How Digital Marketing Can Help Your Small Business Win

Digital marketing has been identified now for years in a row as being the most important marketing application for small businesses. The reason? It’s accessible to all and it’s incredibly effective when implementing an online marketing strategy. While it is accessible, it can quickly feel overwhelming if you aren’t familiar with the platforms, the ever-changing best practices and guidelines, and the requirements of time and effort. Nevertheless, it is exceptionally powerful and now a staple in our daily lives, requiring all businesses to have a presence as part of their digital marketing strategy.

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What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is the whole of your small business online marketing efforts. What are some examples of digital marketing? It’s anything you do online to marketing your business including website, email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and paid ads. Strategies for digital marketing can run from simple to complex. While Dash & James provides digital marketing as a service, I also believe every business can do it!

Digital Marketing is an Engaging Website

Most important, your website is the cornerstone of your digital marketing. As you put in the work on social media or email marketing, most of the time you’ll be aiming to send target customers to your site for a conversion. That could be an action you want them to complete like filling out a lead generation form, a direct purchase, or booking an appointment. The chances of that happening with a dated or poorly designed website aren’t as high as they could be.

A great-looking website with excellent copy is one of the most vital parts of your marketing and should never ever be overlooked. After all, your website is likely the very first stop current and new customers make when considering your business, so hiring an experienced web copywriter and web developer is paramount for consideration. Furthermore, well-designed, and written website lends credibility to your business and sits as the foundation for your brand.

Digital Marketing is Branded Email Marketing

Email marketing is a direct marketing line to interested audiences – they’ve indicated so by opting in, so they want to hear from you. There is no other digital means that gives you the one-on-one attention of your audience, so it’s critical to implement it.

How to start: First, build your list. This is easier said than done if you are starting from scratch. Crazyegg has a few great tips of how to gather your list into a strong email marketing powerhouse. Next, you’ll need an email marketing service. I usually point people to Mailchimp. It’s easy to use and has all the capabilities you’ll need. Then, decide on a strategy, plan and produce your content, then send that beautiful message you just created out to your customers.

Digital Marketing is Targeted Content Marketing

Content Marketing is using content to provide value to your audience, and while it does that it establishes brand recognition and trust. It is not ‘salesly’ or overly self-promoting, it is instead a bank of information where you can offer your insight and expertise as it relates to your business. It’s inbound marketing, using valuable information to draw readers inbound to your site and brand.

Content marketing can be any kind of useful content you distribute to your target audience including (and not at all limited to) social media content, blogs, whitepapers, e-books, infographics. Content marketers are writers and creators who provide content marketing as a service.

Using content marketing is an effective way to communicate with potential clients and customers searching for exactly what your small business can provide or answering questions only you can. It can be a window that becomes a door to the rest of your website, it can foster brand awareness, and it can establish your company’s legitimacy and expertise.

Digital Marketing is Social Media Marketing

The darling of digital marketing, social media marketing is an incredibly powerful tool that is in essentially anyone’s hands. Micro-content marketing that boosts awareness, a customer service vehicle, a powerful audience data tool, and a dynamic paid marketing strategy are only a few of the things social media can be for your business.

There are numerous digital marketing platforms for social media and being on all of them is not realistic. Even being on many isn’t realistic without a solid plan and a lot of help. Most small business focus on the few their target market is on and devote their efforts and time there.

For small businesses, digital marketing is an incredible opportunity to promote your brand online. It allows your business to communicate and build relationships with your target audience and engage with them throughout the buyer’s journey.

Read Next: How to Use Instagram for Your Small Business Social Media Marketing

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