Our Top 5 Digital Marketing Tips for Beginners

May 15, 2020

Author: Deepika Sulekh

Reading Time: 3 minutes

So you’ve made the leap and started your business, but now you need to get yourself in front of as many eyes as possible. How do you get the word out there?

Did you know that according to Google, 80% of today’s consumers rely on the web to find local businesses? If you want to really reach your customers, you have to be where they are: online.

Here are our top 5 digital marketing tips to help you get started:

1. Claim your business listing on Google

Having a business listing on Google makes it so much easier for people to find you when they’re searching the internet or a map. They don’t have to sift through search results, your Facebook profile or the Contact section of your website to find where you are or how to get in touch with you. Because let’s be honest… unless someone really wants your specific offering, they’re not going to search that hard!

You should also encourage your customers to review your services on your Google Listing. Seeing positive reviews and interactions are very helpful for attracting new customers, building instant trust, and getting a higher rating in the search results. Win win!

2. Content is always king

This is not ground-breaking or new, but it is so often overlooked. You need high quality content to get your brand message out there, engage your target audience, and reach the customers who are searching for you.

A good way to get content out is a blog, by having a blog (we wrote a blog about that too), you keep refreshing your website with relevant and sharable content, which does wonders for SEO and building your brand integrity.

Unfortunately, this gets overlooked for a reason. It’s hard to consistently produce content, let alone high value content. Planning is crucial here, schedule your content creation into bite sized chunks and try to release small amounts of content often.

3. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly

Mobile-first is key. Most of your website visitors are using their phones to browse the internet, and this is a big audience you shouldn’t ignore. Start with mobile and build from there, if you’re not mobile-friendly, you’ll lose out. No one has time to deal with a website that can’t display well on a mobile.

Now, you may be thinking… “but didn’t I hear people are more likely to convert on desktop, not mobile?” Well, yes; that is true, globally desktops convert at around 3.82% and mobile devices convert at just 1.32%. But don’t be fooled. Typically, people require 7 exposures to a brand before making a purchase. So, it’s very likely any customer that makes a purchase on a desktop has at some point viewed your website on their mobile. But if your site was unusable or uneasy on their phone, they will not return at all.

4. Be on social media

You can’t afford not to be.

It’s effective, relevant, and won’t cost you (unless you advertise). It doesn’t have to be difficult, there are many simple social media strategies you can use, even if you just start by posting regularly. Be frequent and consistent in your posts and engage with your followers. Social media is a great medium if you don’t have a big marketing budget but have got a lot to say.

Tip: If you’ve just started and don’t have a big following, you can advertise to target lookalike or custom audiences on Facebook.

5. Paid Advertising

This one is probably the most important, whether you’re new, have a lot of competition, need to reach a new audience, or just want to get the word out there – paid advertising is where you will likely get the fastest results. You can specifically target the audience you want as your potential customers (from demographics to life events to interests), it’s affordable (you set the budget) and measurable (see exactly how many people saw your ad, clicked and converted). You can even re-market to people who have already visited your website to remind them why they need your product or service.

Paid advertising reaches your customers wherever they are: on a phone, in a specific location, searching for something, a specific social media channel, the list goes on.

Key Takeaways

Your customers are seeing digital content all the time, so give them something new, different, and unique to you – something they want to share!

People want to feel a certain way and if you associate your brand with what they’re looking for, they’ll respond to that. Beyond your business, digital marketing helps people see a consistent brand message of your business, whether they’re on your website, social media, or seeing an ad.

If you’ve ticked all the above boxes, you can make a little go a long way in generating new revenue streams for your business and building a strong customer base.