Digital Marketing For Start Ups or Small Businesses.

To keep it simple lets go step by step on how you should get started with our digital marketing strategy.

1) Define your marketing channels; Not all social media channels are for your business.

Be where your clients are.

It all depends if your product is a service, new to the market, high ticket sale, or requires people’s traffic.

Now if your product is a service (automobile repairs for example) Google my Business is your place, people can easy locate you and also see your photos and review. The important thing about google my business, is to keep updating photos and asking your current customers to review your product. The more engagement people have with your google my business account the more exposure google will give to your business. Remember that google is a business too, and they want to recommend and show the best to their users. Also Google my business is free to use.

Suppose your product is new to the market. Facebook ads and Pinterest ads are the best places to introduce your product to your target audience. Also, it helps you to understand who is interested in your type of product. When we introduce a product to the market, we assume the target audience, but the data can always surprise us.

Case study

Google ads can be tricky when your product is a high ticket sell (solar panels, air-con or flooring). If you are starting, one lead coming from someone looking directly for your product could be pricy, and it might not convert into a sale. Why? Because Google ads work auctioning a user’s attention for a price, the winner gets the attention of a possible customer; this happens in milliseconds. If your ad shows to the wrong target audience or people looking around but not wanting to buy, you will lose significant money.

The next step is for you to be a step ahead of your clients.

2) Study the money habits of your clients.

We all have money habits, money that we always spend in something specific every day or thing that we buy just because we need to. Been one step ahead of your clients and show what they need before they even think off is the secret to cheap digital marketing with better Returns.

How do we do this? I normally use Google Trends To compare keywords that might be related to the future needs of my clients, for example. While working for a solar company, I launched a campaign that targeted new homeowners. The theory was that if we show people future improvement of their brand new house, and because they just got the house’s mortgage, they will be more willing to spend money than someone who already has a place. I compared the search words for Furniture, garden, new home, solar and real estate.

Estimated how much would be the investment and made the ad show to people looking around for real estate agencies, looking at house prices, furniture companies, or even showing off that they did buy a house. When your home is new, you want the best you can for it and your family; it was a successful campaign for 140 leads in a month (that in the solar industry is quite a lot)
Of course, it did not take less than two weeks, and another company started using the same strategy. Which, for me, means that it works!

3) Video Video Video

Yes, I know it sounds painful, but you need to use Pinterest or Facebook because of your business. Videos about your product are what you need. The idea is to reach more people and get their attention in less than 3 seconds, A quick call to action (buy now button) and a funnel to follow up sale.

People attention span is small and remember you are not the only one showing ads to them. You can make videos yourself depending of your business.

Pexels give you free creatives

Canva can help you some pieces together

But if you want a real good content Fiver can make your life easier. Is a cheap investment for a digital asset that you can keep for years. Some people here can make the creatives and the captions with SEO data for your campaigns.

Your do not have to bee a super hero, some tasks have to be done by someone else.

4) Collect Data

Data is key to the success of your digital campaigns, and these ones take time to be collected, the algorithm learns about your possible target audience and it will always try to give you results. But if we do not feed our current campaigns with accurate contain we might loose the opportunity to talk properly to our own people.

Key Data to collect about your audience:

Gender: To make content related ( If you are non binary it will show too)

Age range: Helps to know how they navigate and process product consumption.

Device used: How people got to see your ad? Mobile or Computer? helps to know how we need to deliver the product to make it easy for them to buy it.

Those three can help you think like your customers a deliver what they want when they want it.

Thanks for getting until this point, to reply to your question, running your own digital marketing for your business could be a challenge but is not impossible. If you still have no money to pay someone else to do this, you can do it yourself.

I will dedicate time of my week to explain channel by channel with as many details as possible so you can be your own digital marketer.

With Love Sarah Machmud.