As a small business, you probably know how important it is to have a viable, well-maintained presence online. Being available online makes it easy for customers to reach out and do business with you. Yet small, and larger-sized, businesses often make the same mistakes when it comes to digital.
Here are the traps it’s easy to fall int and advice on how to avoid them.
Neglecting the website
We get it. You’re busy running your business. If you’re trying to do that and look after your website at the same time, the chances are the website’s losing out.
Your business website is, for most of your customers, likely to be the first contact and experience of you, even if they go on to do business later with you in person. If your website isn’t well-designed, up to date or useful, or even optimised for mobile, it doesn’t give a good impression and will result in lost leads, opportunities and sales.
Don’t forget that search engines favour websites users like and find helpful, so the more you look after your website, maintaining it with fresh, relevant content, make it easy to navigate and keep free of glitches and optimise for speed, the higher you’ll come in the rankings.
How to avoid: invest in a website redesign or outsource website maintenance for routine fixes, content and blog updates.
No cohesive digital marketing strategy
Digital marketing involves having a tip-top website, and everything else digital-communication-wise that goes along with it, so you can reach your audience effectively, engage and market to them.
You’ll need to use all the digital channels available to you, in a cohesive, planned and strategic way: SEO (search engine optimisation), email marketing and social media marketing. This means putting together your key messages and a content marketing strategy, so you know what to communicate in your digital marketing.
How to avoid: work on your target messages and content strategy with a marketing professional to get clear on your offer and how you’re going to communicate it to your target audience.
Ineffective use of social media
Do you post frequently enough on your social channels? Are you reaching out and engaging with your target audience, answering their DMs and growing your following effectively?
It’s hard to find the time to do, what can be, a full-time job, fulfilling your social media obligations. Posting consistently, useful, engaging content to keep your services top-of-mind with your followers takes time and resource.
How to avoid: outsource social media support to a social media manager, or even a VA (virtual assistant). Many VAs offer social media support across a range of channels, including video content for YouTube.
Not using/or underusing email marketing
Email marketing, when used well, is an effective and affordable way of marketing for small businesses with none of the costs associated with paid ads or direct mail. Plus, email marketing is less ad hoc than social media marketing, since it goes right to the inbox of your follower / customer. You can send targeted messages to literally hundred of prospects, with very little resource required.
There are also many tools available to help you measure the success of your email marketing, so you can see which prospects click through to, and open rates of your messages, making the adjustments to tailor your messaging to be more effective.
How to avoid: outsource to a specialist email marketer or a copywriter who can craft compelling emails your prospects will want to open and engage with, according to your business aims.
If you feel like you’re falling behind in digital, get in touch with our team and we’ll talk to you about your business goals and how you can stay ahead.
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