How digital marketing can help create a resilient business during Coronavirus
In such uncertain times it can be hard to think about what your business needs right now – or your customers. Chances are you’re looking more carefully at your budgets, and finding the most cost-effective way to deliver products and services. Often the first thing to go is the marketing budget, but cutting back on this activity is a short term fix, with long term consequences.
Now more than ever it’s vital you maintain visibility in your market, and with the whole world going online, this means boosting your digital marketing.
There are a few simple steps you can take to stay connected to your current customers and attract new ones.
Update your website
Now is the time to update your website, to let your customers know it’s business as usual. Include links to your social media accounts and plenty of CTAs (call to actions) to increasing online sales. Customer experience is king, so make sure your website offers a fast, personalised experience. It’s worth getting advice from the experts on how to improve UX (user experience) as this is key to increasing conversions.
Get more social
With social distancing, social media is more important than ever for connecting with people. So make the most of this opportunity by reaching out to your customers and building new communities. Community posts enjoy higher levels of engagement because they’re for a niche audience. They are a great way to communicate with your end user – and build relationships that will outlive COVID-19.
Advertise
You shouldn’t just rely on organic traffic; you need to put some money behind your digital marketing. Don’t worry, you don’t need to spend a lot to get results. Boosting posts is an easy and affordable way to get your content seen by more people, and is a good way to start. Even creating your own ad campaign doesn’t have to be expensive – you can make quite an impact with a cleverly built £5 advert.
You can also run adverts in Facebook communities – just make sure you’re offering practical solutions and advice, and not going in for the hard sell.
Social media has a number of handy marketing tools that can help you target your adverts at specific audiences, helping you build brand awareness and drives sales directly to your website.
Content, content, content
With much of the world on lockdown, people are hungry for content to keep them entertained and informed, so if you want to make an online impact, now is the time to get creative.
From blog posts on your website, to video content on social media – there is so much you can do to reach out to your audience. While it’s important your posts offer value and solve problems for your customers, in these hard times they should also bring joy and some light relief.
Another bonus of regularly updating web content is that it tells Google you’re still around, which will improve your ranking on search engines.
Pay Google to be your friend
Speaking of Google, this is another great platform for advertising. With high street shops shut down, everyone is shopping online and as Google holds 98 per cent market share, it makes sense to run some Google Ads.
A great way to start is with a PPC (pay per click) campaign, as you only pay when your ad gets results. Your business appears at the top of the search page for a specific term and location, and every time someone clicks through to your website, you pay a fee.
Google Display Network is another popular, highly effective option for many small businesses, as it lets you place ads across millions of websites that your prospects are visiting every day.
Leverage artificial intelligence
AI is transforming digital marketing, due to its ability to collect data and then analyse, apply and learn from it. By automating tasks that once required human labour it not only helps brands increase productivity and revenue, it is also changing the way brands connect with their audiences.
One example of how AI can help is marketing automation. By learning customer habits it enables you to send out personalised, targeted messages to existing customers. And at a time when we are living in isolation, it has never been more important to keep in regular contact with your customers – and to treat them like individuals and not another sales lead.
Measure, track and learn
If you don’t measure your marketing activities, you can’t know what works and what doesn’t. And the great thing about digital marketing is it provides quantifiable data that offers insights into customer behaviours and the success of your campaigns.
The first thing you need to do is configure your Google Analytics – there are videos available online to help you set this is up correctly. It provides lots of metrics to help you measure the success of your adverts and website performance. These include:
- Detailed reports on bounce rate
- Which social media channels drive the most traffic
- Which channels drive the most conversions on your products or services
- What are the most popular pages – and how long do people spend on there
- How many times CTA buttons were clicked
- Valuable data about your audience
- Top viewed blogs
UTM’s (urchin tracking modules) is another great Google tool. This applies tracking to every link going to your website, so you can see which posts drove traffic and conversions through your website. With the use of UTMs, you can fully track and improve your marketing campaigns.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help
Creating a digital marketing plan can seem overwhelming – but there are a number of free resources out there that can help. Google and Facebook have their own e-learning platforms linked below, and there are myriad YouTube videos offering free tutorials.
You can also enlist the help of a marketing and PR agency, who will bring a range of skills and benefits to your business.
If you want to work with a marketing agency, why not give us the reins? We can help guide your business through these torrid times, so get in touch to find our more.
Photo by Diggity Marketing on Unsplash
