Digital marketing has proven to more cost-effective than traditional advertising approaches to promote a small business. According to The marketing tech blog, 75% of small business owners believe it is very effective. However, many small business owners don’t invest enough and lack a digital marketing strategy.
If you are trying to expand your business with digital marketing, you need to understand your options and have a clear plan in place. Here are some factors to take into consideration.
Don’t shy Away from Spending Money
Have you ever heard the term “it takes money to make money?” This principal definitely applies to digital marketing for small businesses.
Any business owners try to rely exclusively on organic search traffic from sites like Google, Facebook or Pinterest. There are a couple of problems with this approach:
- The traffic isn’t dependable. Algorithm changes can cause traffic volume to plummet overnight. About one in eight online search queries were affected by the first Google Panda update, which caused many sites to lose 50% or more of their traffic.
- Traffic isn’t always well targeted. It can be difficult to convert organic traffic from social media.
You should look into pay traffic options with these platforms. Traffic can be much more targeted and the volume is steadier.
Don’t worry if you are on a tight budget. You can receive an existing AdWords campaign review.
Profile Your Target Demographic
You don’t want to launch a campaign without having a clear understanding of your target customer first. Your demographic information should include the following:
- Age
- Gender
- Income
- Buying preferences
Understanding your customer will help you create more effective ads and make sure they are properly targeted. PracticalEcommerce published a great case study on a Facebook campaign they ran for a local eatery. They found that targeting users with a preference for Creole and Cajun cuisines helped make their campaign more successful.
Choose Your Traffic Sources Carefully
Small business owners need to be more selective with their advertising mediums. If you are trying to reach local customers, you need to be able to target users by city. Google ad words, Bing and Facebook allow you to target local customers, but many advertising networks do not.
Media buying isn’t as effective for small businesses as it is for online retailers. While 50onRed allows advertisers to target by city, SiteScout and other media buying companies do not. Even if you find a media buying provider that allows you to target by city, the traffic is usually insufficient to scale well. You will want to try other traffic sources that work better.
Search PPC and Facebook ads are usually the most effective. You can easily reach virtually anyone in your area and carefully target your ads too interested prospects.
Test. Test Test.
You probably think that you know what ads and targeting options are going to work best. Unfortunately, your assumptions may be completely wrong. Many marketers were sure that they had a winning strategy, but found it totally flopped after testing it. On the other hand, other marketers threw something together quickly and found it worked great.
The only way that you can know whether something will work is to test it. This means that you need to budget your money for testing before running a campaign. Make sure that you test every possible variable, including:
- Keywords
- Ad copy
- Landing pages
- Targeting options
- Time of day
After you have tested your campaigns thoroughly, you will know how to optimize them better.
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