Finding a place for your small business in the digital world can be a daunting.
There’s so many opportunities to grasp and pitfalls to avoid.
Knowing where to start can be half the battle!
That’s why you need to start thinking about actionable online marketing ideas for your small business.
Thankfully, there are proven strategies and techniques to grow your business online and fast.
So, what digital marketing tips for small businesses should you action?
Social Media
Getting your business set up on all the major social networks can be a really easy way to build your online presence.
Not only can social media increase your visibility, if done correctly, you can successfully identify new leads and drive loads more conversions.
Changes to the Facebook feed algorithm over the last few years has seen organic reach plummet.
So, where can you get your social media wins from?
Get set to become a twitter marketing pro.
There are some neat little techniques you can implement that will see your twitter followers increase rapidly over a short space of time:
1. Hashtag Research
Don’t go shooting in the dark.
Do your research first!
By taking the time to do a little bit of hashtag research, you can successfully find new niche’s, topics and demographics to reach out to and target.
2. Photo Tagging
This is such an under-utilized twitter marketing strategy.
Simply find the profiles of influencers or others you want to get your tweet in front of, upload a photo, and tag them in it!
This will show up in their notifications, giving your profile and business instant visibility.
3. Following the Right People
Sometimes it’s just not enough to build something and expect people to flock to you.
Scout around Twitter and identify profiles that have similar interests and relevancy to yours and hit the ‘follow’ button.
If they like the look of you, they’ll follow you back, creating another source of prospective engagement.
Optimise On-Page Content
Don’t think of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) as just a channel.
SEO is your website.
Everything you have on your website, from titles to page copy, is crawled by Google’s indexing spiders.
So, every piece of content you have live, is a chance to rank higher and a chance to get more organic traffic to your website!
How do you go about optimising your website like an SEO pro?
1. Keyword Research
Although there are hundreds of ranking factors Google consider, keyword research still plays a fundamental part in building the foundations for your website.
Keyword research can surface exactly what your prospective customers are looking for and how many are looking for it.
Targeting localised and ‘long tail’ keywords can provide an excellent way to get your business ranking fast.
2. Optimise Your Page Title
All too often you see websites neglecting the power of a well-optimised page title.
Your page titles should target the keywords you want to rank for on that page.
If possible, try and include your primary keyword as close to the front of your page title as possible.
Including your main keyword is just the first part of page title tag optimisation.
Next, you need to ensure it stands out!
Try to include a strong call to action or words that illicit an emotion response.
That way, not only is your page title eye-catching, but it also will entice that much wanted click and help to increase your organic click-through rates.
3. Rich and Informative Page Copy
Including well optimised page copy on each page gives you another opportunity to rank for keywords, as well as providing extra relevancy for search engines about your content.
Including high volume keywords and semantically related keywords is a great way to improve your likelihood of ranking for those terms.
As well as including keywords, ensure your page copy is engaging, informative and directs the reader to take action!
Local SEO
You can really improve the local visibility of your business in just 10 minutes or so!
By claiming a free ‘Google My Business’ listing, you have the opportunity to create a profile for your business.
It asks you to include information such as name, location, phone number, opening hours etc.
Your ‘Google My Business’ listing will improve visibility for your company in the local area, whilst also providing prospective customers with extra information and contact points, creating trust and confidence in your brand.
As well as the above, make sure you’re targeting localised keywords within your copy and titles on your website.
For example, say you’re a new Artisan Bakery in Bedford. If you just targeted the keyword of “Artisan Bakery”, your chances of ranking for that keyword vs everyone else across the UK would be pretty slim.
However, if you choose to target “Artisan Bakery in Bedford”, your chances of ranking for this ‘longer tail’ keyword would be greatly increased.
Plus, this could well improve footfall into your bricks and mortar shop!
Link Building
Another tried and tested method for growing businesses online.
Link building is essentially the art of reaching out to similar websites and influencers within your niche and getting them to link back to your website from there’s.
You can do this by offering a service, guest posting or by just simply highlighting an awesome piece of content or offer you may have.
The more links your website has pointing to it, the more link ‘authority’ and weighting Google gives it.
Link authority is one of the major ranking factors and indicates your website is trusted and offers excellent content.
Word of Mouth
This may seem slightly counter-intuitive when we’re talking about growing a business online.
But hear me out…
Word of mouth is just one more weapon in your armoury you can use.
If you talk to people in person about your business, the world we live in dictates at some point they will go online and check you out.
Perhaps try casually point out you have a Facebook or Twitter profile.
That extra ‘follow’ or ‘like’ is one extra person that’s going to see your updates and content.
Conclusions
As we mentioned in the opening paragraphs, getting the foundations right for your business online is crucial to further it’s potential.
In this article, we’ve highlighted some of top small business digital marketing ideas you might want to consider to put your business on the map in the online world.
Once you’re happy with your first steps, there are countless other ways to help grow your business online.
By getting the simple things right first, the only way is up!