Effective digital marketing strategies are essential to the continued existence of many small businesses. Even if promoting your enterprise through digital channels represents uncharted territory for you and your team, there’s no time like the present to brush up on the basics. Furthermore, this isn’t to say that all digital marketing endeavors are equally successful. In fact, it’s hardly unusual for businesses with ample experience in digital marketing to make a variety of missteps. So, when working to bolster your digital marketing game, take care to avoid the following blunders.
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Underestimating the Importance of Social Media
Ignoring social media is something that businesses do at their own peril. After all, it isn’t hard to see why popular social platforms have become an integral part of many enterprises’ digital marketing strategies. Not only are they free to use, they can help bring your brand to the attention of thousands of prospective patrons. Furthermore, they provide potential customers with a direct line to you, thereby ensuring that any questions or concerns are promptly addressed.
So, if your business has yet to fully embrace social media, there’s no time like the present to rectify this mistake. You can start by creating accounts for your brand on the web’s leading social platforms and updating them on a daily basis. Since posts can be reused across multiple accounts, you needn’t necessarily worry about creating original content for each individual platform. (Still, the number of updates you should post per day, as well as the ideal length of these updates, varies from platform to platform.)
Once you’ve established your brand on social media, take care to engage with followers in a courteous and professional manner. Additionally, make sure to be timely in your responses. For example, if you’re presented with a question during normal business hours, make a point of responding within one to three hours. If you receive a significant number of social media queries or wish to craft engaging posts throughout every workday, recruiting a dedicated social media manager may prove to be a smart investment. While you’ll still have final say over everything, this person will be in charge of crafting engaging posts, determining the most opportune times of day to update your various accounts and taking charge on all follower interactions.
Never Updating Your Website
Never updating your business’s website stands to hurt you in a number of ways. For starters, an utter lack of new content ensures that established patrons have no incentive to check back on a regular basis. Secondly, it limits your site’s chances of receiving a favorable ranking from Google and other prominent search engines. When putting together search results, these engines tend to favor sites that are consistently updated over ones that rarely – if ever – receive updates.
You can get on top of this by creating at least one new piece of web content per week. Blogs and feature articles can serve you particularly well in this endeavor. If no one on your team is keen on taking on content creation duties, consider farming this task out to experienced freelance writers. For best results, make sure to utilize keyword integration when creating blogs, articles and other text-based content. This can prove particularly effective for small businesses whose focus is strictly local as opposed to national or international.
Not Keeping Clients in the Know
Both current and prospective patrons should always be kept in the loop about the latest developments regarding your brand. While social media can be a great tool for keeping people updated, it isn’t ideal for every customer. Furthermore, there’s no guarantee that all of your followers are going to see every update you post in their respective timelines.
With this in mind, consider utilizing a dependable bulk text service. This will help ensure that important updates are sent directly to clients, thereby increasing their odds of seeing them.
Digital marketing is crucial to the long-term viability of virtually every small business. However, as is the case with other forms of marketing, some enterprises have a much better aptitude for digital endeavors than others. While luck certainly plays a role in determining a business’s level of success with digital marketing, the proper skills and knowledge can dramatically increase your odds of reaching a broader audience. As such, learning what does – and does not – work is essential for business owners looking to step up their digital marketing game.
About Carson Derrow
