Good Online Marketing Strategies for Small Business Owners

The coronavirus effects can be felt by small business owners who’ve been forced to shut down their businesses and are desperately looking for solutions.

The competition online is high and you need a good online marketing strategy to stay on top, generate sales and save your business.

If you’ve never thought about bringing your business online and never depended on online sales, you might be pleasantly surprised to see it actually works for you too!

In this post you will find a few strategies and suggestions to improve your online presence, no matter the size, type and location of your business.

Social Media Marketing Strategy

First of all you need to be mindful about your customers and where they usually go on social media.

Is it facebook, instagram, twitter or linkedin?

I know it is overwhelming, especially when you are new to marketing, social media, but I really think that it is very easy to create a basic, but efficient strategy.

Everyone is home now and they are all over the internet, and facebook and instagram are the first places you will probably find your customers.

If your target customer is between 18-35 there are high chances to find them on instagram and facebook, as most of the instagram users are young, following influencers.

In case your business targets an older category 35+, you should definitely focus most of your energy on facebook.

LinkedIn is mostly for professionals and if your business has anything to do with education and providing services that requires a certain level of education, you might want to focus on this platform.

Twitter is still a good channel for sharing, mainly if your brand is known in your community, it is very intentional and somehow oriented around communities.

No matter what channel you’ll choose, don’t forget to send clear messages about :

Who you are  – A clear, but concise description of your company and products/services

Who you are targeting – Make sure your audience understands to whom your company is addressing

What do you offer – Focus on describing your products/services

Why they should choose your company – Highlight the benefits of choosing your business products/services

How do you deliver – customers should have a good understanding on how they can buy, receive your products or services and how long it takes

Of course there are many other things that can help you improve your online presence on social media, but as a marketing consultant, I believe these information are vital.

Email Marketing

Once you have created an online presence, it is time to inform your older customers or even the new ones, that you are still offering your services.

There are a few platforms that are very easy to set up and use with ready-made templates, such as Mailchimp – allowing you to add up to 2000 email addresses for free!

Another one is Aweber, a paid email marketing platform that has a lot of amazing features for tracking and conversions.

I personally prefer at this moment Mailchimp, as facebook gives us the option to connect the mailchimp account to the facebook account, a good opportunity for advertising to your email subscribers.

The advantage of using these email marketing platforms are:

• They are a quick and efficient way to keep in touch with customers
• They help you retain and grow your client database and keep it organised 

Here is a video tutorial about setting up a mailchimp account for free

Online Communication

Many small business owners and entrepreneurs that used to teach, are now facing the challenge of communicating online with their customers.

One of the best platforms used by almost everyone now is Zoom.

Zoom has the advantage of:

• Allowing you to create your account for free
• Allowing you to create and have an online meeting for free up to 45 minutes
• You can have an unlimited number of participants
• You can record your sessions

Zoom can be installed on your desktop/laptop or phone and you will need to invite your participants by creating the meeting and sharing the url and meeting id and password ( all generated by zoom).

Here is a video about how to use Zoom.

Increase website traffic

Most of the small business owners thought until now that having a website is not efficient or relevant, but the current situation showed us all how important the internet is, and how it helps us to stay connected.

In case you don’t have a website, you can create a website page or if you don’t have the resources at the moment, make sure your social media presence is very well organised, in terms of sales and conversations.

If you have a website, you can focus on promoting your website on social media and through email marketing.

Now is the best moment to optimise your content or even add new relevant content on your website.

Encourage communication with your customers and create backlinks to your website.

It is worth checking the similar businesses in your area and even look for partnerships that could help you promote and sustain your business, try to be flexible and innovative.

These basic steps can be applied by any business and for a more personalised plan you can contact me on this page.