Marketing Tips from Social Media Consultants

For a small business, digital marketing offers opportunities and challenges. Even though you have a level playing field and can get marketing exposure without spending too much. There is a lot of intense competition out there. Thus, you need to use the most efficient tactics and strategies to get noticed by your target market. In this article, we talk about 7 effective marketing strategies that every social media consultant should follow.

1. Assess Your Competitors

Identify your 3 biggest competitors and analyse their digital marketing strategies—on their website, social media and email campaigns. See how they position themselves and what aspects of their product, service, staff, or company they emphasise the most. What kind of keywords do they use to grab the attention of the reader? All of this information is vital to help you shape your online marketing position.

2. Work On Improving Your Google Ranking

Few small businesses realize the importance of a simple and efficient website design. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by flashy web elements of your competitors, focus on making your website efficient like Amazon, Yahoo or ShopDev. Ensure a high level of uptime, minimal errors, accurate and complete information, ease of navigation, fast loading, and so on. This will not only improve your Google ranking but also reduce the time it takes a user to become familiar with your site and make a purchase.

3. Prepare Blogs

The importance of an informative, interesting and regularly updated blog should never be underestimated. Your audience needs information and you can win their loyalty by providing it to them. Keep these things in mind when creating a blog:

• Focus on your niche
• Listen to your audience (through comments, emails, likes, etc.)
• Inform your audience about industry trends (new technologies and research, product laws, etc.)
• Use a conversational tone. Give your blog a friendly and approachable personality. Remember, the point is to encourage interactivity, not one-way communication.

Here is how you plan a blog for your small business:

1. Identify your niche and audience interests
2. Design the theme and layout of your blog
3. Create a content calendar for different types of blogs, e.g. tutorials, listicles, reviews, demos, industry updates, and so on. Plan to publish at least two posts a week initially.
4. Commission at least two writers and one editor to work on your blog
5. Keep track of your blog performance by viewing metrics regularly.

4. Make Use of Google Tools

Google Ads is a great way for even a business with a limited advertising budget to gain exposure to the right audience. Initially, resist the urge to go for the high volume keywords that your competition is targeting. Focus on a smaller niche, choose long-tailed keywords with low CPC values, and build your SERP results with those. Even if you feel you are not ready for Google Ads yet, then simply using Google Keywords to enrich your blog can generate a lot of traffic to your website.

Whether you use Google Ads or simply Keywords, keep the following in mind:

1. Sign up for the Keyword Planner
2. Enter a general search query based on customer insight or competitive analysis
3. Compare search volumes and CPC for various keywords
4. Select the most relevant keywords
5. Produce content around those keywords in a user-focused way.

5. Make a Strong Foothold in the Market

As a small business, your priority is to get your foot in the door. Low cost strategies that help you achieve this are on-site SEO, local SEO, Google Business listings, and email marketing. To succeed in all of these areas, you need to identify a separate audience for each, and direct your strategies to them. Remember, it takes time and effort to get results from these strategies, but these are effective for the long term.

6. Monitor The Marketing Campaigns Of Your Competitors

Here is what you need to do:

1. Identify your USP and competing factor (product quality, cost, service time, customer support)
2. List the top 3 competitors with that USP
3. Follow and subscribe to their website updates and social media accounts
4. Monitor their marketing campaigns and target keywords
5. Develop points of differentiation and similarity for your business

7. Identify Brand Requirements

Discuss the following at the onset:

1. Estimate your current and desired traffic volume on your website and social media pages
2. Identify branding requirements, e.g. company logo, colour, typeface, images
3. Select information to be shared, e.g. company information, blogs, media pages, videos, etc.
4. Share these details with your web developer and request a quote
5. Ask for references and service terms before hiring a developer

Conclusion

By following the above strategies and tips, you can easily succeed in improving the online presence and sales of a particular brand or business. Your client’s customer traffic will increase steadily and you will be able to develop more nuanced strategies over the long term. Remember that marketing is a continuous exercise, so you need to constantly monitor your performance and adapt your strategies based on the results.