DIGITAL MARKETING PLAN FOR SMALL BUSINESS

It is the joy of every business owner that the idea which they had turned into reality is generating profit for them. More so, every business owner wishes to reach a wider audience so that their goods or services can be sold and made known to the public. In this blog, I would be taking you through some digital marketing plans that small businesses need to do to gain a wider reach and audience that would help improve their business.

According to OutBound Engine here are ways to build your social media presence

Use Consistent Photos, Headshots, and Logos
Let the World Know You’re on Social Media
Create and Share Industry-Adjacent Content
Create a Schedule and Post Content Regularly
Make the Most of Visual Content
Don’t Be Afraid to Advertise
Stay on Top of Trends With Twitter

USE EMAIL MARKETING: Email marketing is an act of sending messages to a group of people using email, they could either be prospects or customers. The reason for the email could be for advertisement purpose, business purpose, Promotion or information. Is Email Marketing still important in 2021? Take a look at these statistics:

International institute of digital marketing "Email marketing"

In 2019, there were 3.9 billion global email users ( Statista )
80% of Americans check their email at least once per day, with nearly a quarter of them checking their personal email several times a day ( Fluent Inbox Report, 2018)
80% of business professionals believe that email marketing increases customer retention ( Emarsys, 2018)

One beneficial aspect of email marketing is lead generation, which is an act of using a customer’s contact information and converting it to sales. Getting visitors on your website to sign-up for your mailing list can also lead to an increase in conversion rate.A personalized marketing email is more impactful than a social media post where you can’t be sure if someone has actually seen your message. Another aspect business owners need to look into for a better email campaign is setting up trigger email. These are automated emails that are sent based on the behaviour of the customer. For example reminder mail for “items in cart”. Trigger email can be used for welcoming, order confirmation, subscription renewal etc.

3. INVEST IN CONTENT MARKETING: When you make your own unique content, it helps in brand awareness and overall marketing campaigns. Marketing campaigns are now dependent on engaging content and how you can use the various content creation tools. According to the content marketing institute, Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

International institute of digital marketing " Content marketing"

(Source: Edgma)

How do you know that the content you share turns into conversion? Take a look at this statistics from Lyfe Marketing :

After reading recommendations on a blog, 61% of online consumers in the U.S. then decided to make a purchase. (Content Marketing Institute)
According to 74% of companies surveyed, content marketing has increased their marketing leads, both in quantity and quality. (Curata)
Video content can help provide a great ROI and significantly increase conversions, according to 72% of businesses surveyed. ( Crazy Egg )
Inbound marketers are able to double the average site conversion rate (from 6 to 12%), in part due to their content marketing efforts. ( HubSpot)

When customers are provided with engaging content, there is a likelihood that they would keep returning to your site and this would increase the chances of converting them into sale.

4. USE VIDEO MARKETING: If you are looking for an easy and relatively inexpensive way to boost the performance of your E-commerce page, video marketing is one of them. Video has been proven to help improve conversion rate, engagement rate and many more. Look at this Video Statistics

97% of video marketers reported that video increased user understanding of a product or service, and 76% reported video helped them increase sales.
62% of consumers watch product review videos before making a purchase.
56% of consumers believe that a company should have video content on its website
Viewers retain 95% of a message after watching it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text
90% of users report that product videos are helpful in the decision process of the buyer’s journey.

There are many ways video can help to increase Ecommerce conversion, but just to mention a few:

Informational videos help users to answer their questions: Have you watched a product review recently or how to prepare a certain kind of meal or even a description on how to use a product. Having the information before purchase makes a difference for the customer because when a product video is done right, it answers all the concerns of the customer.
Consumers engage more with video: One good way to engage consumers more is by giving them a behind-the-scenes-look at your brand. It also allows the person making the video to tell a more complete story, building a narrative, building emotion, and provoking action more effectively.

In summary, every business needs a digital marketing plan because

You need to know your online audience and customer well enough
Digital marketing delivers conversion from leads to subscribers which later transforms into sales
Digital marketing helps to build brand reputation
It provides better ROI for investment
It earns peoples trust
It makes you ready for the internet of things
Digital marketing helps you to make use of proven strategies and techniques that attract not necessarily just traffic, but highly targeted traffic that delivers result
Digital marketing is all about ensuring survival of your business

REFERENCES

https://bandzoogle.com/blog/new-updated-options-for-social-media-icons

https://www.sendinblue.com/blog/what-is-email-marketing/

https://medium.com/@tejaratmarketing/how-email-marketing-is-impacting-todays-business-3e50a71c323b

https://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/5-reasons-you-need-to-invest-in-conte n t-marketing-02235336