Online promotion for small businesses: A 5-step marketing plan

It can be difficult for a small business to stand out in a crowded market when there are established leaders. There are many opportunities available online for you to up your marketing game without going into debt, even though you may not have the cash or resources to promote your company as aggressively as they do. We at Webworkz think that any business can succeed if a clear objective and effective marketing plan are implemented—and it doesn’t have to break the bank.

Here are five marketing tactics you can implement right away to assist your small business to develop a strong, loyal customer base and brand awareness.

1. Improve your SEO

Paying for Google ads might not be something you want to do. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make an effort to appear higher in search results; SEO is the most effective strategy for doing so. The easier it is for people to find you, the higher your ranking will be. While there are many different online SEO techniques you can use, there are two crucial SEO strategies to help you market your business more successfully.

Local SEO

By enhancing your local SEO approach, you may quickly become more visible in local search results. You can achieve this by adding your business to directories like Apple Maps Connect, Google My Business, and Bing Places for Business. These tools, which are available for free, are designed to assist organizations in managing their online presence across the various search engines and maps.

Traditional SEO

While local SEO focuses on a specific geographical area, traditional SEO is for any business looking to expand its digital reach and rank higher in organic search results. This is becoming more important as e-commerce gains traction in a variety of industries around the world. This type of SEO is all about improving the discoverability of your website, product listings, and general content. Using effective title tags and meta descriptions, conducting keyword research, writing ALT text for images, and including a clickable phone number on your contact page are all examples of SEO best practices that can help boost your content marketing efforts.

2. Use social media

A third of consumers said they will look at a brand’s social media presence before doing any form of business with them. Nearly 80% of Kiwis are frequent users of social media. Nevertheless, despite the fact that social media marketing has a huge potential to help small businesses expand, many of them ignore it. Social media is a tremendous powerhouse of visually appealing content that people are continuously interacting with and sharing. It provides rapid access to the entire world. Without spending a fortune on paid advertisements or employing an influencer to promote your company, you can create a social media presence.

We advise you to set up a free business profile on any social media network your target market utilizes and to start publishing pertinent, helpful material in your specialized market. This can be Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. You will gain organic followers who may eventually turn into clients when consumers recognise your postings as informative and interesting content rather than just blatant advertising.

3. Start email marketing

Email marketing performs better than almost all other marketing strategies in terms of ROI. Email is a flexible tool that every small business should use for anything from delivering newsletters, special seasonal offers, and promotions to offering customer service. The best aspect is that it is really inexpensive and completely customizable. For a fraction of the price of other marketing channels, it is possible to target and distribute pertinent emails that are valuable to particular clients. An important role your website can have is to collect email subscribers.

4. Start a blog

Business blogs are a powerful tool for increasing brand trust and authority. They may take longer than other marketing strategies to show results, but they are unquestionably a great investment for your company. By sharing your knowledge in blogs that are optimized for your industry, you provide search engines with more justification to list you on results pages. By reaching a wider audience, this also aids in domain authority building and traffic generation for your website.

In other words, the more people that find you, the more likely it is that they will become clients. This is because higher search engine rankings will attract more users to your website. Let’s pretend, for illustration, that you own a photographic studio. If people looking for a wedding photographer in Auckland find your blog article on the “Top 10 photographic spots in Auckland,” they might decide to hire you if they were impressed with the pictures you took and your in-depth knowledge of the subject.

5. Sign up for online communities and forums

Online discussion forums are places where individuals discuss and communicate about a specific topic. Select a forum where you may network with potential clients, take part in debates, and actively provide your advice and viewpoints on issues pertaining to your business. However, be sure you are abiding by the guidelines by only marketing your business in appropriate settings. This is a great approach to networking with new clients, establishing connections, and exposing them to your services at the precise moment when they are required.

Final comments

Word of mouth is one of the most credible ways to attract loyal customers. When people start talking positively about your company to their friends, brand awareness grows exponentially. The marketing strategies above adhere to that simple principle while adapting it to today’s digital world in which people check their email, social media apps, and Google multiple times per day. There is so much you can do to market your business for free or inexpensively on the internet. Some of these methods will take time to produce results, but when they do, you can be confident that the leads they generate are genuine prospects looking to make a purchase.