Around this time, a few years ago, most business owners depended heavily on traditional marketing, which was quite the rave. As digital marketing was introduced, traditional advertising became more expensive and ineffective.
Now, digital marketing is the lifeline for any local business that wants to survive in this era. So, why should a local business adopt digital marketing?
importance of digital marketing for local businesses
- Cost-effective
- Precise targeting
- Valuable insights
- Increased ROI
- Enhanced customer engagement
- High conversion rate
- SEO
- Global and greater reach
- Brand and product promotion
- Builds reputation
- SEA
- Social network marketing
For businesses that are interested in adopting digital marketing, we will be discussing five (5) essential strategies that you need to adopt to succeed in digital marketing.
Top 5 Key Digital Marketing Strategies
- Master Local SEOfor Maximum Visibility
- Embrace the Power of Social Media Engagement
- Run Targeted Online Ads for Precise Reach
- Leverage the Magic of Email Marketing
- Partner with Local Influencers for Authentic Promotion
Master Local SEO for Maximum Visibility
All e-commerce platforms need SEO for premium visibility. The algorithm of most search engines favours listings that are properly optimised for SEO.
For example, if you own a store in Yorkshire, you can contact an SEO agency in Yorkshire to put your business on Google Business Profile with accurate information, compelling and quality pictures, and positive customer reviews. This will improve your lead generation and brand awareness.
Accurate information involves providing the correct physical address, phone number, operating hours, price of goods, shipping fee, etc. For captivating pictures, you can pay for professional product photography.
Also, positive reviews will not just encourage your customers to buy from you, but will also make your search engines recommend your products to customers looking for the products you sell or the services you offer.
If you wish to establish your legitimacy or enhance your visibility and credibility, then you may want to consider putting up your business on local citations and directory listings. This usually serves as a legitimate online reference.
Embrace the Power of Social Media Engagement
Just in case you don’t know how powerful social media is, allow me to let you in on the importance of social media:
- Direct communication
- Customer engagement
- Building customer relationship and loyalty
- Tailored offerings
- Real-time interaction
- Attracts customers
- Customer feedback
- Understand customer’s choice
Examples of social media platforms that you can promote your business on:
- Nextdoor
- YouTube
- TikTok
- Telegram
- Snapchat
- Kuaishou
- Sina Weibo
- X (Twitter)
- Quora
- Discord
- Twitch
- Tumblr
- Threads (by Instagram)
- Mastodon
- Bluesky
After you’ve established your business on any of the above platforms, the next step is to create engaging content tailored to your local audience. This is very important for the following reasons:
- Increased brand awareness
- Website Traffic
- Leads and sales
- Increase in conversion
- Valuable insights into audience’s behaviour
- Allows strategy refining
Seeing the above-listed benefits, you can try to increase your social engagement through:
- Contests
- Asking questions
- Observe engagement times
- Add visuals
- Post promotions
- Reward contributions
- Discuss trending topics in your industry
- Prompt response to comments and messages
- Quality videos
Run Targeted Online Ads for Precise Reach
There are some social media platforms that allow you to run targeted online ads to reach users based on online behaviour, location and interests. This makes your ads highly targeted, measurable, interactive and cost-effective.
On the other hand, if not managed properly, ad blockers, high competition, short attention span, and ad fatigue can affect the success of your online ads.
You can run ads for your business on the following platforms
- Google ads
- Facebook ads
- Snapchat advertising
- TikTok
- YouTube etc.
However, it’s not enough to run these ads, you have to set clear campaign goals, track the results of those campaigns and optimise your ad spend. This will help you focus your resources and efforts, measure your campaign success, and make sure that your campaign is efficient.
Leverage the Magic of Email Marketing
Email marketing, when used correctly, can be quite magical in yielding results. Some of these are:
- Cost-effectiveness
- Retention
- Improved customer loyalty
- Personalised communication
- Increased brand awareness
- Word-of-mouth advertising
- Personalised to audience’s needs
Hence, if you wish to achieve all or any of the above, you will have to build an email list. Ways through which you can build an email list include:
- Website signups
- In-store promotions
- Social media initiatives
- Leverage social media
- Offer incentives
- Create popups
- Craft CTAs
- Run a contest
- Manual reach out
- Referral program
- Giveaways
In building your email list, you can craft personalised emails with valuable information such as exclusive deals, expertise, and local events.
Partner With Local Influencers for Authentic Promotion
You can partner with celebrities, local influencers, and community leaders to genuinely promote your business. Please note that the keyword is ‘genuine’, which means that you should not contract people to promote anything for you if you intend to be fraudulent.
Also, not all influencers should represent you; you should go with influencers that represent the target audience that you want and whose reputation is worthy enough for your brand.
For instance, you can’t hire or work with an influencer who is infamous or someone who does not have a loyal following. You have to go with someone whose trust and belief are credible.
That way, when they endorse your products or services, they will be highly valued.
If you don’t have the money to pay the influencers, you can collaborate with them for all or any of the following:
- Marketing reach
- Product reviews
- Sponsored posts
- Co-hosted events
- Local awareness and interests.
In Summary,
The article will not be complete if I don’t remind my readers that following the digital marketing strategies highlighted in this article is very beneficial to their businesses.
Also, try not to adopt other people’s methods; find your unique approach. Where you are not able to do it on your own, you can hire a professional or an agency well-versed in digital marketing.
