With the
lockdown surrounding every aspect of our life, small businesses, and retailers
are looking for ways to adapt and change the way of doing business. A large
number of businesses are looking for the right set of opportunities to stay
afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the
absence of physical options and more dependence on the digital landscape,
digital marketing continues to provide value to small businesses and retailers
that are looking to expand their horizon and revenue.
During this
downtime, businesses have the golden opportunity to work out with their online
marketing strategy and channels. Although it is chaotic and challenging
period, it could become a good time for business leaders if they take a hard
look at their digital marketing techniques and leverage the internet boom.
Digital Marketing Strategies for Businesses in 2020
The
possibility for face-to-face communication is currently confined as people are
practicing social distancing. Given the current situation, businesses should leverage
social media to reach out to their old and potential customers.
Social media has been a crucial part of the marketing plans for all the businesses who have transformed themselves into big brands. Social media is the best way to connect to a large number of audiences available online thus build a larger-POTENTIAL CUSTOMER BASE.
Businesses can
use social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter to showcase
consumer testimonials and ideas as a way to show potential clients what they
can do and also engage the old customers.
Social media
platforms encourage engagement, direct communication, and brand exposure. These
factors build a level of personalization and trust with your customer base.
During the pandemic, businesses leveraging social media have been able to develop better ties with their customers as they spent an increasing amount of time browsing the web.
In this era of digitization, the total number of email users in the world is more than 3.8 billion, so if you’re looking for a way to reach your customers, email is the perfect place to find them. Also, Two-third of customers have made a purchase as a direct result of an email marketing message.
"According to HubSpot, email generates $38 for every single dollar spent, which is a huge 3,800% return on your investment. Also, more than 60% of marketers strongly believe that email marketing produces a positive impact on their business.
The impact of email marketing goes beyond an email
inbox. It’s a key tool for small businesses and retailers looking to extend
their reach and influence.
Using techniques such as email, Newsletters can provide a sense of stability and connectivity with the audience, as you can inform, update, and greet your audience even in this period of time.
Digital
presence is extremely important for businesses in this era of the internet. If
your business doesn’t have a website, your presence within your market is
non-existent.
Website
marketing is a more focused digital effort for developing online relationships,
educating people about your brand, product or services. It allows you to tell
viewers how you are different and what value can you add in their life.
Website marketing is the main focus when it comes to digital marketing. The company focuses on creating and marketing content about the brand through blogs, articles, and videos.
Businesses can study their website’s footfall, traffic, bounce rate, engagement levels, and work on areas that work well for them.
The usage of
eye-catching videos with an emotional message can help businesses dominate the
online space as videos make the average user spend 100% more time on video as
compared to other forms of content.
According to Neil Patel; a well renowned digital marketing expert, "More than 70% of average audience want to see more video content from brands, but only about one-third of businesses invest in creating video content."
If small businesses are low on a budget, they can create homemade videos
that fit their audience’s demands and expectations.
As a large number of the audience are working from home and spending their free time online, a short visually appealing video can do wonders for your engagement rate.
It’s easy for a business to get stuck into the
trap of just selling products and making huge sales. Although it’s not a sin to
give priority to sales over other matters, you have to engage with people to
make them learn about your company's services and products.
Social media is one of the best and most accessible
ways to engage with your target audience. It offers an opportunity for indirect
marketing which is very efficient.
Share or retweet their posts, comment, get involved
in conversations with customers, and always backlink your opinions to your
product. Over the period, people will notice you and ultimately they will begin
trusting your brand and will buy your service or product.
However, you should be very cautious about what you post. People apparently will not read your posts or follow you if you are always boasting about your products and posting promotional ads. You need to create interesting posts, short articles, blogs, contests, and things that catch people’s attention.
Joining local business groups will empower you to
meet up with other like-minded people and brands who already share some common
interests and ideas with you. There are a large number of business groups on Facebook
and LinkedIn that you can join and provide value to each other.
These groups provide a fabulous chance to work on ideas with other smart people, share referrals, discover talent and recognize new opportunities.
It acts as a major catalyst in developing and
expanding your network around the globe. Connections tend to multiply, and if
your group takes networking seriously, you can leverage your minor associations
into many important ones.
While these business groups are typically best found online, it’s better to have face to face meeting for the majority of your interactions. It can also lead to joint ventures and profitable partnerships in the future.
Teamwork is always more effective and fruitful than the single effort, and combining the resources with another business will enable you
do tasks you could never achieve on your own.
For example, if you are a budding retailer, small manufacturer or distributor, you can always partner up with big brands like Amazon, Flipkart, and Indiamart to boost your growth.
Also, food vendors and restaurants can collaborate
with delivery partners like Swiggy, Zomato, FoodPanda, and Box8 to reach to a large number of audience present online.
It’s typically best to target companies in areas where you cannot reach or function physically. You aim to accomplish out a mutual arrangement that provides joint benefit for both businesses.
Defining a goal to measure the success of your
digital marketing efforts might be the most useful tip of all. Before
strategizing a digital marketing plan, companies must determine their primary
digital marketing goal.
According to the survey conducted by Ogilvy & Mather, more than three-quarters (76%) of small businesses believe their digital marketing endeavors are effective in fulfilling their company’s goals.
Small Businesses Need to Look Ahead in 2020
A strong digital marketing campaign can not only build your presence but
also can boost your sales during this catastrophic time and present you with
seamless possibilities.
The impact of COVID-19 will be long-lasting, so businesses need to plan
both short-term and long-term marketing goals to establish them apart from
others in the market.
According to the survey conducted by SalesForce, "More than 75% of budding small businesses believe in the power of digital marketing. Almost all of them are investing in social media and are looking to grow their digital marketing efforts through website marketing, email marketing, and video marketing.
While
this is a time to try something new, there are still valuable and effective
digital marketing strategies that small
How Should Small Businesses Use Social Media Platforms?
As a business owner, your aim on social media is to communicate with customers and create a bond rather bombarding their inboxes with useless information. If people like your approach and social campaigns along with products and services, they will correlate with your brand and become a buyer from a potential customer.
If you are new to digital marketing, you should consider this rule. Being on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at an initial stage are like being stranded on an island full of strangers.
The first thing to do is to find out who your targeted consumer is and figure out their buying behavior, understand what they want to hear, and see. It will enable you to outline your marketing campaigns better.
Whatever you are sharing
should be correlated to your business and must not confuse the customer.
Whatever you are posting should not be perceived merely as
advertisements.
Engage with the people's comments and remarks on a post and never leave any posts unattended. For every new post, figure out what is the on-going trend and use appropriate hashtags to stay in trend.
Social media is the only space where people are always available and looking for information and knowledge. To make people interested in your product or service, promote the product by connecting it with their emotions and lives and educate them about the value they will get after purchasing it. Make sure to surround your products and services with related stories that keep people captivated.
Be a "unicorn"
in a herd of "donkeys". Always create posts that are original, quirky
and uniquely represent your Unique Selling Proposition through advertising and
marketing. Make people aware about your business, team and all the people
working behind it. It empowers the brand and creates a feeling of empathy
among people. Like Tata’s Jaago Re Movement.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, you are the expert of your services and product
and you have to decide what works best for your business. Nevertheless, in this
process never drop out an opportunity to acquaint others about your
availability and zeal to serve.
Make sure your digital and online presence is all that it can be. There
is no other wiser method to compete with competitors and rivals. Online
marketing will surely let you take a bit out of your rival's volume.
Stop being hidden and come out of your comfort zone and traditional ways
of promotion. Show the people what you have to offer through a great marketing
strategy. As you will work more and more in digital space, you will see your
sales touching new heights.
All of these actions create space for your brand and lets you showcase your potential to the buyers by offering just what they’re looking for. Don’t wait, just adapt these strategies in your business and take a leap with your business.
You have a website and you have
something which people are looking for. The question is are your
customers finding you? Only having a good website in place does not
ensure customers dropping in and spending time on your website.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) takes care
of this. SEM if
harnessed effectively, will drive a sustainable pool of targeted traffic to your
website, and will ultimately result in an increase in revenue.
SEM is still growing and evolving at a rapid
pace, not because it is a relatively new concept(It has been there for more
than two decades) but because it is highly dynamic and fluid with more refined
methods and technology coming in each day. This dynamic nature makes the complete domain of internet marketing incredibly challenging and exciting.
An effective SEM strategy begins with website optimization. The process involves making the website suitable for the search engines to crawl and find it. This process is known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
SEO is a broad mix of multiple factors
– the quality of the site’s architecture, content on the website, various
channels or ways to reach the website, the influence of the website: SEO is done correctly has to satisfy each one of these aspects.
WHY SEARCH ENGINE
MARKETING IS IMPORTANT -Some important points to note-
During the month of December 2013, in the United States alone, search engines fielded more than 18.3 billion search queries (comScore qSearch). That’s more than two and a half searches for every living person on the planet in a single month!
Optimizing the
Website for Search Engines
This
is where you Search Engine Marketing begins. Matt McGee, an SEO expert who
specializes in advising small businesses (www.smallbusinessem.com), in an
interview once said: “SEO is not rocket science... It’s simple, but it’s not
easy. There’s a difference!... There’s a small set of basic rules that apply to
any web page or web site, whether you’re a small business or not. Your site has
to be crawlable, your content has to be good – and I’d include things like page
titles, keyword use, etc, under the umbrella of “content” – and you need
quality, relevant inbound links. That applies to everyone.”
This was way back in 2006, the early days when SEO and SEM had just begun to gain momentum, the fact is it still holds true and forms the groundwork of website optimization.
When you are trying to optimize your website for search engines, the best place to look out for tips on improving your site’s ranking with the search engines is with the search engines’ own guidelines and resources for your website.
Foundations of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
· Make your site easy to crawl
If you have to attract more search engine traffic to your website you have to make sure that your website is easily crawlable by search engine spiders. Spiders are interested in text, text, and more text. They don’t see the graphics, flashy animations that web designers primarily use to make websites look pretty. In fact, over-reliance on some of these things even hinders spiders, many times preventing some websites from being indexed at all.
· Choose Right Keywords
The starting point for effective SEO is to have correct knowledge what the people who are looking for your products, services or information are typing into the search box. What they are typing is known as keywords or keyword phrases. Finding and using the right keywords in website content is a must for successful SEO.
· Right Keyword at the Right Place
keywords are useful and important but their right placement on a webpage is even more important. Repeated use of keywords is strictly prohibited. Keywords can be ideally placed at the following locations-
• Title tag: Use
the keyword in the title and as close to the beginning as possible.
• H1 header tag:
Use the keyword in the header tag and as much as possible
in the other H
tags.
• Body content: Use
keywords but make sure it makes sense in context. Remember to use synonyms
rather than focusing on one specific version of a keyword. You should aim for
about 350 words of content. But don’t overdo it or it could look like spam to
the search engines.
• Bold: Use <strong> tags around the keyword at least once.
• URL: Try
to use the keyword in your page URL.
• Meta
description: Use it at least once in the meta description of the page, which
should entice users to click through to your site from the SERP.
• Link anchor text: Try to ensure that the keyword is used in the anchor text of the pages linking to you.
While optimizing your website you have to focus on one page at a time. When a search engine presents results to a user, it does not present the whole website, it presents individual pages that, according to its algorithms, best match a user’s query. This means each individual page on your website has to be optimized for specific keywords or phrases. It presents an opportunity to focus on different verticals of your business by promoting each one on a different page. For example on one page you can promote health insurance, on another, you can promote life insurance with respective keywords.
Check in the below-given image, when I searched for health insurance plans, the results came up with the link to the health insurance page of all the companies.
Content-relevant
and page-specific images make websites look much more appealing. As search
engines are improving at recognizing the content of images, It is extremely
important to properly tag and give content for each image for search engines
and visitors. This includes adding an ALT description to all key images and a
caption wherever possible.
Content is the most
important thing on your website, as it is the unique, relevant, and informative content
that sets your website apart. The term content encompasses everything on your
website- the flashy graphics, animation, videos, images, banners, and text. Of all this, the search engine spiders only
see the text. So with regard to SEO; the text is the most important form of
content.
When writing content for your website The first and foremost thing you have to keep in mind is your audience- These are the people whom you want to visit your website.
Your pages have to be search engine
friendly, they have to include keywords but still, you have to make your
content engaging for real, live people. If people visiting your website
don’t spend adequate time on your website and make an inquiry or a purchase all
your efforts will be pointless. Moreover, the search engines also take into
consideration the time spent by visitors on individual pages of your website.
More is the time spent more is the probability of your website moving up in
SERP. So, always develop content that
is more audience-friendly and follows the search engine protocols.
Let’s Sum Up
Having an updated website is an important aspect for every organization or an individual offering some product or service. To make that website count and deliver results, Search Engine Marketing(SEM) is equally important. You have got a website developed and have invested money in it, now unless and until you tell people about it, people are not going to find it and the money invested will not reap you any benefits. But if you spend just a little more and persist with it you are sure to reap huge benefits.
Internet is a highly cluttered space but has attained a level wherein you cannot ignore it – if you are serious about the growth and sustainability of your organization. So, don’t waste time; because every second foregone is taken up by someone else to consolidate his/her position. Hire a professional Digital Marketing Agency today and reach out to more people with higher rankings and more visibility.
“Promoting yourself on the internet is
as important as having a presence on it”
Social Media for sure offers enormous opportunity for
reaching out to new customers, engaging with consumers and building brand
awareness. It is also true that social media has reached a stage where
even your smallest of post can evoke a public response in a matter of minutes.
So, while operating in such an open and dynamic space it is extremely important
to carefully choose what you are doing. For social media the thumb rule goes
as “THINK TWICE BEFORE YOU POST”.
Social Media is public driven, there is no single person or
an organization which governs it. This is the underlying characteristic which
makes it such an exciting proposition for marketers. The pace at which
the information traverses the network and the interconnected nature of the
online community requires the marketers to be always prompt and wary of their
actions.
There is no rule but a word of caution for social media- NURTURE
AND VALUE RELATIONSHIPS. The most important thing to remember here is ; that
people are getting on to social media to interact and exchange information and
content with other like-minded people. They are least interested in the sales pitch
and they will mostly overlook the promotional messages. What they are looking
for is fun, quirky and exciting piece of information, anything which would
immediately interest them.
Remember that social media is a two way communication. You not only send a message, You also invite a response. So, plan you message so as to get the desired response. This might not be as easy doing as it is to write that is why you always need a plan to engage in social media marketing. Be flexible in your approach and work according to the underlying, tried, and tested premise.
S |
SPECIFIC |
Be
precise and clear of what has to be done. |
M |
MEASURABLE |
A
metrics should be there to measure progress and achievement |
A |
ACHIEVABLE |
Objective
should be aligned with the competency and consent of the person working on
it. |
R |
REALISTIC |
Objectives
should be possible to attain |
T |
TIMED |
Time
period for achievement should always be defined. |
Social Media allows you to engage with an online community
and reach out to an appropriate audience. The outreach of social media is its
greatest benefit if harnessed properly. If users like your content enough they
share it with their own communities. Efforts to control the conversation in
social media are soon found out and backfire horribly. So work on a social
media strategy that is more engaging and more considering. Always
follow the thumb rule and basic rules of engagement, also make sure to always
provide your digital
marketing agency with correct and updated information.
Never forget that in this evolving landscape the customer really is the king
and any attempt to dethrone the king can have dire consequences.
Social Media Marketing for
organizations is crucial and should not be overlooked, but at the same time, it is
also tricky. Effective social media marketing is
less about product promotion and more about customer engagement. You should
never be forcing or pushing your prospects, day in and day out to buy your
products instead work on the art of creating a pool of loyal followers and a huge
fan base.
Use Social Media to talk to the
people rather than push at them and more importantly listen to them. If
you manage to do this effectively, then social media can have an incredibly
positive impact on your organization’s online profile.
How far you go in reaching out and connecting with your prospective customers depends on a lot many factors-your business, your customers, your goals, and your overall digital marketing strategy. But one thing is for sure that there is something in it for everyone.
Understanding Social Media
Social media is a collection of internet-based software and services that allow users to connect, exchange of information, engage in discussions, communicate and participate in any form of social interaction.
Types of Social Media
Social media is present on the internet in varied forms. Each Social media platform has a different primary offering or maybe offering a mix of services. Each and every service offered presents, marketers, with a unique opportunity. To read in detail about the different forms of Social Media check out the article on Types of Social Media
Let’s go through the different forms of social media in brief and identify their offerings for Marketers as well.
Websites such as www.reddit.com, www.stumbleupon.com, www.digg.com fall in this category. The major feature which the social
media submission sites have that here you can share the link of the content you
like. These sites allow other online participants to rate and rank that
content. The more people view and vote positive for a particular piece of
content, the higher it rises in the rankings.
These websites also allow the top-ranked submissions to be displayed on the HOME page of the website, which in turn drives more traffic to these social media submission sites.
What is has for Marketers?
These websites present the opportunity of an open discussion to like-minded people on any topic that one can think of. Discussion groups such as yahoo groups- https://groups.yahoo.com, google groups- https://groups.google.com have been around on the internet for a long time. People from the online community gather here to participate in discussions and express their views.
What it has for Marketers?
Media Sharing websites are gaining in popularity day by day because of the very simple reason that they provide a platform for their users to become popular in the online world.
These websites allow users to post videos, images, and also share and comment on the uploaded content. Websites such as www.youtube.com, www.vimeo.com, www.blip.tv, www.pinterest.com lets members save and share images and videos. These videos and images can be seen by others and immediate reactions such as like, dislike, just love it, etc are available in form of emojis. Instagram and Flickr are other popular sites that allow users to upload, share, comment, and discuss their photographs.
What it has for Marketers?
These websites allow users to review or rate anything they want to. It can be a product, a service, an individual or an organization. With their increasing credibility, these websites have the potential to build or destroy brands. Independent review website such as www.glassdoor.com allows users to rate and write a review for their current or previous companies. www.reviewcenter.com, www.epinions.com are some other standalone reviews and rating websites. These websites are extremely important for Social Media Marketing managers especially to maintain the online reputation of the company.
What’s in it for Marketers?
Social Networking Sites
These websites present marketers with tremendous opportunities because of their large user base. Popular social networking websites such as Facebook(www.facebook.com), Linkedin (www.linkedin.com), Twitter(www.twitter.com) have users in multi-millions. Facebook today has more than 1.3 billion users- which is like having the whole of India on Facebook. And marketers very well know how big a market India is.
What these sites offer to Marketer?
The blog is an acronym for weB LOG. Blogging gives everyone and anyone the freedom to express his/her views, opinions, share experiences or write about anything in detail and the people with similar interests are out there to read and comment on your blogs.
Various web services such as bloggers (www.blogger.com), WordPress (www.wordpress.com) allow users to set up and start their own blogs in a matter of few minutes. The blogs also rank in the search engines based on their popularity. Blogs and Bloggers have tremendous power. Many bloggers have millions of loyal followers.
These bloggers have the potential to influence their followers which can be well harnessed by marketers.
How can Marketers use blogs?
Podcast can be best regarded as an audio form of the blog. Various portals such as www.podcast.com, www.podomatic.com, and www.apple.com/itunes allow uploading and distribution of podcasts for people to download or listen online. People can also subscribe to podcasts of interest.
What Podcasts offer to Marketers?
Microblogging
Microblogging can be thought of as a short message broadcast service that allows people to keep their readers up to date via short text posts. Twitter (www.twitter.com) dominates the space of microblogging services on the internet.
Microblogging has been successful in the sense that collective aggregation of the mini-posts creates a tremendous impact which is much more than the sum total of the individual posts. When your readers receive short but frequent updates they begin to connect with you and develop a bond. This eventually creates a loyal following the power of which can be well harnessed for effective Social Media Marketing.
What’s in it for Marketers
Wikis
Wikis are an online collection of web
pages. What makes Wikis stand out is that these pages are open for anyone to
create, edit, discuss, comment, and mostly contribute to.
This is the underlying premise of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia has been developed.
Develop a strong collaborative community of your customers and people in your organization: wikis is a great platform to encourage constructive and collaborative interaction between the people inside your organization and people outside your organization including the customers. People here write what they know about the organization rather than critically reviewing and rating it. Once your customers start doing this it means that they now feel connected and have developed a bond with the organization. As a marketer encourage your customers to post on Wikis whatever knowledge they have about the organization. As it goes a long way in creating a strong background of the organization in the world of the internet.
Instant Messaging Service
With the advent of instant messaging service on mobile social
media, the revolution has reached an altogether different level. This development is
led by “WhatsApp”. Most of the instant messaging services provide
you with a simple and straightforward interface where you send messages,
pictures, videos, documents instantly to the receiver’s phone. It even allows
you to make video and voice calls anywhere across the globe and at any time.
All this comes at absolutely no cost(At least till date- October 2020)
Even though WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook for a whopping 19 billion USD in February 2014, but it has still continued to operate as a separate entity since then. And also Whatsapp has not yet seen the same marketing-friendly features as Facebook Messanger has. It still has a lot to offer to the ever anxious marketers.
What is has for Marketers?
Establish one to one and personal connections- the instant messaging services are
primarily tied to mobile phones, which are definitely more personal than computers. Use these services to send personalized messages and spread
brand awareness. Apply one to one marketing and work on interpersonal
marketing skills and present your product to the individuals the way they want
it.
WhatsApp business app- WhatsApp has launched a Business App for which they say it is “built with the small business
owner in mind.” This app is free to download, and currently only available for
Android devices. It allows businesses to easily interact with customers by
using tools to automate, sort, and quickly respond to messages.
Highest engagement rate- More than 60 billion messages are sent using WhatsApp each day and to cheer up the marketers approximately 82% of these messages are checked and read. Thus an engagement rate of 82 %. This is one thing that marketers are always looking for so start engaging with your customers on WhatsApp now.
Social Media Marketing has helped businesses grow and
achieve which otherwise, maybe, would not have been possible, at least at this
pace. With the ever-increasing numbers on social media, organizations have
become more and more concerned about ensuring their presence and maintaining a good online reputation.
It's important to reach out to people but in a way that appeals to them. So, for that matter, if hiring an expert is a problem you can always
reach out to a Digital Marketing Agency having
expertise and experience in the domain but don’t miss the opportunity.
“Don’t use social media to impress people, use it to impact people and change lives”
Posted on 01 Nov 2020, by Mudit Mittal
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