About 20% of small businesses fail within their first year. By the end of the fifth year, about half of these businesses will fail. Instead of joining that pack, consider using online marketing to give your business the boost it needs.

10 Online Marketing Tips to Help Your Business Take Off

With a digital marketing strategy, you can stand out and draw in customers online. You can generate brand awareness, trust, and loyalty over time. As you continue marketing your small business, you can retain long-time customers.

Your ROI will grow as a result!

Want to set your business up for success? Use these 10 digital marketing tips!  With these tips, you can avoid becoming part of a disappointing statistic.

Set your business up for long-term growth with these tips today.

1. Know Your Goals

Before you start using these online marketing tips, it’s important to consider your goals. Otherwise, you’ll fail to choose the digital marketing strategies you need. By establishing your goals ahead of time, you can build a plan to accomplish those goals.

Make sure your goals are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-Driven, Timely). For example, maybe you want to boost website traffic by 20% this quarter. Maybe you want to acquire 20 new leads a week.

Once you establish your goals, set your key performance indicators for each one. You can track:

• Unique website visitors
• Dwell times
• Social media followers
• Form submissions
• Cost per acquisition
• Phone calls
• Social media likes
• Blog comments
• Bounce rates
• Clickthrough rates
• Email open rates
• Social media shares

Attach a few KPIs to each of your SMART goals. Then, use these tips to achieve your goals this year!

2. Research Your Target Audience

Before you can create content, ads, or marketing messages, you need to understand your customers. Otherwise, you’ll fail to create content with their needs and wants in mind!

About 96% of the people who visit your website aren’t ready to make a purchase. With high-quality, personalized content, you can attract and engage customers. In order to personalize your content, you need a better understanding of those customers.

Who is your ideal customer? What do they care about? What problems are they facing each day?

How can your product or service provide them with a solution?

Try to focus on a niche target audience. If you’re focusing on a broad audience, segment your customers based on:

• Age
• Gender
• Pain points
• Buying behaviors
• Search behaviors
• Interests
• Marital status
• Language
• Education
• Household income
• Location

Segmenting your audience into personas will help you create a strategy for each group. For example, a mother of five kids will likely have different needs than a male college student. You can create content with each buyer’s persona in mind.

3. Build Your Website

Your business website can help customers learn more about your brand. Without a wow-worthy website, they might not choose your business. Instead, you need a website that makes a strong first impression with potential buyers.

First, make sure your website shows off your brand. Your brand will set you apart from other businesses in the industry.

Then, utilize user experience (UX) design trends to encourage people to explore your site. The easier your website is to use, the more likely they’ll stay. For example, you should make sure:

• Content is easy to read (shorter sentences and paragraphs, easy to read font choices, etc.)
• The navigation is organized
• Pages load quickly
• You’re mobile-optimized
• Your website is secure (especially if you’re taking online orders)
• Buttons and forms work properly

Updating your website will benefit your search engine ranking, too.

4. Start With SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) can help your website rank higher on search engines like Google. If you want to become successful, you need to add SEO to your online marketing strategy. Otherwise, consumers might struggle to find you online.

Almost 70% of all online activities start on a search engine like Google. Unfortunately, only 0.78% of people look at the second page of results. You need to rank on the first page if you want to reach customers.

Developing an SEO marketing strategy will help your small business appear before competitors.

5. Stay Social

Don’t forget to stay social, too. You can share your blog posts and unique content on social media. Social sharing can help you reach a broader target audience.

Consider working with influencers in your industry, too. Influencer marketing can help expand your reach and boost brand trust.

6. Use PPC

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can help you boost leads and sales online. This digital advertising strategy will help you create ads for Google and social media.

Each time someone clicks on your ads, you’ll pay for that click.

Make sure to create dedicated landing pages on your website to convert each click into a lead!

7. Always Email

Email marketing can help you keep people informed about your business. First, you’ll need to create a lead magnet on your website. Then, you’ll need to segment your subscribers into lists.

Segmenting your email list will help you craft personalized emails. You can also create drip campaigns to save yourself valuable time.

Are you having issues with your business emails? Do you need IT to help? IT issues could impact your entire online marketing strategy.

Consider outsourcing to professionals like Stonebridgemsp.com to avoid problems down the road.

8. Begin Video Marketing

As you develop your content marketing strategy, consider crafting unique videos, too. Videos are a great way to engage people with your small business. Adding videos to your online marketing strategy will help you engage and excite customers.

9. Automate Everything

If you want to save time in your busy schedule, start using marketing automation. You can automate your social media posts, emails, and other tasks.

10. Review Your Data

Once you start automating, don’t forget to review your data. Which tactics are supporting your digital marketing strategy? Where are your strategies falling flat?

You can use your data to make informed decisions before improving your campaigns.

Boost Your Online Visibility: 10 Online Marketing Tips for a Stronger Start

Don’t fall behind your competitors this year! Instead, consider these 10 online marketing tips. With a strong digital marketing strategy, you can reach more customers online.

Then, you can boost your ROI and set your business up for long-term success!

Looking for more ways to set yourself up for success this year? You came to the right place.

Explore our latest guides today for the tips and tricks you need!

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