Digital marketing tips for small businesses

It's hard to standout in the digital space. It's so wide and flooded with competition. For small businesses, it's often hard to compete with the big box brands who have had years to develop name notoriety and brand recognition. Not to mention have massive budgets to work with.

The good news is digital marketing can be done for small businesses.

The one thing small businesses have an advantage on over the big box brands is personalization. What customers (current and potential) want these days more than ever is personalization. It is much easier for small businesses to have that person-to-person communication with consumers because small business owners are often embedded in the community. By comparison, big box brands are in the community, but only by location only. Rarely are they involved in the community.

So, how can small businesses compete in the digital space?

Have a quality website

By quality, this means have a professionally looking site, but also a functioning site. Nothing irritates consumers more than having to wait for a slow website to load. Several studies show consumers wait less than a few seconds for a website to load. Anything beyond five or so seconds is a negative customer experience and that's where you first lose consumers.

Once a site is loaded, does it look professional? Social media is a great way to generate leads to a website. But, it's the website that provides validation to a business to a potential customer. Think of it as social media is the front-facing of your house, the website is the living room, with the corresponding rooms of the house being the different sections of your site.

If a site is too complicated to navigate, that's a turn off for consumers. Make what they're looking for easy to find.

A site with all sorts of graphics and moving parts is great and all, but all those elements can hurt website loading speed. In many cases, simplicity is the best way to go because it doesn't hurt website speed nor makes the navigation experience easier and more effective.

Be on social media

Whether you like social media or not, being on social media is a must in today's digital world.

According to an April 2021 survey by Pew Research, 70 percent of Americans are using social media on a monthly basis. Another study, this one by statista.com, showed that people with a social media account has grown 38.6 percent between 2017 to 2021. That is expected to grow an estimated another 10-15 percent over the next five years. (Read more here)

Simply put, consumers are on social media. So should small businesses.

Couple pointers to keep in mind.

• Be active on social media. Post consistently, engage with consumers.
• Find the platform that best fits your target demographic(s). You don't have to be on every social media platform.
• Social media is a fraction of your marketing strategy. Shouldn't be entire strategy.

Be transparent

This is one of the biggest ones in any marketing strategy, let alone a digital one. Be clear and concise in what you're communicating to your present customers and your potential ones. Understand what your customers need from you and what you need from them. Concentrate on not what product/service you're selling, but why.

Author Simon Sinek once said, "People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it and what you do simply proves what you believe."