Main idea behind online marketing for Small business
Online marketing for small businesses is a topic worth talking about for various reasons, the most important one is the ability of promoting businesses to an enormous audience in a very short period of time, and in a targeted manner.
Our definition of online marketing is one or many online platforms or channels that a business or individual uses to promote, inform, advertise, engage and support visitors and clients.
Different types of online channels
There are thousands of platforms and all kinds of directories to be used in order to advertise a business online. Starting easy and practical will save you time and money, that’s why you can use the most common channels:
Assuming you want to give it a try on your own, starting with the simplest channel you are familiar with, might be the best option.
Best Practices Online
Being online is not enough, with the increasing number of online tools and mechanisms to facilitate usage, many inexperienced authors are getting their hands on, and building more and more online, increasing competition.
A bigger number of competitors though, don’t mean to reduce businesses chances to succeed online. On the contrary, inexperienced online marketing will leave gaps that anyone a bit more experienced can fill with their strategies. In order to practice online marketing in a relevant way, you will need to develop strategies and methods to reach your desired results, but it’s possible!
Make a list
List relevant channels and why you want your business there
Media Types
Select or create pictures and videos to show legitimacy
Help
Not too sure?! Get help! Freelancers, videos, etc...
Here’s a simple process:
- Research and making choices – Nothing can take more time and be more frustrating than a plan start, with no thoughts or preparation. Choosing where your business is going to be online and how you will maintain it working, will help with costs, reach and amount of work needed.
- Planning & Feeding the Process – Time to decide how you’re going to use your selected channels. Time to also decide what to use and when to feed those channels.
- Measure Results – A huge mistake is to implement all of your work, and simple forget about measuring. You will never know how it is impacting your business, and you will always have to decide based on speculations, not numbers!
- Make Changes and Updates – After seeing what’s working and what’s not, you can have a clear view of the changes you need to work on, so do them!
- Start it all over!
Researching and making choices
Ok, now you must be thinking… “this is great! But how can I really go through each step?” Well, fortunately we have practiced this for some time and we can help!
Starting by goals
Make a list of goals you need to reach with your online marketing, then you simple design step by step approach to look for those specific tools and channels to accomplish them.
Common Broad Goals
- A Presentable Online Presence
- Quality Testimonials
- More visibility
- Show work
- Connect clients
Now, for every goal you will need to find a tool or a channel. Sometimes multiple goals will overlap with a single channel or tool, which is great for managing purposes.
A Presentable Online Presence
To build a great and presentable online presence you need to define where you’re going to be building your business’ online foundation. Think of it as a physical location. Where would most of your preferred clients or visitors come from?
Once you have figured that out, now you need tools. In the future we will provide more details and our own list of tools. Subscribe for alerts!
Quality Testimonials
Businesses can’t just sit down and wait for reviews to come naturally. Every working business have testimonials, and if you want, you can take advantage of that by requesting a review. Overtime, your reviews will be the differential in decision making from visitors and clients.
More Visibility
Just signing up for social medias or creating a website will not give you any traffic. Strategies will play a big role here… it’s simply because you need to connect people to your business online, so how do you do that?
- Text messages
- SMS
- Messenger
- Search Engines
If you stop and think about how to get more visibility, you will quick understand that the methods are simple, but you will need a little work on the procedures.
Show work
Don’t let the lack of motivation or technical skills break your images or videos. BUSINESSES NEED MEDIA. If you have nothing to show, better start working on them. Pictures and videos have a great effect showing a real business. Even if you want some stock pictures and videos, it’s worth getting real media before visitors’ eyes.
Connect clients
Once clients found everything they needed to find, now how are they going to interact with your business? Well, you should open some doors for that purpose. Always thinking in making this process easy and effective. A form or messenger, or call, email, all of these are types of connections to have clients connecting with your business, let’s use them!
Wrapping Up
Online marketing for businesses is not impossible or too expensive that a business can’t have it. The only way it would not help a business is if it’s not controlled the right way, so read more about our online marketing content and if needed we are always available to help.
