There’s a good reason why big businesses spends millions on marketing each year. They are noticing a distinct improvement in the bottom line by shifting to online marketing. They understand the importance of a well-designed site, great content, and friendly social media platforms. The world, as far as they are concerned, has become a digital marketplace.
Ironically, while this is happening many SMBs have not realized that we are now living in a world where the desktop is not the latest and greatest thing. Nor is it the laptop or notebook. We are way beyond that early stuff. Instead, more and more consumers are simply relying on smartphones and tablets to shop and organize their life. In fact, with the growing trend in wearable tech, even these may be eclipsed as popular devices.
To this day, many SMBs still try to operate brick-and-mortar operations without also building up a strong online presence. It’s ironic because the world is in the midst of a full-throttle digital revolution while many small businesses are still asking the all-important question: what is digital marketing? There is still doubt, hesitation, even fear of participating in the digital revolution.
Consumers are digitally wired to help take your business to the next level. As for the cost of doing business, creating an online presence is an inexpensive way to grow a business. Compare, for example, the cost of building a physical store versus building a virtual store, or compare the cost of hiring salespeople versus using paid traffic to get leads to a high-converting landing page? In both cases, the operating costs are far less and the sales exponentially higher.
How do you join the digital revolution if you are a late-adopter?
Start With a Website
Your website is your foundation. While many SMBs do have websites, they are outdated—poor design, poor SEO, and poor usability. They may not even have a phone number or email address for potential customers to contact them. What’s more they are not ready to handle the vast number of people who are shopping with mobile devices. It’s estimated that 1 out of 4 SMB websites can’t even be found on the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
One reason that SMBs quote for not keeping their websites up to par is the excuse that it is too expensive to hire a designer. It’s an excuse because it is possible to develop a fast-loading, responsive using Content Management Systems (CMS). These can be designed inexpensively or you can even learn how to do it yourself.
Here are the top 3 CMS choices worth looking into to build a great website:
1. WordPress. This is the most popular choice. A barebones WordPress site can be set up in five minutes, with numerous free or paid skins to choose from. If you visit a place like themeforest.net, you can build a formidable website. One that not only looks stunning but that is also optimized to be user-friendly, too.
2. Joomla. This is a little harder to setup, but it can be customized into a complex website.
3. Drupal. This is the third most popular choice because it does require some coding skills to set up properly. Thus, it is a developer’s choice CMS.
The way to get traffic to your website is through Search Engine Optimization (SE0), which brings you organic traffic from the search engines and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, which brings you paid traffic from the search engines.
In an article entitled What is the difference between SEO and PPC? Alex Chris, suggests, “Which method can bring more traffic to your web site, SEO or PPC? SEO (organic traffic) is more than PPC traffic so if you can manage to rank your web site for the keywords you want, you will get much more traffic than paying for those keywords. This is because when you are in one of the top 5 positions (according to statistics the majority of search traffic visits one of the top 5 web sites) you can expect to have a continuous flow of traffic 24×7 without having to pay anything (the actual volume of traffic depends on how popular a keyword is).”
You can supplement income from your current line of products by using affiliate marketing. Reaching out to customers and building a relationship should be an intrinsic part of your business, and you can do this with email marketing.
Develop A Social Media Network
Although your website may be optimized to get a high volume of search engine traffic and you may even be using paid traffic, it’s still a good idea to develop a social media presence. This is a way for customers, partners, and vendors to develop a relationship with your business.
While there are numerous options available, a short list will include Facebook, Twitter, Google +. LinkedIn, Pinterest, Hubpages and Reddit. Each has its own particular way of developing a significant profile, with a different marketing approach. For instance, Facebook is a good way to interact with the general public while LinkedIn is the best way to develop business relationships.
Ideally, you should write a blog, which can be connected to your website. The fresh content on your blog can then be shared on your social media platforms.
