal of marketing has always been to meet with the target audience at the right time and place.
Are you not using digital marketing tools in your business yet? Then now is the time to reconsider your approach to promoting your business and choose tools that help you do business online. Check Marketing Satchel for a guide
As we know, every technology has a tendency to change quickly. How to choose the best methods and tools to promote a small business online? Which of them will immediately lead customers, and which will work in the future? You will find the answers in this article.
I have picked 5 powerful and essential tools. You can use only one tool or in combination with others. It will help to expand the arsenal of methods if you are already working and want more customers.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is a collection of various digital tools and communication channels. They help communicate with the target audience there to get hold of potential customers.
There are a number of tactics and tools that relate to the concept of digital marketing. A business that uses different channels of digital marketing has the opportunity to communicate with the target audience much more efficiently. Thereby constantly increasing the number of new customers and audience loyalty to the brand.
These channels include:
- social networks;
- company’s own website;
- search engine ranking (SEO);
- email marketing;
- media (banner) advertising;
- company blog
- a mobile app, etc.
Here are 5 selected tools on how to promote a small business online and save a lot of money.
#1 Social media is the best friend
If you want to get more customers to your store, communicate with your target audience, then you need to be active in a social media world.
Nevertheless, that the platforms are very full, they are still very effective. But it is not as easy as you think. Creating a Facebook page is not enough to promote a small business online. You should first think of a marketing strategy that can achieve the specific goals of each platform. Facebook works differently from Instagram than Pinterest.
NB! You also have to invest a lot of time and be active if you want your campaign on social media to be successful. In addition to advertising special offers and promotions, you must also do such things as:
- answer comments,
- respond to questions
- and create useful posts that your followers consider relevant enough to share.
It is important to become popular at one platform first. Only after that, you can start with the next one. It doesn’t work if you have a profile everywhere, but not really active anywhere.
On the Internet, you can easily find information on how to draw up a profile, create a content plan, build content, etc. There are also paid offers from various experts.
However, most people are looking for the answer to the question of how to save time and money and not bothering with images for different social networks. Mostly because the sizes of images and banners are different on each platform.
If you are interested in doing everything yourself, ready-made templates for social media are the best solution.
By paying between $10 and $25, you can get:
- cover images for Facebook,
- cover images for your YouTube channel,
- banners and animated stories for Instagram,
- Pinterest posts, etc.
A huge plus of using social media templates is that they are designed for a specific target audience. For example, you can create a profile for a photographer, clothing designer, or beauty salon. There are also universal solutions with a neutral design.
#2 Create a website or a simple landing page
Nowadays, a website is a digital version of an office of the company. As a tool for content marketing, a website should solve such problems as:
- talk about the product in the client’s world;
- provide evidence: product videos, test results, customer reviews, certificates;
- answers on the popular questions;
- provide clear information about the cost, terms of payment and delivery.
If you are not sure yet that you need a website or are just testing a niche, it makes sense to start with another practical tool of Internet marketing – landing page.
Any landing page should have a specific request. Therefore, a single offer is usually placed on a landing page.
Most often, visitors are brought to the landing using contextual and targeted advertising. Or using email newsletters when you already have your subscriber base.
Offer impulse demand products – use landing for sale. The task of the landing is to collect contact information and leads for sales managers and marketers.
Landing Features:
- It has one sentence and a targeted action. That is, if you have five products, you need to create five landing pages too.
- It contains an offer or a selling offer. Landing does not just describe the product, it gives an incentive to purchase: a discount, a free test drive.
- It is built according to the template and has standard blocks: product description, advantages, work with objections, customer reviews, selling offer.
For small business owners, the main marketing tools are websites and social media accounts. It is important that these resources not only look good but are also 100% consistent with marketing goals.
To save, but at the same time create, what you want is a universal solution. For example, ONE — subscription service is a universal tool for any marketer. It includes several thousand templates of different products that may be needed during the development process. Download and use – unlimited, for the duration of the subscription.
Subscription contains:
- WordPress themes, Elementor templates, e-commerce themes, and plugins;
- platforms for creating an online store – OpenCart, Magento, PrestaShop, and others;
- a large number of plugins;
- graphics;
- presentation templates;
- HTML and CMS templates.
The cost of this solution will pay off, even if you work even with low productivity and apply only a few templates.
All users have access to round-the-clock technical support.
#3 Create an attractive media advertisement
The next tool is ready-made sets for contextual advertising. This type of advertising is familiar to every Internet user. It can be seen every day both in search engines and on web resource pages.
More specifically, you can see it:
- At the top and bottom of the search results for certain queries in the search engine.
- On the right side of the issue.
- In the email menu.
- On the pages of sites.
At the same time, you can place it in any convenient place – the main thing is that it is noticeable and the user does not miss it.
The most popular and widespread platform where you can place contextual advertising is Google AdSense. This is the most famous tool to promote a small business online.
The essence of this method of Internet marketing is that promotion is aimed exclusively at interested users, that is, the target audience. Only those users who are looking for a specific product or service, see contextual advertising.
Placements occur in social networks, on partner sites. For the preparation of display advertising, you can use ready-made tools for creating graphic forms. For the convenience of marketers, the totality of such tools is provided in bundles and sets. A bundle should contain the necessary set of graphical tools: icons, banners, mockups – and everything necessary for creating display advertising. You need to choose a bundle based on the specifics of the marketing strategy, as well as with the prospect of using it more than once.
A similar bundle is an ultimate digital marketing bundle, which is relevant for any holiday and any time of the year.
You can find there:
- Fonts
- Banners for Social media
- Mockups
- Logos
- Icons
- Landing pages templates
- Flyers and illustrations
- Newsletter templates
#4 Start a useful blog
A blog is a great way to tell people what services you provide and which products you sell. In addition, a blog is a good platform for interacting with bloggers. And commenting on other related blogs helps to increase popularity.
With a blog, you can position yourself as an expert as well as attract new prospects online with content. People don’t see it as advertising. It is important to offer high-quality and useful content that offers readers added value. A blog offers the opportunity to advertise and attract interested potential customers almost free of charge.
How to use a blog to promote a small business online:
- create unique content and attract visitors from search engines;
- publish useful expert-level materials and gain the trust of the audience;
- talk about the features of the product to dispel the concerns of customers;
- introduce readers to new products and generate demand.
You need to work with to make every visitor buy a product or register for a trial period, after reading the article. To do this, place an order form on the blog, offer to subscribe to an email newsletter and, using letters, lead to a purchase, use remarketing and other tools.
If you don’t have a website where you could start a blog, I have an easy solution for you. Shopify Blog Template will help you to create a simple blog website in less than an hour. Just pick one and fill it out with your content.
#5 Create a mobile app
Mobile marketing is one of the key components of digital marketing. In fact, 60% of mobile users click on ads once a week. These are world statistics.
This means that it is vital for you to optimize your digital ads, images in social media and other digital resources for mobile devices.
People who interact with your company online via mobile devices should have the same positive experience as using the desktop version.
There are many ways to optimize your digital marketing strategy for mobile users too.
You can even create a mobile app for your business with a ready-made mobile apps template.
There you can find apps template for such niches as:
- Business and services,
- Fashion,
- Photography,
- Design,
- Sports,
- Travel,
- Medical,
- Education,
- Real estate,
- Gifts,
- Electronics, etc.
These templates are suitable for iOS and Android. Many of them have a fully responsive design, long-term support, and quick installation. To customize an app template, you don’t need programming skills.
Conclusion
The advantages of digital marketing is the ability to reach a wide audience, without borders and detailed analytics. And this is more and more often proved in practice by companies from different industries.
Therefore, if you have not yet applied these tools in your business, then you should think about revising your approaches and start right now.
There are a large number of advertising and marketing agencies that you can turn to for help. They are ready to share experiences and help you implement your marketing strategy.
But this does not mean at all that you cannot do it on your own. It takes only time and desire.
Which digital marketing method you think is best to promote a small business online? Leave a comment below to share your experience.
