Small and medium enterprises (SME) often face challenges with marketing their products and services to new customers. Shoestring budgets, lack of awareness, and reluctance to explore new avenues – these are some of the reasons that make it difficult for SMEs to lookout for effective ways of marketing their brands.
With the popularity of the internet and mobile phones, online marketing has emerged as one of the most affordable avenue for SMEs. Consumers today no longer reach for the local directory to get information about something they want; they seek out information on-the-go while being connected to the internet. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that SMEs put in the effort to understand how they can leverage the power of internet to boost their marketing efforts. In the below-mentioned points, we will take a look at some important tips that SMEs can put to use as a part of their online marketing strategy.
· Build a Well-Designed and Seamless Website
There are more than one billion websites on the World Wide Web. Out of these one billion sites, only a few hundred are really popular with the users. Therefore, it is important for you to develop a website which gets noticed by the users.
In today’s digital age, your website is the first point-of-contact between your brand and the target customer. A professional and aesthetic website will likely leave a good first impression on the users. Therefore, you should definitely put in the effort and resource to develop a website that will portray your brand in a positive way.
You can start off by acquiring a unique domain name. There are numerous service providers that offer domain name services; you can choose one which offers quality services at affordable costs.
As we mentioned before, your website will play an important role in forming the perception about your brand among the users. It becomes all the more important to put in the best effort in designing the website. You can take the help of a reputed web designing company to help you out with this, but it is important that you have a hands-on approach in its development.
You need to know what information will be posted on the website and where it will be placed. You need to ensure that your contact information is up-to-date and a user can easily find what he is looking for.
· Optimize your Website for Search Engines
Even if you have the best products and services to offer to the consumers, you run the risk of remaining ‘unknown’ or ‘undiscovered’ on the World Wide Web if your website is not optimized for the search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of boosting the ranking of a website on the search engine results page (SERP).
SEOs research on what keywords or phrases users are typing in the search engines to find your business or the competitors. For example, if you are the owner of a restaurant that specializes in Italian cuisine in London, potential customers might use the keywords “Italian Restaurants in London”, “Best Italian Restaurant in London”, “Top Italian Restaurants in London”, etc. or phrases like, “Where can I get good Italian food in London”, “Want to have Italian food for lunch”, etc.
An SEO service provider will analyze these keywords and optimize your site in such a manner that it has a higher probability of ranking on the first page of search results.
There are a number of SEO Companies in Toronto that provide affordable costs to SMEs. Before choosing an SEO company for your business, ensure that you have done the required research about the credentials and reputation of the company. It is very important to choose an SEO provider who understands your requirements and creates a tailor-made plan for you.
· Know your Potential Customers
After you have put in the hard effort of building a website and optimizing it for the search engines, it is important to monitor its performance. You need to know the demographics of people who are visiting your site. The best way you can get complete information about your users is through Google Analytics.
Google Analytics will give you detailed insight into the age-group of your users, and which pages of your website are getting the maximum traffic.
It is very important to get in-depth knowledge about your users as it will help you in getting a clear understanding about the performance of the website along with the areas where you need to put in a lot more effort.
· Leverage the Reach of Social Media Platforms
Social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc have membership that runs into hundreds of millions. As a small business owner, these websites offer you a great platform for connecting with your customers and peers.
Nowadays, most SEO companies also provide social media marketing services to their clients; therefore, if you have already hired an SEO company, they will take care of social media engagement. However, it is important that you invest a bit of time in understanding how you can use social media platforms to your advantage.
Setting up a company page on popular social media sites is easy; however, getting the desired results from your social media endeavor entails a lot of hard work and patience. You need to connect with users on an individual level and share your knowledge and insight with them.
As we mentioned before, users nowadays make a buying decision after they have diligently done the research to know the ins and outs of a product or a brand. This is where social media engagement helps a great deal. When you have taken a proactive approach to connect with potential consumers through social media, it builds a sense of trustworthiness and reliability among them, which is an important factor in buying decisions.
Social media platforms can help you in learning more about your area of operation. By being a part of online discussions, you can understand the challenges and future opportunities for your business. As an SME, you will have a lot to learn from the market leaders of your industry, and social media websites provide the perfect platform for staying in touch with what is happening in your industry.
· Experiment with Paid Search
The fact about SEO and social media campaigns is that it takes a fair amount of time before you start to see the results. You can publicize your website by displaying paid advertisements on Google SERP. Paid searches will put your website on the top, or on the side panel of SERP, but you will need to shell out a major part of your marketing budget on it. However, if you are targeting the right keywords, the ROI on Pay-per-Click (PPC) can be pretty lucrative. Therefore, we advise you to give PPC a chance, and monitor the results closely. If you feel that it is bringing a lot of users to your site, then you should definitely make it an integral part of your marketing strategy. However, if it doesn’t perform as planned, you can prioritize other marketing strategies and pay more attention to them.
These were a few tips on online marketing for small and medium enterprises. We hope that this article gives you a better understanding of the importance of online marketing in today’s digital age and the immense opportunity it has to offer to all of us.
