Online Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

What is Online Marketing?

There are many different strategies for small businesses to use when marketing their company online. One strategy is to create a social media account and post regularly. Small businesses can also promote themselves on Facebook and Twitter with targeted ads and various campaigns. Another strategy is to make the most of search engine optimisation. This means optimising the content on one’s site, writing blogs, and using keywords in posts.

Social Media Marketing Strategies

Social media is the most popular form of online marketing. It is the process of using social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to share information with an audience. It can be done by creating posts that are promotional or with content that is entertaining. Social media can be used by companies to advertise their products, maintain relationships with current customers and potential customers, as well as to build brand awareness.

Almost everyone is on social media these days. If you are not, you are missing out on a great opportunity for marketing your business. The best thing about having social media accounts for your business — it won’t cost you a thing! It’s free to create a business account on Facebook, post on Instagram and build brand awareness on Twitter.

Maintaining Your Social Media Accounts

Unlike other social media platforms, Facebook allows you to gain reviews. Do your best to impress your customers to encourage them to leave a positive 5-star review. Let’s face it, many people actually read reviews these days before purchasing a product or visiting a store/restaurant. It’s also important to reply to reviews, both positive and negative, to show your audience that you care about their feedback. The reviews section of your Facebook page is a great way to build trust with your customers.

An attractive Instagram feed with quality content is more likely to gain new followers and potential new customers. Do research into your competitors’ Instagram feeds and take inspiration from other businesses. Some businesses will already have a set of brand guidelines to follow. Brand guidelines include your brand’s colour palette, typefaces and images that depict your visual style. If you don’t have a guide, it’s vital to plan these specifics before posting them all over your social media platforms. Your brand guidelines should tie all aspects of your brand together — logo, website, marketing collateral, social media assets and more. Posting without following a set of brand guidelines can ruin your brand’s identity.

It’s important to stay on top of your posts! For business accounts, we recommend posting once per day. Try creating a social media calendar to help you plan what you’re posting and when to post it. Keep your content exciting by not posting the same thing repeatedly. Your content shouldn’t only promote your brand and products, it should also inform, educate, and entertain your audience. Mix it up with images, videos, and gifs. Finally — don’t forget to hashtag! Stay on top of relevant hashtags that are trending to reach more people like your audience.

Targeted Ads and Various Campaigns

For the past few years, Facebook has been a popular tool for companies to promote their products. This type of online marketing is paid but highly worth it when done right. Companies can use targeted ads to persuade potential customers who have an interest in a certain market, making it more effective than regular advertising. Your ad can be directed to target users of a certain age range, gender, hobbies, interests and more. For example, a lot of car companies have been highly vocal recently on social media because they’re trying to meet the demand from Millennials.

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Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Strategies

In today’s online marketing world, SEO is a necessity to be competitive. With the Google algorithm constantly changing, companies need to stay on top of changes and stay at a top ranking. It is an ongoing fight for businesses to rank higher in search engine results pages.

Website Content

To raise your company’s rank in search engine results, you will need to optimize your website with keywords. If you are not concerned with what your target audience is searching for and you’re only focusing on what Google wants, you’ll never get anywhere. Your job is to make sure that your site page and posts do consist of popular search terms and phrases so that when people Google them, they will find you.

Once you have a list of keywords, include these search terms and phrases in your website’s page titles, meta descriptions, subheadings, content, images, URLs, and link anchor texts.

Blog

It’s no secret that the world of online marketing is ever-changing. Blogging has quickly become a go-to strategy for many companies to promote their brands and services. The blogosphere has evolved from a place where people can share their thoughts to an opportunity for businesses to communicate with their customers.

Having a blog on your website is the easiest way to constantly feed trending keywords onto your website. To make it easy, you can use keywords in the title of your blog and use them strategically placed throughout the article.

Australian Web Hosting and SSL Certificates

Boost your Google ranking even further with an Australian web host, such as DreamIT Host. You will benefit from cheap web hosting plans with free SSL certificates. Not only do SSL certificates improve your SEO, but they are also important for security. They allow websites to recognize your identity with a unique, encrypted link. If you were to use an unsecured connection, anybody who was on the same network as you could be able to see all your information, including credit card numbers. SSL certificates are also important if you are using an e-commerce website or banking site where confidential data needs to be transmitted securely.

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Read more: Getting Started on Basic SEO.