You’ve heard that your business needs an “online presence” in order for your prospective customers to find you, but what, exactly, does that mean?
The internet is great in that it provides a ton of opportunities for small businesses to get in front of their customers. The downside is that being faced with all those opportunities can leave a lot of small businesses paralyzed by indecision. Which opportunities should you go for? Which ones will provide the highest return on your investment?
It’s true that the internet has leveled the playing field between small businesses and large corporations, but only to an extent. The large corporations have more money to hire content creators, social media strategists, and to run online ads. But with the right strategy, a small business owner can still get ahead.
So let’s go over some of the most effective online marketing strategies small businesses can use to attract, engage, and convert leads online:
Table of Contents
- Know Your Target Audience
- Make the Most of Your Website
- Get Your SEO Ducks in a Row
- Know Where Your Target Audience Is Hanging Out Online
- Know How, Where, and When Your Target Audience Wants to Be Contacted
- Collaborate with Influencers in Related Industries
- Comment on Relevant Content
- Write a Book
- Take Advantage of User-Generated Content
- Make Good Use of Targeted Ads
- Conclusion
1) Know Your Target Audience
The first thing you need to do before starting any marketing campaign (online or otherwise) is to identify your target audience. Too many small business owners and solopreneurs think everyone needs their product/service, but you can’t target everyone because that’s not a target – that’s just shooting in the dark and hoping you hit something.
Instead, focus on the kinds of clients you like working with and/or the ones with which you’ve already had a lot of success. Make separate columns in a spreadsheet for their gender, job type, income status, family status, etc. If you get enough people on your spreadsheet, you’ll start to see some trends, and that will give you the data you need to create a marketing persona.
Knowing the specific problems you were able to solve for your most successful clients is also key to identifying the pain points of your target audience. It doesn’t matter how many times you’re able to get in front of them if your content isn’t resonating with them. So if you see that your content is getting a lot of views, but not a lot of conversions, that means it’s not speaking to your target audience’s pain points (or your call to action is off), in which case it’s time to readjust your content.
2) Make the Most of Your Website
Presumably, you already have a website, unless you’re just thinking about starting a small business of your own and haven’t yet reached the point of launching a website for the business. Or maybe you’ve been doing this for a while, but your website is out of date and needs a new look.
Your website is your company’s online real estate. You can reach people on social media or in their inboxes, but then you’re at the mercy of the social media site’s algorithm and their email server’s system of sorting through spam.
Your website is the only online space you own and it’s important to make the most of it. That means making sure it’s eye catching without being too flashy. You want to draw in visitors and lead them through the funnel, and in order to do that, you have to carefully consider each piece of content on your website and decide where you want your audience to go from there. Then you need to determine the most effective way of getting your viewers to that next stage. Not only do you have to compel them to take the next step in the buyer journey, but you also have to make it easy for them to do so. If people have to search for the button or link they need, they’ll click away and chances are you’ve lost that lead for good.
3) Get Your SEO Ducks in a Row
A key part of online marketing for your small business is to try to show up in online searches. There are a lot of components to this, but here are some of the basics:
- Get an SSL certificate (if you don’t know what this is, ask your website host);
- Make sure your website takes no longer than 3 seconds to load;
- Beef up your “About” page (in addition to talking about what you do and why, you should use this space to list your credentials and the credentials of everyone on your team);
- Do your keyword research – you want to make sure you’re using keywords with a fairly high search volume, but a low enough SEO competition score to give you a shot at actually showing up in searches for those keywords;
- Target long-tail keywords – these usually have a lower search volume than short-tail keywords, but they also tend to have a lower SEO competition score and higher buyer intent;
- Publish new content regularly – the more content you have on your website, the more content Google can index for your website, which gives Google a better idea of what your website is all about, and as a result, gives you a better chance of showing up in online searches. It’s also a great way to establish yourself as an authority and build credibility;
- Use meta tags to show up in online searches;
- Use images, videos, and interactive content (these don’t directly impact SEO, but they do improve engagement, which does impact your SEO).
4) Know Where Your Target Audience Is Hanging Out Online
The internet is at least as big as our world, if not bigger. Everyone who hasn’t been able to find their own space online has created it, which means there really is a place for everyone.
This is why it’s so important for you to understand your target audience, not just the problems you’re solving for them, but their hobbies and interests. Where do they spend their free time (both online and off)? Where do they go to look for information related to the products/services you provide?
When you understand your audience, you don’t have to waste time scouring the internet (or the wrong networking events) in search of them because you’ll already know where they are. All you have to do is hang out there as well and spend some time there until they’ve gotten to know you. Only then can you lead them back to your website.
Too many small business owners and first-time marketers hear that they need to be on social media to market their business, and they make the mistake of trying to be on all the social media platforms. Not only is this a great way to make sure you burn out and your content is ineffective, but it’s also a waste of time because your target audience isn’t on every social media platform. They’re only spending time on two or three social media sites, so you need to figure out which social media sites your target audience prefers so you can make the most of your online marketing strategy for your small business.
The same goes for online forums. A lot of discussion happens on online forums, and if you consistently devote time to participating in those discussions, not only will you earn brand recognition, but you’ll earn their trust from all the expertise you showed off in the forums.
5) Know How, Where, and When Your Target Audience Wants to be Contacted
If your target audience is on the younger side, they might spend more time on social media than checking their email, in which case it might make sense to reach out to them via direct message on their preferred social media platforms. Other people think this is incredibly spammy and will immediately unfollow you for the perceived breach of boundaries, in which case, you’d be better off using your newsletter to reach out to them.
Even if direct messages on certain social media platforms prove to be an effective way to reach your audience, you should still maintain a newsletter because a social media site can change their algorithm without warning or explanation, and the last thing you want is to be left unable to reach the audience you’ve worked so hard to build. You need to make sure you have their direct contact information, and the only way to do that is by collecting their email addresses.
Once you have your newsletter up and running, make sure you get the most out of it by sending it at the right time.
6) Collaborate with Influencers in Related Industries
You never want to point your target audience in the direction of your competitors, but collaborating with influencers in industries related to yours can be extremely beneficial for both of you. You can write blog posts for each other, interview each other on your podcasts, share and comment on each other’s social media posts, etc.
This helps both of you create more content for your brands and expand your reach, making it a win/win for both of you. So if there’s a particular vendor you use for your business or recommend to your clients, reach out to them and see if they’d be interested in a content collaboration.
7) Comment on Relevant Content
In addition to sharing and commenting on social media posts, you should also be commenting on blog posts on the websites of other influencers in your industry and in related industries. A quick, “Thanks for the tips! Your insight is always appreciated” will always earn you brownie points, but it won’t necessarily get you noticed.
Instead, try to build on the conversation that was begun in the blog post. If you can think of additional points you think should have been included in the blog post, go ahead and put them in your comment. If you have questions about anything in the content, use the space for comments to ask those questions. If you disagree with anything in the blog post, say so and explain why – just be nice about it. Insulting the competition is more likely to work against you, rather than for you.
If done right, commenting on relevant content can earn high-quality backlinks for your blog posts, which will help it show up in online searches. If done wrong, it can come off as spammy, which can get you blacklisted from Google, so tread carefully. Don’t just put a link to your latest blog post without first making sure it’s relevant and provides value to both the author and the other readers of the article.
8) Write a Book
I’ve talked before about the benefits of writing an ebook for your small business, and it’s important to remember that, when it comes to online marketing, Amazon owns an enormous amount of online real estate. Someone who might not be looking for blog posts to get information might be searching Amazon for books on a topic on which you just happen to be an expert. Make sure you get in front of those people (and earn some extra income) by having a book for sale on Amazon with your name on it.
9) Take Advantage of User-Generated Content
Not only is it content you don’t have to spend time and effort creating, but user-generated content is also a great way to let the results of your products/services speak for themselves. Some examples of user-generated content include:
- Guest blog posts;
- Testimonials/case studies;
- Comments on your blog posts and social media posts;
- Social media posts that tag your brand or use a particular hashtag that’s specific to your brand;
- Quizzes and surveys (you put the questions together and your target audience provides the results, which you can then publish as a study).
10) Make Good Use of Targeted Ads
While the importance of organic SEO and building an authentic following on social media are never to be underestimanted, online advertisements are another option that should also not be underestimated. We wrote a blog post back in December about the pros and cons of paid search vs organic search, but it’s important to remember that, in addition to Google Ads, each social media platform has it’s own advertising system, as does Amazon. Again, don’t feel like you have to spend money on all these platforms, but it might be worthwhile to develop a strategy for determining which platforms are likely to get you the most bang for your buck, and then develop a strategy for targeted ads to make sure you get the highest return possible on your investment.
Conclusion
While it’s true that your small business does need an online presence to remain relevant, you need more than just a website – you need a strategy. If you don’t have the resources to be everywhere online all at once, take a good look at your target audience, where they hang out online, and what their online behavior is like so you can determine the best way to both get in front of them and interact with them online.
It’s true that our society has become increasingly digital, and the pandemic has significantly boosted that trend, but just like you can’t make it to all the networking events, don’t try to be on all the digital platforms, because that’s just not possible. At some point, you have to do what you do best and actually serve your clients while letting your online presence do the work of attracting, engaging, and converting leads online.
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