With more and more people using technology and eCommerce sites to buy goods, it’s easy to start an online business anywhere around the globe. The internet is great for reaching customers from all over the world. With new apps being created, software services improving, and online stores growing, the possibilities of selling services and goods are endless.
One of the main strategies to running any business is creating a marketing strategy. There are tons of fantastic social media tools and outlets, pay-per-click advertising, and other digital strategies. Yet, if you’re a small company just starting out, it’s best to look at all your options and see which ones fit your needs the best.
Here at Antares, we’ve put together a helpful digital marketing guide for small businesses based on our extensive experience and research. We hope you’re able to sprinkle these tips into your marketing plan.
Find Out Who Your Customers Are
Before you even begin drafting your marketing strategy, it’s a good idea to survey your current clients so you know how to market toward them. For example, if you’re in the real estate industry, it might be wise to design your marketing efforts and events around real estate agents and homebuyers. You might find that you have multiple customer targets, and therefore, it might be beneficial to have several different marketing strategies for each customer niche.
A great tool to discover who your demographic might be is Google Analytics. The data they capture can tell you the age, gender, and where the person is from who’s visiting your site.
Implement an Email Marketing Campaign Strategy
Email marketing is the best type of free marketing, even though it’s hard to believe. Gathering hundreds of email addresses could lead your company to many successful sales, especially if you’re sending your leads coupons for great discounts. While advertisers pay hundreds of dollars on flyers and colorful mailers, digital marketers pay $0 to send an interactive email.
There are many awesome email campaign platforms but we recommend MailChimp. They allow you to send email campaigns for free (until you send to 2,000 or more subscribers).
Create Quality and Noteworthy Content
How often do you search for items or answers to questions you have on Google? If you’re like me, it’s 100 times a day. This is known as an organic search. Although you can advertise on Google, it’s more advantageous to create noteworthy and quality content that will show up on the first page of the search. You can study SEO (search engine optimization) strategies to learn how to get your website’s content to show up on the first page of an organic search.
This will not only increase your traffic on your company’s website, but it can also contribute to more exposure and overall sales for your business.
Making Your Website Fully Responsive
You might have heard the word “responsive” tossed around a lot in the web development world. This is what makes your website fit perfectly on any screen size such as a mobile phone, tablet, and flat screen TV. In fact, Google rewards companies that have fully responsive sites by placing them higher on their search engine page than companies who don’t. This is because Google wants to give the searcher the best experience. It is face that more and more people use their smartphones to search for things nowadays; so Google wants to provide them with a fast and responsive website.
Pick Your Social Media Platforms Based on Customer Demographic
Being active on every social media platform is not the best strategy. It’s best to be more active on Google, Facebook and YouTube rather than 4 or 5 platforms since many people search more on those platforms than others. You also need to look at where your demographic is going. If you’re a photographer, it’s safe to say that you’ll want to be on Instagram. If you’re in politics, Twitter will be the best platform to share your opinion and the news. Look into what your clients or customers are using before creating each account.
If you’re looking to relocate your startup team to a nice, modern office in downtown Bangkok, view our offices at Antares. We provide a comfortable office environment that helps startups and digital agencies create a collaborative working atmosphere.
