Author: Manish Shrestha
July 31st, 2023
0%
No doubt, there’s a lot going on in the world these days which presents some additional challenges to small businesses. The reality of the pandemic, a U.S. election year, and other unique economic factors can certainly impact small businesses in some potentially negative ways. The good news is that you’re not alone; everyone is struggling with many of the same problems and challenges right now.
No one saw any of this coming, and in many ways, we’ve seen nothing like this before in the modern era. Many small businesses don’t know how to respond, and some of these same businesses don’t know how they’ll recover, either. Some of the hardest-hit businesses have included restaurants, resorts, event venues, event management agencies, and travel agencies.
All things being equal, there are still some things that a small business can do to recover from the worst impacts and get things headed back in the right direction.
Don’t panic during tough times. Easier said than done, but still true nonetheless! Whenever you panic, your judgments also tend to be skewed, which really isn’t good for any business. It would be wise to restore yourself to a state of calmness (even during a financial crisis) and analyze everything from an objective standpoint before every making any important business decisions.
Digital marketing already plays an important role in the success of many small businesses, and an effective digital marketing strategy is even more important during these trying times. One unanticipated result of this pandemic is the fact that people are now spending more time online than ever before. Intentional promotion of your brand, and of your associated business offerings, can help you to stay in touch with your existing clients, as well as with your target market. Digital marketing is one of the best ways to infuse your business pipeline with more tangible leads.
If you don’t currently have an online marketing strategy – you need one! And if you do already have a digital marketing push, it’s high time for you to reevaluate it, to ensure that your approach is fresh, current, and relevant to the emerging needs of your market. Focus on growing your online business presence holistically – this obviously includes your PPC and other targeted ads, but it also includes your ongoing social media presence, website content strategy, and all of your other online “touches.” Listen to your current customers and potential prospects, and speak to them where they are right now. And during uncertain times like these which present some additional stress, people expect more effortless communication where your business is concerned. It’s a good idea to keep that fact in mind as you’re looking to improve your website’s UI, UX, design, and overall appearance.
Here are a few of the best strategies which digital marketing agencies are currently implementing towards the success of their small business clients:
Social media is a compelling, effective marketing strategy for small businesses. It allows you to speak directly to your consumers and other promoters of your business. Through social media engagement, you can create many contacts and connections for your business, without necessarily asking for the sale upfront. More than 40% of today’s digital consumers use social networks to research new brands or products when making their purchasing decisions.
Among other things, email marketing can help your buyers and customers to understand what your brand is doing to help address the pandemic crisis. But pandemic considerations aside, email marketing is still one of the most potent marketing strategies for small businesses to leverage. According to the Marketing Association, the ROI in email marketing can be as high as 4400% for companies in the United States. If that number doesn’t get your attention, then you’re simply not paying attention!
Email marketing can be simple to manage (if managed correctly), provides you with complete control over your messaging, and also serves to help build stronger customer relationships. It’s also important to note that email marketing success depends almost entirely upon the tools & software you use, along with who you choose as your email marketing agency partner. The right digital marketing partner can help ensure that your emails will be delivered successfully and that they’ll have a greater chance of actually being opened and read.
Whenever a business chooses to run an email marketing campaign, there’s always this common concern – will people actually open these emails? What will the open rate be? The good news is that there are sound strategies you can follow to encourage more people to actually open the emails you send out.
According to recent surveys, 15% to 25% of marketing emails actually get opened, depending upon your particular industry. In other words, even with a well-kept email list, three out of four people don’t bother to open your emails! And many businesses actually have an open rate of 10% or less. Sound like bad news? Remember, don’t panic! The email marketing professionals at Cibirix are here to help you develop a more successful email marketing campaign!
Traditionally speaking, email marketing usually involves using email to send advertisements and special offers out to your contact list in order to drum up more business and solicit more sales. But email is also a powerful means for building more customer loyalty and trust, and also be used to help raise your brand awareness. Marketing emails aren’t limited to your existing customer database; they can also be sent directly to your website-generated leads, as well. Some strategies for achieving better ROI with your email marketing campaigns include list segmentation, offer personalization, and better leverage of email automation.
Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing are really some of your best online consumer touchpoints. Through effective use of paid search, any business can appear right at the top of the primary search results page by bidding on keywords which are relevant to the user’s search terms. Paid search marketing can deliver reliable, consistent results, and it can also be tweaked up or down to fit the needs of practically any paid marketing budget.
This is a technique of optimizing websites and their specific content to be easily discoverable by searching keywords which are relevant to your website. The phrase “SEO” also explains the method of creating sites that are easier for program indexing software (known as “crawlers”) to find, scan, and then use to create an index of your site.
Content marketing is an absolutely essential marketing strategy centered around creating and sharing content which is seen to be valuable, relevant, helpful, and engaging by your target audience. The right content can really help you to attract and engage more of the users you’d like to entice with your brand, products, and services. Effective content marketing can generate more traffic on your website, produce more social engagement, build more backlinks to your site, and ultimately produce more customers for your business and more followers for your brand.
Regular blog posting is a great strategy for keeping your website content fresh and updated. The content marketing team at Cibirix can partner with you to help publish new blogs on a weekly or monthly basis, and we can also help in the production of engaging long-form comprehensive guides and infographics, too. Our team is trained and experienced in producing effective content for webpages, product pages, blogs, articles, infographics, and much more in terms of the best content marketing for your business.
We’ve highlighted just some of the most effective ways in which digital marketing can bring more customers to your business. Cibirix can help you with some other effective marketing strategies, too. But no matter what you decide to do, if you’ll decide to make digital marketing an important pillar for your overall business success, you’ll be taking one of the most important steps you can make towards making your small business more successful.
In today’s digital world, if your business doesn’t have an effective online presence, you are simply losing customers to your competition, period! Tired of seeing your competitors capture more leads and sales? Then take a moment to connect with the pros at Cibirix today – we’re here to help!
As an SEO Analyst for Cibirix, Pranav Sharma is passionate about performing technical, on-site, off-site optimization and creating effective backlinks for both B2C and B2B business clients. He leverages only the best “white hat” SEO techniques to deliver improved business results for clients, and one of his primary goals is to help businesses make better investments in their websites that will generate better long-term results. In his free time, he enjoys playing cricket, singing, and spending quality time with friends and family.
