9 Small Business Digital Marketing Tips You Need to Know

But where do you start?

If you’re ready to launch your business into the world of digital marketing, take note of these nine tips we’ll share to help you get started, including:

1. Know who you’re targeting with your marketing
2. Create a custom design for your website
3. Optimize your presence in search results
4. Connect with prospects through social media
5. Build your local presence
6. Create content to share your knowledge
7. Use email marketing to nurture leads towards conversion
8. Run paid ads to reach prospects ready to convert
9. Track your campaigns to see where you can improve

Need help getting your digital marketing strategy off the ground? We have a team of over 450 marketing experts ready to help you get started. Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our digital marketing services!

Small business digital marketing tip #1: Know who you’re targeting with your marketing

Before you get started with digital marketing for small businesses, you need to know who you’re targeting with your marketing. Your campaigns won’t drive success if you don’t know who’s meant to see them.

To establish your target audience, look at a typical customer that buys from your business. Define characteristics like:

• Age
• Gender
• Occupation
• Income
• Location
• Buying/Spending habits
• Hobbies
• Interests

You can use this information to form buyer personas, which are fictional representations of your customers. These buyer personas help you target new leads for your small business.

Small business digital marketing tip #2: Create a custom design for your website

Next on our list of marketing tips for small businesses is to create a custom design for your website. Regardless of what type of campaigns you run, you’ll drive people back to your site.

To ensure they have a positive experience with your small business, you need to deliver a user-friendly website. To build an effective website, you need:

• A custom web design that emulates your brand’s unique style
• An organized navigation bar to help users find information fast
• Responsive design to ensure your site adapts to all devices
• Visuals to ensure you keep your audience’s interest
• A fast-loading site to deliver information quicker
• Call to action (CTA) buttons that guide users to take the next step

As you build your website, stay focused on providing a site that offers your audience a user-friendly experience that keeps them engaged with your small business.

Small business digital marketing tip #3: Optimize your presence in search results

Another critical strategy to add to your small business digital marketing plan is search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is an essential strategy to help your business rank in search results — it involves optimizing your website to appear in relevant results.

To help your site rank in search results, follow these best practices:

• Conduct keyword research to find relevant terms for your business
• Focus on long-tail keywords to help drive qualified traffic to your site
• Create content to continually drive traffic to your site (we’ll discuss this more later)
• Improve page speed to rank higher in search results
• Create a mobile-friendly site to ensure visitors have a positive experience

By optimizing your website for search results, you’ll help more people discover your small business and get them to visit your business.

Small business digital marketing tip #4: Connect with prospects through social media

Next on our list of small business marketing tips is to connect with prospects through social media. Social media marketing is one of the few strategies where you can build a relationship with people interested in your company, which can help you nurture these leads towards conversion.

You can build a presence on numerous platforms, including:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Snapchat

With social media, you can build relationships through organic posting and reach new leads through social media advertising.

If you want to do social media successfully, follow these best practices:

• Use your logo as your profile photo to make it easy to identify your brand
• Post content often to ensure prospects see your content
• Use a variety of content formats to keep your strategy fresh
• Use a social media calendar to stay organized with planning your content
• Engage with prospects in the comments to help build relationships
• Use chatbots to help you respond to direct messages faster

Small business digital marketing tip #5: Build your local presence

A critical strategy you need to add to your small business digital marketing plan is local marketing. A large portion of the customers that visit you, buy your products, or use your services come from your local community. To help these leads find your business, you need to help your business appear in local searches.

Here are some ways you can help your small business appear in front of local leads:

• Claim and optimize your Google My Business listing
• Optimize your site for local keywords (i.e., “Barbershop in Los Angeles”)
• Ensure your name, address, and phone number (NAP) is consistent across the web
• Create local content to attract local traffic to your site
• Encourage people to review your business

Small business digital marketing tip #6: Create content to share your knowledge

When you do digital marketing for small businesses, a critical component of your strategy is content creation. Content marketing is a great strategy to help you build your business as an authority in your field and build trust with your audience.

You can create numerous types of content, including:

• Blogs
• Videos
• Infographics
• Guides
• Ebooks

If you want to get started with content marketing, follow these best practices:

• Use a variety of content to keep your strategy fresh
• Create content often to keep a steady flow of traffic to your site
• Use a content calendar to help you stay organized with creating and publishing content
• Target multiple relevant keywords in your content to help it appear in related results
• Create evergreen content to drive traffic to your site over time
• Continually update your content to keep it fresh

Small business digital marketing tip #7: Use email marketing to nurture leads towards conversion

Email marketing is next on our list of small business marketing tips. This strategy enables you to send information directly to the inboxes of interested leads. People choose to sign up for your email list and receive information from your business.

If you want to do email marketing successfully, follow these best practices:

• Segment your subscribers to deliver a tailored experience for your audience
• Send tailored emails based on subscribers’ interests
• Use an email automation tool to help automate your email campaigns
• Create an email subject line that entices people to click and open
• Include a CTA that guides people to take the next step
• Monitor email performance to see if your emails are effective

Small business digital marketing tip #8: Run paid ads to reach prospects ready to convert

Another strategy on our list of marketing tips for small businesses is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Paid ads appear at the top of search results above the organic listings. These ads can help you obtain more qualified leads ready to convert.

When you run a PPC advertising campaign, keep the following in mind:

• Optimize your bid amounts to maximize your budget
• Target long-tail keywords to keep costs low and get more qualified leads
• Use negative keywords to keep your ads from showing in irrelevant search results
• Use ad extensions to add more helpful information that gets leads to click
• Create a custom landing page to deliver a tailored experience and keep leads focused

Small business digital marketing tip #9: Track your campaigns to see where you can improve

The last strategy we’ll cover on our list of marketing tips for small businesses is to track your campaigns. When you launch your digital marketing strategies, regardless of which ones you use, you want to ensure they’re driving your desired results.

By tracking your campaigns, you get insight into whether your campaigns are working effectively to help your business grow online.

The types of metrics you track will depend upon your strategy and campaign, but here are some general metrics companies track:

• Organic traffic
• Impressions
• Clicks
• Clickthrough rate (CTR)
• Dwell time
• Leads
• Conversions

Small Business Website Essentials You Need for Your Site

Read the Blog Post & Watch the Video

Need help launching your small business digital marketing strategy?

Now that you have a list of marketing tips for small businesses, you’re ready to launch your digital marketing strategy! But if you’re feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, don’t worry — WebFX can help you craft a marketing strategy that works.

We take a client-first approach that enables you to get a campaign that’s custom fit to your business’s unique needs. Our approach helps us drive incredible results for our clients — we’ve driven over $3 billion in revenue and over 7.8 million leads in the last five years.

Ready to grow your small business online? Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our digital marketing services!