Ignore Digital Marketing at Your Peril
Small businesses have never faced as much competition as they do today. They’ve never had so many powerful marketing resources, either. Fighting the first fact by taking full advantage of the second is a must for all small business owners. A strong online presence may once have been a mere bonus, a nice extra for companies that were already thriving, but those days are over. Now, any business with a weak online presence has stymied its own growth. Smart digital marketing allows small businesses to punch above their weight, going up against older and sometimes significantly larger competitors in a way they never could before. The earliest marketing steps include crafting and implementing effective SEO strategies, perfecting website quality, and other foundations of marketing.
SEO Basics for Small Business Owners
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a way to help potential customers find your business. A business owner who ignores it will have to rely on word of mouth and random passers-by while their competition snags everyone who uses search engines to find what they want. Optimizing for search is also one of the most cost-effective marketing methods. Though keyword selection requires research, continuing improvements are less labor intensive. Research does go more smoothly with specialized software. Some tools require significant time investments to use skillfully. Whether you learn how to do it yourself or rely on a Vancouver digital marketing agency, polishing your SEO game is like having an internet marketing team that works around the clock every day of the year.
These are some foundational aspects of high-performance SEO:
- Local SEO
- Website loading speeds
- Website user experience
- High-quality backlinks and useful internal links
- Technical SEO for behind-the-scenes search engine crawlability
- Compelling, high-value content
A Website That Converts
Your website has the potential to be one of your most powerful tools. Without extra effort, though, it will function as little more than a spot where people who already know about your business can find its contact information. Functionality is the first thing to get under control. Even if loading time is nearly instant, there are other issues that frustrate potential customers to the point of bouncing from your site, never to return again. Broken links and low-quality content make it look like business owners don’t care about how they present themselves to customers. Making visitors hunt to find basic information is another common error. Customers should also receive guidance on what to do next, whether that means signing up for a newsletter, scheduling a consultation, or making a purchase. Make sure your website provides an equally good mobile experience, too. The majority of internet traffic worldwide comes from mobile devices.
Other Ways to Market Your Business Online
Website quality and supercharged SEO are the two things to lean into first. Marketing avenues don’t end there, though. Digital marketing is a massive, complex array of interconnected paths for reeling in customers. Options include multiple social media platforms, email newsletters, Google ads, and more. Don’t try to tackle them all at once. That might make sense for huge international corporations, but a small business owner benefits from picking one or two platforms that are popular among their target audience. Getting started might seem overwhelming. Starting with small, well-defined steps makes it easier—and if you’re too busy running your business, you can rely on digital marketing professionals to handle it for you.
