With every passing year, the landscape of digital marketing continues to progress. Search engines become more advanced, ad networks more targeted and social media continues to evolve into something its founder could never have comprehended. But none of this would matter if it couldn’t lead to greater sales and leadgen for your business.
Fortunately, digital marketing will continue to offer plenty of opportunities for small businesses who can successfully adjust their marketing tactics in 2021 and get it right… perhaps more so than ever before! This article will explain how.
Visibility
The number of businesses trying to make their presence felt online is growing exponentially. You likely have more competitors than you could possibly comprehend. Keeping up to date with the latest digital marketing rules and norms will be vital to ensure your business can stand out. This means understanding the intentions of search engines, link building and even sales funnels. All the above have become infinitely more advanced and comprehensive, meaning the tricks that may have worked in 2015 are simply not longer applicable.
Is your site mobile friendly with strong User Experience, or is it the same antiquated design that you paid for a decade ago. Digital marketing in 2021 is about making your business viable just as much as it is about standing out.
Build a Reputation
The brand reputation of your business has never been as important in today’s ultra-connected world. All your customers and potential clients can discover your business and make a snap decision on whether you deserve patronage with a snap of their fingers.
This is both a danger and an opportunity. It’s important to protect your brand so you don’t make a negative first impression to the millions of potential customers out there. At the same time, online word of mouth via things like Google My Business reviews mean that the positive aspects of your business can go viral and transform your business overnight.
Understand Your Customers
Total interconnectivity means you can discover just as much about your potential customers as they can about you. Through social media, forums and marketing tools like Google Trends, keyword research or more advanced paid seo tools like Ahrefs, you can find out virtually anything you need to know about these could-be-clients. What are they searching, what are they buying, who do they like; you could have a treasure trove of information at your fingertips if you know what to search for.
Reach Your Target Audience
Hand in hand with finding your target audience is reaching them. Advertising platforms like Facebook and Google are in a heated battle to provide advertisers with the most individualised targeted data. Exciting new marketing tools like Sparktoro have found new ways to discover exactly where your audience is hanging out online and who they are following. Influencer marketing is continuing to provide the dual benefit of brand recognition and leadgen. The options for small business marketing have never been so vast and gaining access to the market research needed to help you better reach your audience doesn’t have to be as expensive as it once was.
Incorporate Conversational Marketing
One digital trend that is emerging more than ever is conversational marketing, which brings together messaging apps and other conversational interfaces, as well as innovative processing of search queries and the growing adoption of the use of smart speakers in homes and offices. The use of real-time communication in your marketing and sales funnels is fast becoming one of the quickest ways to move your potential customers and buyers through your funnels and will help you build lasting relationships and create authentic value-added experiences between the two of you.
Conversational marketing makes business feel more personal again as it puts focus on interactions with the consumer, as compared to traditional avenues that businesses have been using where interaction is one-way. Marketing your business this way can look like:
- Live messenger apps
- Live streaming videos
- Chatbots / Live Chat
When incorporating any of the above make sure you plan how you engage, understand, and what recommendations need to be in place to move them through the funnel, when setting up the process.
Summary
It should be clear that digital marketing is more important in 2021 than it has ever been in the past. If there is one thing that 2020 has taught us is that if you’re a small to medium sized business you need to ensure that your digital marketing plan strategies are helping your business to succeed and thrive online.
It is the double edged sword with near endless opportunity due to the leaps forward in technology, while also being a world of endless obstacles that must be overcome.
If digital marketing feels daunting to you then perhaps you simply need the right guide. Select Marketing are pioneers in small business marketing and digital marketing. Gold Coast has been their home for more than 11 years and they have continued to stand out as experts in the industry, helping small businesses grow online.
