Marketing is expensive and time-consuming. There, I said it. Online marketing can be perceived as much cheaper as there is little materiel cost, but it takes a lot of time, which has to be paid somehow. For that reason, many companies are intimidated into inaction, as they are afraid to take a first step that will not bring benefits quickly.
However, it is still important to keep working on marketing your company at all time and to stay in a growth mindset. In this article, we look into some tips to help you stay on top of your online marketing game.
For some reason, plenty of small businesses don’t even know they have a presence on Google My Business. This is a mistake, because the data from Google My Business is likely the first thing that your potential customers will see if they search for your company on Google.
To use this service, you should create an account on Google My Business and claim your business if it isn’t done already. Once you are logged in, fill in all the information about your business, add some photos, your products, services, and everything else that’s relevant.
Once your business profile is set up properly, you should still keep an eye on it and try to post on it at least every month. You can post special offers, tips, product updates, or whatever feels relevant. You should also make it a habit to ask your customers to leave a 5 stars review.
The time you invested in the creation of your website and its content does not mean that the content of the website is written in stone. Actually, it’s the opposite, your content should be changed to perform better over time. While you don’t need to update your pages that perform well with search engines, you should definitively work on the pages that are underperforming.
To improve the underperforming pages, start by identifying them through analytics reports and conversion. Do a keyword search and try to position yourself better on the relevant keywords by rewriting your titles and some texts.
With the same logic, you can extend your content by repurposing it for other channels. For example, a blog post about the best apps for hotel reservations can become a survey on Facebook, an infographic on Twitter, or a call for comments on LinkedIn. Try to understand what should come out of each page of your site for various social networks.
Probably the easiest marketing tip ever, although it can be quite time-consuming. Find out who are the bloggers in your industry (or in other relevant industries), then contact them to try to get a link. Basically, there are three main ways to get a link from a blogger: do a link exchange (not so likely with larger bloggers), provide them with a guest post with a link in the author section (time-consuming), or link buying (borderline illegal and more expensive). If you are comfortable with writing, this would be quite easy for you, otherwise you will need to find people to do it for you and pay them.
Another advantage comes with the research work that comes with this tip: you get to know your industry’s “Internet activity” much better. Also, this type of links can prove very useful on the long term, as they help improving your website’s SEO.
Contests and giveaways are a great way to capture leads, whether it’s email subscribers, or Facebook or Twitter followers. By giving away one of your products or services, you will attract people that could potentially be interested in it even without the giveaway.
If your company’s website is run by WordPress, you can use a plugin that Simple Giveaways to make your giveaway much more efficient. This plugin helps you tremendously by doing the heavy lifting and providing you with tons of tools to make your giveaway as successful as possible. The core feature is, in my opinion, the ability to force people to subscribe or follow you in order to access the giveaway.
If you are on social media, as you should nowadays, there is a simple way to get more exposure for your content: to boost it. For example, if you do a giveaway, as mentioned in the point above, boosting it will help you get more subscribers or followers that were out of your reach previously. For better performance, boosting content should be done regularly and on the most appropriate platforms. For example, for B2B content, LinkedIn would probably be a better choice than Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok, among others.
This should be constantly on your mind: you need more email subscribers! First, the social media you are thriving in can bankrupt. It has happened in the past and it will happen again. Also, email newsletters allow you to build a different kind of relationship with your subscribers as it is more “intimate”.
To grow your email list, consider all options. Offer a freeby on subscription (that can be automated), regularly promote your newsletter on social media or even in real-life events, make sure to publish exclusive content and maybe offers in your newsletters, and so on… The growth should be the central point for your email newsletter.
An easy way to get links that also brings a lot of side-benefits is to build partnerships. The partnerships can be very simple, with just a link exchange, but they can also extend much further. For example, it can be with existing partners, such as suppliers or complementary companies.
If you can make these partnerships active, your partners and yourself will get much more benefits from it. For example, you could do newsletter exchanges, social media cross-promotion, and so much more. This will be great for both the short and long term.
One of the most overlooked aspects of marketing is probably the reviewing part. Why? Partly because it can be quite boring to look at numbers, but also because it confronts you with the real results of your actions. Before your start with new marketing actions, make sure to have an objective for both the cost and the returns. This way, you will be able to measure your results afterwards.
To make a proper review, check out all the stats and sales related to your marketing campaigns and compare it to your initial goals.
This tip depends on the previous one at number 9. Once you have done your review, you should be ruthless about abandoning some marketing actions. You are marketing your business with specific goals in mind, not just for fun. Act accordingly.
