4 Digital Marketing Channels Your Business Should Be Utilizing | SmartBiz Loans
Content marketing can be scary for business owners because it is truly an investment in every sense of the word. You often will not see returns for a few months and sometimes as long as a year.
But similar to monetary investments, the returns will compound exponentially bringing your business a stream of revenue that can last a lifetime.
Content marketing consists of creating unique quality content to get your business found online through search engines and social media platforms.
You'll need to dedicate resources to not only creating the content but also promoting it so that it gets found online. Because your content will last forever, it can be an excellent investment in your company.
For example, if you’re starting a pressure washing business, there are likely many customers searching the web for questions like “how often should I get my driveway pressure washed?”. By creating a piece of content around that question, you can answer their question with the potential of bringing them on as a paying customer for your services.
Email Marketing
Did you know email marketing has one of the highest ROIs of any marketing channel?
By growing an email list and marketing directly to potential customers, you can quickly scale your business and grow revenues.
When considering email marketing, you’ll want to ask yourself a few questions:
Email marketing starts with creating a mailing list for users to sign up for. You'll need to give them a reason to sign up, however. For many companies, they'll offer a free downloadable piece of content in exchange for a user's email address. This can be as simple as a checklist or more advanced like an ebook. Either way, you want to provide the user value.
Once they’ve joined your list, you’ll need to craft a communications strategy to keep them engaged with your business. Depending on your business, there are several types of emails you can send. You will want to ensure you have a mix of types of emails to limit fatigue in your email list.
For example, sending routine sales emails might pester your subscribers and encourage them to unsubscribe. By mixing sales emails with other emails like new content emails, they won’t be off-put with your sales efforts.
Social Media Marketing
For those with smaller or local businesses, social media is an untapped marketing opportunity to grow your revenues. Why? Many small businesses choose to avoid social media for a couple of reasons, mainly a lack of knowledge, time, or resources.
But social media marketing is not as challenging as you might believe. By learning a couple of platforms that suit your audience, you will be capable of growing your customer list and improving your revenues.
One great ways to use social media is by promoting your services through imagery. For example, many mobile auto detailing businesses will post images of vehicles that have been detailed.
Which platforms are right for me?
Let’s take a look at some of the stats for several of the large social media platforms currently available.
Facebook is the largest social media platform with over 2.7 billion users. YouTube is the second-largest platform with almost 2.3 billion users. Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter all follow far behind in terms of monthly users, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use them.
To craft a successful social media campaign, you’ll want to analyze each platform's demographics and find the platform that most encapsulates your audience.
For example, if your audience is primarily females between the ages of 25 and 40, Pinterest is likely your best option because the vast majority of their users fall into your demographic.
This content was originally published here.
