Tuesday, March 24, 2015
By CallFire, Follow me on Google+
Small businesses are always on the lookout for affordable, effective ways of marketing themselves. The onset of the Digital Age has opened up vast new opportunities for entrepreneurs. Let’s look at the main weapons in the Digital Marketer’s arsenal:
SEO
With so much competition for prime digital real estate, making sure your brand is visible to searchers is the first - and often hardest - order of business. Devising an effective SEO strategy requires an intimate understanding of your industry, target market and products/services, with a view to ascertaining which keywords you should focus on ranking for. Broadly broken down into two elements, SEO campaigns comprise an onsite strategy and an offsite strategy. The onsite part relates to optimizing the content on a brand’s webpages for maximum visibility to search engine bots, including domain name, meta tags, body text, internal links, title tags etc; offsite SEO refers to inbound links from external sites, and anything else that promotes a specific company website and improves its standing in the SERPS.
Mobile
Mobile marketing is the process of targeting an audience through devices like smartphones and tablets. It might be in the form of native technology like SMS messaging and voicemail, an adjustment of existing web content to make it ‘mobile friendly’, or via a piece of software such as an app. There are multiple ways to reach people with mobile marketing, and a good mobile campaign will encourage users to visit your social media pages and website.
Social Media
Even resource-poor entrepreneurs can make use of social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn - these services are as free to use as they are easy to use.
Blogging
Having a regularly-updated internal blog on your website is one of the best ways to stamp your authority on your industry. Not only does it grow your website with fresh, relevant content, a decent blog will give you credibility among competitors and customers alike.
Email
It may not be the primary way to reach people these days, but you’ve got very little to lose by establishing an email contact list with which you can update customers and offer discount deals. Like SMS messaging, it requires a light touch: avoid weekly emails as they will irritate people and prompt them to opt out. Keep them to once a month, and offer something of value every time.
SEO
With so much competition for prime digital real estate, making sure your brand is visible to searchers is the first - and often hardest - order of business. Devising an effective SEO strategy requires an intimate understanding of your industry, target market and products/services, with a view to ascertaining which keywords you should focus on ranking for. Broadly broken down into two elements, SEO campaigns comprise an onsite strategy and an offsite strategy. The onsite part relates to optimizing the content on a brand’s webpages for maximum visibility to search engine bots, including domain name, meta tags, body text, internal links, title tags etc; offsite SEO refers to inbound links from external sites, and anything else that promotes a specific company website and improves its standing in the SERPS.
Mobile
Mobile marketing is the process of targeting an audience through devices like smartphones and tablets. It might be in the form of native technology like SMS messaging and voicemail, an adjustment of existing web content to make it ‘mobile friendly’, or via a piece of software such as an app. There are multiple ways to reach people with mobile marketing, and a good mobile campaign will encourage users to visit your social media pages and website.
Social Media
Even resource-poor entrepreneurs can make use of social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn - these services are as free to use as they are easy to use.
Blogging
Having a regularly-updated internal blog on your website is one of the best ways to stamp your authority on your industry. Not only does it grow your website with fresh, relevant content, a decent blog will give you credibility among competitors and customers alike.
It may not be the primary way to reach people these days, but you’ve got very little to lose by establishing an email contact list with which you can update customers and offer discount deals. Like SMS messaging, it requires a light touch: avoid weekly emails as they will irritate people and prompt them to opt out. Keep them to once a month, and offer something of value every time.