Small businesses are prioritising online marketing, with 35 per cent now using email marketing and 48 per cent using social media to target their audience*.
For many, it can be difficult to navigate the murky world of marketing lingo and online platforms that come together to create your business’ overall marketing strategy.
When it comes down to it, understanding online marketing can be straightforward, as long as your marketing platforms are streamlined and all working together to get your business noticed online.
Social media
While business owners may feel confident in understanding how to use social media platforms, marketing through social media requires much more than simply a business page. Facebook boasts 16 million users in Australia, and is the best platform to begin developing your social media presence.
Facebook users like to feel as though they are part of a community, so ensuring you humanise your page and keep the tone of voice consistent in each post is important for all business profiles. Facebook in particular is often the first place online users go to when searching for contact details, or to get in touch.
Like the “old days” of marketing, visitors to your website are more likely to search for your website because they’ve heard of it from a friend, or it’s been recommended via social media or on a local business directory.
For small business owners, it’s this referral that’s the most important when engaging potential or returning customers online, especially in their local areas. 80 per cent of consumers regularly query search engines for local business information, with half of them visiting within a day of searching.
Email marketing
Email marketing is a great way to directly market to your database. It requires a low investment, minimal maintenance, and is proven to deliver effective ROI. It is important. However, to roll out this strategy carefully. While using it, you are approaching customers who have signed up to be targeted, they can also opt out at any time so you want to ensure you are delivering content they want to see.
It is important to ensure the emails are visually appealing, with minimal text, is mobile friendly and has live links directing to promoted products or services. Crazy Domains email marketing service does this for you, at an affordable price, even offering to share emails with your contacts with their bulk send tool.
Make sure you deliver what you promise. If a customer has signed up to weekly emails, it’s important to only send weekly emails. Anything more can leave a bad taste in their mouth and result in a negative opinion of your brand.
Google Ads
Google Ads provides an excellent platform to promote your business, with abilities to locally target and increase traffic to your website. You can also live track your ad, giving you the ability to tweak for performance. You can also try and test different ads in real time, to see which delivers the highest results for your business, offering a clear performance report throughout.
Certified Google Search Ad teams are often part of many domain hosting platform services, such as Crazy Domains Search Ads, making the process easy for those without strong knowledge or experience navigating the marketing tool.
Integrating an effective online marketing strategy is a great way to expand your businesses audience and facilitate a ROI. While at first, these tools can seem daunting to understand, simplifying the platforms can help understand what will work for your business.
*Sensis e-Business Report 2016
Gavin Gibson, Chief Operating Officer, Crazy Domains
