How Your Small Business Could Benefit from Digital Marketing

Technology has leveled the playing field so much and so fast that business owners aren't fully aware of how competitive a small business can be in the digital marketing arena. Some tools and techniques work for any company wishing to go toe to toe with big box stores and online giants like Amazon. All it takes is knowing what those are to get the sales rolling in.  

A big part of why digital marketing is such a good thing for small businesses is twofold. The first is the low cost. Digital marketing is an inexpensive way to reach a large number of customers. Done effectively, digital marketing can achieve the same results as traditional print, TV, or radio ads for pennies on the dollar. You still need engaging and relevant content though whether you DIY or outsource it.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of making your website look relevant to Google’s and other search engine’s search algorithms. It also applies to blogs or anywhere a business has a web presence they have control over. Search engines look at more than just the web page’s content. It factors in a pages meta description, URL slugs, and even photo descriptions.  According to rossk, SEO is a long-term strategy and it might take 6 months to see the first results for the website.

Another considerable strength is that a business owner can track the effectiveness of a digital marketing campaign. Traditional choices like billboards and radio spots are sometimes a guessing game. They can work, but a business can end up paying for an ad that thousands of people will hear, but none of them will be customers. Digital marketing allows a company to see exactly how many people saw and interacted with/clicked a given ad and how impactful it was. That way, marketing strategies can be adjusted and fine-tuned faster and more effectively. 

A Mobile Mindset
Most digital marketing is done through mobile devices. The average customer for most businesses is glued to their smartphone for a significant portion of the day, so any foray into digital marketing must hinge on this reality. The effectiveness of this mobile mindset comes up in three meaningful ways. 

Mobile Friendly Web pages
It is crucial that business websites be mobile friendly. This means that the webpage will scale and change how it looks on a desktop computer to give mobile users the best user experience possible. The biggest reason for a mobile-friendly site is Google rankings. A website that isn’t mobile friendly will be pushed down in search results, even if it has the most relevant content. 

Geotargeting
Geotargeting is as close as it gets for a small business being able to suddenly appear in front of a customer when they need something. How it works is by using algorithms and enabled location services within an app like Google Maps, Facebook, etc. that factors in things like the user’s demographic, their location, and what they’re searching for or are interested in. 

SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of making your website look relevant to Google’s and other search engine’s search algorithms. It also applies to blogs or anywhere a business has a web presence they have control over. Search engines look at more than just the web page’s content. It factors in a pages meta description, URL slugs, and even photo descriptions. 

Search engines are harder to fool than they used to be. One old trick people used to do was to put irrelevant information (like a restaurant hyping up a big game or a hit movie) as a way to piggyback their site to come up in more results. Search engines will now push down sites that try to game the system further than they should be. Make sure all content is directly relevant to what the customer is searching for.

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