One of the most difficult challenges any small to medium business faces is how to manage an effective digital marketing programme on a tight budget, while successfully attracting new customers to the brand and extending customer lifetime value. With limited time and even less resource, the savviest marketers will think closely about their strategy, realising that an element of trial and error will likely lead to the best results. But the real question is: what areas should you be prioritising?
Social media
Aside from paying for promoted posts, social media is potentially the most cost effective and powerful resource for any SME. It enables businesses to build their brand identity to a largely responsive community of users, while enabling them to share content and promote their service in a more organic way. Social is also an important outlet for increasing consumer trust and provides a useful platform for customer relations. And if you're looking to make a small investment to increase traffic, then paid advertising tactics can really pay off. Any company trying to keep digital marketing costs down is missing a serious opportunity if they don’t yet have a presence on social media. If this is you – then act now and set up some profiles! It’s important to think about this in the long term – internal resource will need to be dedicated to keep social media activities (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – whatever channels you have a presence on) constantly ticking over as well as which platforms are right for your customer base.
Email marketing
Ok so you’re a small company, but any good business person knows that the only way to expand its customer base is to keep hold of the existing ones. Email marketing is a great way to boost repeat business by offering tailored offers to individual customers. In a marketing report last year, 73% of marketers believe that email is core to their business due to its effectiveness and 69% of users claim email is their preferred method of communication with a brand. These numbers don’t lie – if you’re not keeping in touch with your existing customer base, then you can forget about growing. And most importantly, it’s an extremely cost effective marketing strategy.
Content is king
You’ve built your site so that consumers can buy your product, but does that really give your potential customers an idea of what you stand for as a brand? The answer to this is no and that is why content is king. Build a dedicated page on your site that is designed to offer unique content that visitors to your site will want to read. This way, your product seems less about sales and more about serving the needs of the customer, something that is a powerful asset to SMEs looking to organically drive revenue. Combine carefully curated content with beautiful imagery and let it tell the story of your brand. If you get this right, the customers will come and they’ll probably tell their friends too.
Invest in mobile
As mobile device adoption increases, ease of use improves and consumer habits incorporate far greater spontaneity than even two years ago. British consumers now more than ever make last minute decisions and that is because they are doing more and more tasks on the move. That includes shopping, booking a holiday or a restaurant or even arranging their house to be cleaned. Investing in mobile is undoubtedly a more expensive method of reaching your consumer audience, but the business that doesn’t have this as an outlet or an optimised mobile experience will likely fall behind its competitors.
Build an app
This is largely a continuation from your decision to invest in mobile, but building a core app base could be the key to driving downloads through a variety of different channels as well as achieving your target CPI (Consumer Price Index). Tracking app activity is vital, so implementing an SDK (Software Development Kit) into your app to track performance will be key in knowing what initiatives are driving revenue. App content should also be tailored and –if possible – exclusive. The consumer mobile market is the biggest driver of new business in the UK. It may take some investment, but for an SME or even larger company, it’s an investment that will pay off as the lifetime value of customers using your native mobile apps is higher than via the web as you can be more intimate with what you offer.
Use free tools for SEO purposes
It’s unquestionable that digital marketers must spend considerable amounts of time to identify what their audience is searching for online. Search is not a static concept, however. Indeed, digital marketers need to adapt and monitor what works and what doesn’t. Again, this is largely about trial and error. Free tools such as Google Analytics allow marketers to keep track on their performance while granting them the ability to adapt their approach where necessary. If you’re struggling, just keep in mind that keywords must correspond to ROI. Think about what your users will be typing into search engines when researching what your brand offers and if necessary, put yourself in the consumer’s shoes to find the answer.
Keep it local
If you’re just growing and need to build an initial audience, then target a local community first and then expend when you have a bigger budget to play with. As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Google.
Collaborate with your peers
A successful tactic for many SMEs is to join forces with a brand within a similar space or that is offering a service that fits well with your brand. Collaborate with businesses that are in the same position as yours and incentivise customers with joint promotions, vouchers and tailored offers that will help to build your brand.
Don’t be dull
This seems to be the most obvious point in the world, but it’s the one most new brands completely forget because most are overly focused on performance. Remember to create a buzz about your brand, talk about the exciting things you are doing at every opportunity, and have fun! Like children picking up on emotions from their parents, your customers will do the exact same. If you send out positive vibes, then you’ll receive them right back.
By Joe Steele, CEO of Bookatable.co.uk.
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