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Up-Scale Your Marketing

There is no shortage of digital marketing options available to businesses today, all offering the potential to increase your website and social media traffic and create meaningful engagement with your target audience. These include:

Social media – creating organic growth using engaging content across multiple channels to bring people to your brand.

Paid advertising – reaching out to new audiences through social media advertising, from entry-level posts through to large-scale Google campaigns.

Website – your shop window to the online world, providing a place to engage and educate users and to advance them through your sales funnel.

The key to success is working out where to start, what to do and what is coming next for your target audience.

Starting small

For small businesses, focusing on sales is a good start. This can be achieved through a small investment of time and resource to generate social media content and some social media advertising. With social media advertising, you can manage your budgets on a week-by-week basis and target the types of people and companies you are trying to reach.

Research the options for yourself and try them first-hand, until you get them right and understand how they work. Although it is faster and easier to use a consultant, it is also an additional spend. There is a lot of support, advice, ideas, case studies and ‘how to..’ guides readily available online. By keeping it organic and starting it yourself you can keep your expenses down.

Question everything

Standing out from the crowd is also important. This can be done by identifying what is considered ‘normal’ and ‘expected’, then considering what you can do differently to stand out.

Question how things are done and ask yourself if the market has changed or needs a change? Platforms such as TikTok and Instagram may have been considered too young for your target market five years ago, however, recently their audience demographics have widened considerably. If none of your competitors are using these platforms, then they may represent great opportunities for your company.

Ask yourself if your brand image sets you apart from your rivals, even if technically you are similar. For example, Apple has great brand perception. They dominate the market because people believe they have the best product, even though there are plenty of similar offerings that carry the same features and/or even more.

Using a digital marketing specialist?

A specialist agency can add value to your marketing by helping to identify:

• What is your offer and USP (Unique Selling Point)?
• What are you currently doing and how well is it performing?
• Who are you trying to reach and why?
• What do you need them to know and how you are currently engaging with them?

You may have an existing marketing strategy; however, a marketing agency should use its skill and ability to deliver improvements, which can often take things in a completely different direction.

Working with a marketing agency can help companies improve their reach, often using a mix of organic growth and paid advertising. They can also advise on improving your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Specialists can also help you create more compelling social content using current trends and engagement insights. For example, videos are increasingly popular and receive higher engagement than images and graphics.

Digital marketing trends for the 20th century

There are big changes in the social world:

• Augmented reality – a great example is IKEA’s app. Users can open the app and scan an area of their living room and virtually place an IKEA sofa in that space, to see how it looks.
• Tik-tok for Business – TikTok is evolving, and its demographics are constantly changing.
• Instagram – the reels video option is growing in popularity. Videos are experiencing higher views than ever before.
• YouTube – YouTube is becoming the business shop window for video content longer than two or three minutes.

Creating videos does not necessarily mean you have to have high-tech expensive equipment – most of us carry smart phones which can capture high-quality videos.

You need to be adaptable, as effective processes are changing rapidly. With many platforms, we are seeing them naturally grow and change, so being adaptable will help give you a huge advantage over your competitors who are not.

How to be successful in the digital world

It is important to understand that a tactic you use one month will not necessarily work the next month. Stay on top of relevant trends and up to date on what the forthcoming things are likely to be. This will give you a ‘first mover’ advantage, boosting your sales and brand awareness.

Avoid resorting to default mechanisms – instead, question how things have been done and why they have been done that way, can they be done better and see what works for you.

Article based on a LinkedIn Live Interview with Lewis Ellis from Hussle Marketing.