Optimizing digital marketing strategies for small businesses
Effective utilization of digital growth marketing strategies contributes heavily to a business’s ability to grow and reach customers. While this fact is somewhat obvious, the degree to which these marketing strategies are optimized for your particular business plays a big role in how valuable prospective buyers and investors will consider your business to be.
Published 12/16/24
Why Digital Marketing is Important for Small Businesses
In today’s digital-first economy, having a strong online presence isn’t just an option for small businesses—it’s essential for survival and growth. Consider this: 76% of consumers look for a company’s online presence before physically visiting a business, yet surprisingly, 27% of small businesses still don’t have a website. This disconnect represents both a challenge and an opportunity for small business owners.
The digital landscape offers small businesses unprecedented opportunities to compete, grow, and connect with customers. By leveraging strategic digital marketing tools—including websites, social media, email campaigns, and online reviews—small businesses can:
Boost your return on investment (ROI)
There are a lot of stats that expert marketers use when analyzing a marketing campaign, but as a business owner who wants to boost profitability overall and the value of their business, your marketing return on investment (ROI) could be considered one of the most important metrics for you to follow.
ROI refers to the overall return you receive from investing into a strategy, and the strategy that has the best ROI will vary for each business and industry. Making changes to your own marketing strategies is in large part working to maximize your ROI.
With ROI in mind, this article works through marketing strategies that you can analyze and improve. Consider each of the following marketing strategies and tools that follow and ask yourself:
Website & SEO
First and foremost, having a user-friendly website is the cornerstone of your digital presence and is often the first place potential customers visit to learn more about your business once they have heard about it through other means. Did you know that 29% of small businesses don’t have a website even as 85% of customers use the internet to find and discover businesses? Not having a website means missing out on the vast majority of potential customers that exist.
If you already have a website, there are a number of ways you can improve it:
Optimize your SEO:
Evaluate whether the website is “search-engine optimized” (SEO), which is what will determine whether your site ranks well when people look for businesses on Google and other sites. These standards change from time to time – recently, Google updated their own SEO standards to emphasize E-E-A-T, which stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
Utilize calls-to-action (CTAs):
Include CTAs such as “Contact Us,” “Request a Quote,” or “Book a Consultation” invitations throughout the site. This funnels interested customers directly to your services. Put your website in front of someone who has never seen it, and have them act as if they are trying to buy your product or request your services. Have them evaluate how easy it was to navigate and use, and identify “friction points” where people may be getting lost along the way to becoming a customer.
Emphasize accessibility:
Make sure your website is user-friendly, includes accessibility features, is mobile-optimized, and is fast-loading to create a smooth experience.
Blogging
As a part of building your website, creating and maintaining a focused blog is a proven method to establish authority in your industry and drive organic traffic to your website. Regularly publishing high-quality, SEO-optimized blog posts allows you to share valuable information with your audience, addressing their pain points and answering their questions.
Here are some things to consider when establishing or improving your blog:
Focus on SEO:
optimizing your blog’s content for SEO purposes will ensure that your content show up in searches made by the audience you are hoping to reach. Include keywords in titles, meta descriptions in images, and headers. Improve the readability of your article by breaking content into shorter paragraphs, use bullet points, and include visuals so that readers stay engaged.
Create content that solves problems:
you want your content to be useful and answer specific needs – that is what will lead them to read the article in the first place, so use engaging formats like “how-to” guides, checklists, and FAQs.
Promote your blog:
Make sure to do your own work to drive traffic to your blog, and use articles as a way to enhance your other marketing campaigns, such as in newsletters and email marketing campaigns. Seek out other businesses and influencers that can amplify your content and don’t be afraid of using paid promotions to target specific audiences.
Track the blog’s performance:
Monitor metrics like page views, time on page, bounce rate, and conversion rates using tools like Google analytics. Experiment with various calls to action like offering free ebooks or signing up for newsletters, and find out what methods work best for your own audience.
Social Media
Social media platforms are powerful tools for engaging with customers, building brand awareness, and driving sales. One study found that in 2024 46% of customers purchased products directly through social media, which was up from 21% in 2019, and 67% use social media to discover new brands. Younger demographics are skipping search engines altogether and going straight to social media for their answers.
As of 2024, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube were considered the top channels for marketing. At the same time, this can easily change: the most recent example being the large exodus of upwards of 1 million users from Twitter/X to Blusky after the 2024 US presidential election.
Here are some things to keep in mind when looking to optimize your own social media efforts:
Audit your social media performance:
Ensure that branding is consistent across all platforms, and review your analytics on a regular interval to identify content that performs well and platforms that are underperforming. Tools like Meta Business Suite, Google Analytics, or other platform-specific platforms provide you with this data directly.
Refine your target audience:
Consider the audience you have, and determine what subsections of your audience have the highest rate of engagement and conversion. Make plans to tailor content to align with this audience’s expectations on each platform, and continue to refine your approach as you develop targeted campaigns.
Enhance content quality and consistency:
Consistency and quality over quantity should be high priorities. Start using short-form content on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms that support it. In 2023, 56% of marketers said that they would increase their TikTok investments, and 30% of marketers who don’t use short form video yet have plans to do so in 2024.
Make partnerships with small influencers:
69% of consumers said that they trust the recommendations made by influencers. Pair this with the fact that influencers with only 1,000-10,000 followers had engagement rates of 12.4%, and that means that partnerships with smaller influencers are highly targeted, highly efficient marketing investments.
Email Marketing
Email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to nurture relationships with customers: Even though it isn’t as flashy or trendy as social media, email marketing is going nowhere as total email users are projected to rise. The technique also has an average ROI of $36 to $40 for every dollar spent. With a well-segmented email list, you can deliver personalized content directly to your audience’s inbox.
Here are some ways to take your email marketing to the next level:
Personalize emails:
Personalized emails have a 5.7% higher open rate than non-personalized emails. Inserting a customer’s name into a template doesn’t cut it: effective email campaigns utilize different emails for different segments of your customers, all based on data you have collected on their preferences and behavior.
Focus on mobile-friendly design:
2023 was very close to the tipping point where more emails were opened on mobile devices than on a computer. Make sure that your own emails are laid out in such a way that mobile users won’t be pushed away. Using an established email marketing platform makes this a lot easier.
Leverage automation & AI:
Using proven email marketing management platforms will help you automate sending emails, subscriber tracking, and data collection. Writing emails can also be sped up with generative AI. Ultimately GAI is only as good as the individual utilizing it, but it can greatly speed up the process.
Online Reviews
Online reviews have a significant influence on purchasing decisions: in fact, depending on the study and context, 55%, 70%, or even up to 93% of consumers look at online reviews before making a purchase or engaging with a business. Savvy consumers will want to know what your customers, past and current, think about your offerings, and for small businesses a strong reputation can be everything.
93%
of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase.
58%
of consumers would be ready to pay more or travel further to visit companies with good reviews.
Here are a recommendations to optimizing online reviews:
Establish a presence:
First and foremost, make sure you have a presence on review platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, or industry-specific review sites. Create profiles and update any information like address, website, phone numbers, and social media accounts if they are old.
Audit your reviews:
Make a full audit of your reviews and take note of any repeated complaints. Make concrete plans to correct these issues where possible.
Regular monitoring:
Adjust your own marketing operations to keep an eye on reviews and promptly reply to complaints made whenever possible. Don’t stress over negative reviews: Google suggests that a mixture of good and bad reviews seem the most trustworthy to consumers.
Consider replacing reviews on your website with video testimonials:
Compared to simple reviews in text-form, videos of customers discussing why they appreciate your offerings are much more effective in boosting sales. Consider the following stats:
- 2 out of 3 consumers are more likely to purchase something once they have watched a testimonial video
- By changing reviews on a website to video testimonials, conversion rates can increase by 80%.
- In another survey, 62% of consumers said they were more likely to buy a product if they had seen photos and videos of other customers.
Optimizing your digital marketing leads to a better business and higher valuation
Ultimately, making changes for more effective digital marketing prepares your business for growth and boosts your business’s value in the eyes of investors and prospective buyers. Even if selling your business isn’t something on your radar currently, these tips are a starting point towards a better ROI that filters into greater efficiency, and improved profitability for your business overall.Bridge Financial works with business owners who are interested in optimizing their business or preparing their business for a sale. If you are interested in getting help, or even simply exploring your options, sign up for a free consultation.
