Digital marketing is not a new concept. I do realize it might be new to you but certain digital marketing channels have been around for years. Gone are the glory days of banner ads and email blasting. Though these marketing platforms are still used today to some extent they are not your only options.
Digital marketing is a rapidly growing industry that is constantly evolving. What worked for your business yesterday might not work today. If the COVID virus has taught us anything when it comes to business is the importance of not only being online but actually having a brand presence.
What I mean by a brand presence is having ways for your business to not only get its products and services in front of your targeted audience but a way to generate traffic and facilitate leads and sales.
If you only retain one thing from this article, remember this: The future of digital marketing lies in the hands of small business owners that are willing to take risks and try new things. The more you experiment, the more you will learn about your audience and what they want from your business.
The following content will cover digital marketing topics and tips to help your small business grow in 2022:
- How to start with digital marketing?
- What is the best marketing channel for my business?
- How big of a budget do I need?
- What are some of the most important digital marketing tips?
Table of Contents
How To Start with Digital Marketing?
Well, let’s first define what digital marketing is: Digital marketing is a broad term that encompasses different marketing channels and techniques. It can be used for advertising, branding, targeting, and other purposes.
I will go over some of these digital marketing channels in a minute but before starting any type of marketing you want to define who your audience is and will want to create a strategy for the type of marketing you plan on doing.
Are you trying to promote and pique interest in your brand? Is the goal to generate leads and sales. Having a detailed strategy will pay dividends in the success of the marketing campaign.
With that being said you will need to educate yourself on the different marketing channels available to you.
Digital Marketing Channels For Your Small Business
There are multiple digital marketing channels but for all intended purposes let’s cover the most used channels for small businesses.
SEO Marketing: This is the process of improving your website’s rank in search engine results pages (SERPs) e.g.Google.
Social Media Marketing: This is the process of promoting a product or service through social media websites. Sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, and more.
Email Marketing: This is the process of sending emails to customers or clients to promote products or services.
Paid Advertising: This is the process of paying to have your ads displayed on websites, social media sites, and search engines. This is typically done through a text ad, banner images, or video.
Now that you have learned about the types of channels you will need to figure out what one is best for your type of business. Let me state some channels perform better for certain types of business.
For example, I would not recommend tons of social media marketing for B2B businesses. You will want to have a social media presence but from my past experiences, your money would be better spent on SEO and paid ads.
How Big Does My Marketing Budget Need to Be?
Honestly, this is hard to answer for multiple reasons. For one it’s subjective to how fast you want to grow, the amount of competition in your industry, and the overall objective of what you are trying to achieve with your marketing campaign.
My suggestion to you is to do research on your competition. This will give you a better understanding of what platforms could work for your business. Knowing the marketing platforms they are using can help you come up with an estimated budget. I will say you will want enough money to be able to appropriately test and adjust marketing as needed.
Small Digital Marketing Tips
Tip number one: don’t be afraid to fail. You won’t learn what works and what doesn’t unless you are willing to take risks.
Tip number two: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. You will want to make sure to protect yourself from future updates and changes in the digital marketing industry and one way to do that is to generate income from a couple of marketing channels.
Tip number three: Embrace technology, like I said before this industry is always evolving so be open to learning new techniques and keeping up with the latest trends within the industry. One thing about the digital marketing industry: there are a lot of tools that help streamline the process. Heck, I used an AI writing tool to help me come up with the concept of this article.
Tip number four: This will be the last tip but it’s extremely important, and I have seen many small businesses fail to do this, and that tracks your results. After all the whole point of doing marketing is to promote your business and gain new customers. If you’re not tracking your results, you don’t know what is working or not.
I hope you find this article useful and wish you well in your future marketing endeavors.
