As you can see from this series so far, there is no easy switch to flick to make digital marketing a success.

To truly do things right, you need to put the hard work in before you even get started on sending traffic to your site.

But if you’ve followed this series throughout, you would have done exactly that. Now, with help from a number of SMB owners, it’s time to look at how you can make your digital marketing work today. 

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

If you’re looking to drive traffic to your site right away, there is no better option out there than PPC advertising.

PPC consists of any kind of advertising where you pay every time your ad is clicked. It’s pretty much the overriding form in which you pay for advertising online due to its fairness, which derives from only paying once the ad has taken someone to your website. Hence the name, Pay Per Click advertising. 

This type of advertising can exist on search engines like Google and Microsoft Bing, and also on social media like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Google Ads is usually the best place to start. According to Google, for every $1 spent on Google Ads, an average of $8 is made in revenue, and with a market share of nearly 80%, the audience is enormous so you can reach every type of person.

“We wanted to appear on searches and ensure people were aware of us and our products, so we decided to go with Google Ads,” says the CEO of Designerwear, Ben Wallington.

“It was a Google Ads campaign which resulted in a 45% growth rate in our sales revenue and a conversion rate of 2%. There are several other modes of digital marketing today, but Google Ads remains the powerful platform it always was.”

So why is it so effective? There’s a few reasons:

• You can get your ads live almost immediately
• You have extensive targeting options
• You only pay when your ad is clicked (prices vary between $1 to $6 on average, depending on what industry you’re in)

But the biggest reason is the power of the keyword.

As Ben alluded to above, the keyword tells you what someone wants, when they want it and you don’t get that powerful intent in any other form of advertising. You can do it with SEO, but as we discussed in part 3, this is a long term venture, whereas with Google Ads, you can start seeing results immediately. And in recent years it’s become a lot more intuitive.

“I’m a lawyer without a digital marketing background, so I started very simply using Google Ads to build some traction for my business online,” says David Aylor, the founder of David Aylor Law Offices.

“I love the system’s Smart Campaigns, which uses AI to build an ad for you and determine your best strategies. It took the guesswork out of the process completely and led to some pretty great results and a reasonable price tag.”

However, it’s wise not to go in gung ho from the start, as Brian Anderson, the founder of My Supplement Store explains:

“Our first stab at digital marketing was with Google Adwords [Former name of Google Ads],” he says.

“We spent way too much and didn’t know how to track if it was working or not. It most likely wasn’t even set up correctly. We just looked at traffic. Looking back, we should have hired someone to help set it up for us.”

These days there are free tools out there like Adzooma that make it much easier for those starting on Google, Microsoft or Facebook to get to grips with the platforms, because as Brian goes on to say, they are super effective when they work well:

“Over time though, we learned more about Google Adwords and now spend about $10k per month. We sell over $50k, so it is doing quite well for us,” he explains.  

You should also have a read of our free Ultimate Guide to Google Ads ebook too. That’ll guide you through every step of the journey in creating great Google Ad campaigns.

But it’s not just advertising on search engines that falls into the bracket of PPC, you also have:

• Display – ads displayed on third party websites usually in the form of imagery
• Social media – ads shown on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn
• Remarketing – ads targeted at users who previously visited your website
• Shopping – ads that typically appear in a carousel format on the likes of Google, Microsoft Bing or Amazon

There are so many targeting options for these kinds of ads, especially on Facebook which makes use of their vast swathes of user profile data to help you to target even the most granular of niches.

But on top of Google and Facebook, you also have the option of Twitter, Microsoft Bing, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and so much more.

Each one appeals to a different type of audience – Facebook is great for SMBs, Twitter is great for publishers, Microsoft Bing is excellent for the more affluent audience, LinkedIn is great for B2B businesses, Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram is great the for the gen z and millennial audience, while Google is just a catch all which is home to 3.5 billion searches a day.

As we talked about in part 2, follow the infographic through to its conclusion, and decide for yourself what channel you want to go for. 

You can read more about why each channel is best for you by clicking here.

Email Marketing

“People that sign up for your email list freely are more likely to convert, or buy one of your items and become customers,” explains the co-founder of Dr. Brite, Dr. Pooneh Ramezani.

That is the big selling point of email marketing. Having access to potentially thousands of receptive people who are interested in what you have to say. 

It may seem a little bit old school in 2021, but it’s as effective as ever. In fact, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect to make an average return of $42. 

It’s easy to implement, easy to track and cheap to run. And can generate huge sales.

But you have to build that database up first, as Nate Tsang, the founder of WallStreetZen explains:

“When we first started the website, what we first focused on was creating and growing our database,”  he says.

“From strategizing our email marketing to ensuring leads are captured, we keep on ensuring that our database keeps increasing. We also experimented with Google Ads and pop-ups.”

There are many other ways to build that list too including:

• Creating an email opt-in box on your homepage
• Creating a popup form across your whole site
• Adding a checkbox on checkout
• Creating a squeeze page – a page where you send traffic to capture email addresses
• Adding a discount in exchange for an email address
• Sharing it on social media

If you’re looking at getting started, AWeber is a great tool to use. It comes with a drag and drop editor, pre-built templates, sales tracking, plus loads more, and is completely free until you reach over 500 subscribers.

Influencer Marketing

The power of influencer marketing has been known for decades, maybe centuries. But in 2021, with social media being such a huge part of our day to day lives, it’s more powerful than ever and anyone can be an influencer.

“Social media and Instagram, in particular, played a significant role in our business model early on,” explains Dan Potter, the co-founder of CRAFTD London.

“Since we began, we have used influencers to run brand recall, set the tone, and introduce us to a broader audience before launching a new product. Using micro-influencers (100k or fewer followers) because they can dig deeper into the niches and spell an excellent conversion rate has proven successful, as they generally have a more loyal following.”

And that’s the thing. When influencer marketing was prevalent before the digital age you were having to pay celebrities thousands to endorse your product, but now you can pay as little as $20. 

You can get them to wear your product on their social media account, you can get them to write a blog, you can get them to review your product on YouTube, you can do whatever you think will work.

Influencer marketing once upon a time was either laughed at or thought to only be for the rich. Now it’s for everyone. And it’s super effective.

Sponsored Articles or Media Buys

Okay, so this one may be for the rich. Sponsored articles or media buys are where you pay to write an article on a publisher’s website or send a newsletter to their database.

There are huge advantages to this as you can imagine. We’ve done it previously with SearchEngineLand where we’ve written about the future of digital marketing and why our product is so important in its future, and then sent out an email to readers advertising our product.

SearchEngineLand has tens of thousands of readers every day with an even bigger email readership, so to put our product in front of so many people at once is a great way of getting customers through the door.

But like I say, it’s not cheap. You can expect to pay between $2k and upwards of $20k depending on where you advertise, but the results are obvious. 

So whether it’s something you can afford now or later down the line, it’s definitely worth considering.

Action Points

Get into PPC advertising

• Decide which PPC channel is best for your business by researching the audiences and using our infographic 
• Download, read and digest the free Ultimate Guide to Google Ads ebook
• Use Adzooma for free to make the management of your Google, Microsoft and Facebook campaigns much easier 

Try out email marketing

• Build up your database by trying things like pop ups, squeeze pages and tick boxes on checkout forms
• Use AWeber for free to manage your database and send email campaigns

Explore influencer marketing

• Have a browse of the influencers and micro-influencers in your industry
• Think of campaigns influencers could get involved with to promote your product or service

Consider sponsored articles or media buys

• Discover the main media publications in your industry
• Speak to their sales team about the cost of a media buy and their audience data

Final Thoughts

I hope you’ve enjoyed this four part journey.

But before we finish, I just want to talk about the importance of not operating within a silo. In this piece especially, we’ve looked at the different types of digital marketing channels where you can be successful, but it’s so important not to get attached to one particular channel.

Opening yourself up across multiple channels may take a little bit more time and effort, but it keeps you agile, it puts you in front of a wider audience, and it allows you steer clear of the whims of one particular company.

“You must determine what kind of digital marketing professional you want to be,” says Danny Veiga from Danny Veiga Marketing. 

“For instance, do you want to be a master of one or a jack of all trades? Do you want to focus on social media marketing, or do you want to cover all components of digital marketing. As I moved through the field of digital marketing, I found expertise in social media marketing, SEO, content writing, etc. Start small and take little steps.”

By finding expertise in more than one area, you can then begin to work on short and long term strategies together, as Brad Tousenard, the founder of SpinupWP explains:

“Our content was designed to draw in organic search engine traffic but we knew this would be a medium to long-term strategy. We knew that paid ads could generate us traffic immediately so we prioritized this in the short term. Most of our initial customers come through paid ads. As our site matured more and more of our customers came through organic search and within six months, 37% of our leads were generated from organic search.”

And that’s the key. If you can balance the long term and the short term strategies together, you’re almost guaranteed success.

Now go have fun out there!

For part three, we will look at the steps you should take when you’re getting your brand out to the masses, and we get first-hand insights from SMB owners on how they approached getting online.

In the previous part of this series, we looked at how you can go about developing your brand and how you can select the right digital marketing channel for your business.

So in this part, with all that in place and considered, we’re going to delve more deeply into the first steps you should take when taking your brand online. This part is crucial for laying the solid foundations for your business to thrive online.

From creating your website or getting on a marketplace, to building your social profile and doing the SEO groundwork; we’ll go through it all.

But first, we’re going to look at how best to drive brand awareness in the early stages of your adventure.

Getting your name out there 

Before you can start directing traffic anywhere, either through PPC, social media or SEO, you need to start building up your brand’s presence. 

In the early days of the internet, people used to be burnt often by scammers, and it made the whole internet population very skeptical. Therefore in 2021, we need to do all we can to quash that skepticism, and we need to build that trust early. 

“When a new company comes onto the scene, it’s not necessarily expected that they will start doing a huge number of sales right away,” says Christian Adams, co-founder of Coffee Affection.

“Instead of trying to drive sales, we focused our original digital marketing on just getting our brand name out there. Just getting our company name on people’s radar proved to be a very successful tactic, because when the time came for us to start marketing to drive conversions, it worked out well.”

Customer reviews are crucial here. If you have loads of great reviews on Trustpilot, Google or Facebook, your business is going to look so much more reputable than without. Sure this might not be easy when you aren’t getting many sales, but be creative, and don’t be afraid to ask for them.

“We collected reviews to boost our online credibility,” says the founder of MaxTour, Matthew Meier.

“It took a while to gain some traction, but once we did, we were able to grow our company. Great website, targeted traffic, and lots of online reviews is a fantastic formula for digital marketing success.”

It’s important to note that not every business will need to warm up their leads first. If you’re advertising without a website on somewhere like Amazon or Etsy, then you just need to focus on those customer reviews. But if you do have a site, it’s always advised and will always help the customer trust you if they know who you are before they make a purchase.

There are plenty of ways of doing this. Traditional PR is one way, but another method that is proving really effective in the digital age is blogging/content marketing. The CEO of dontpayfull.com, Andrei Vasilescu, did this in the form of money saving tips:

“We thoroughly researched to find different possible and practical ways to save money in daily, seasonal and occasional purchasing. We started sharing that useful information in the form of interesting articles through our blog page.

“People always search for money saving tricks and they soon found our excellent blog articles in the search results. Our blog contents were the biggest source of online visitors to our business website.”

Content marketing and blogging is a great way of driving traffic to your site and getting yourself recognised as a thought leader in your industry, and the next time the reader sees Andrei’s brand, they’ll automatically associate that with the subject matter they read before. 

You can obviously sell within the article too, but even if they don’t convert, the least you’ve done is get great exposure to your brand.

“The most effective technique a business can employ to develop its digital footprint and online reputation is content,” explains Timothy Robinson, the CEO of InVPN.

“We made sure that we had good content to assist our audience to solve their problems, from web copy and social media postings to images and blog entries. We began putting together a solid content marketing strategy. I would suggest not to be afraid to experiment with new content types like videos, infographics, and photos.”

Getting those content pieces to the right audience is a matter of combining this great content with the keyword research we did in part 1, but we’ll get into more of that the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) section coming up. 

However, you should also share these pieces with journalists and social media too – just make sure your content is unique, powerful and helpful.

Website Builders

Not all of you will need a website: some of you will already have one, while some of you advertising on the likes of Amazon or Etsy may not feel it’s worth the outlay, so feel free to move on if that’s you. 

But if you don’t have one already and you’re not already on a marketplace, make sure you get a website created.

“When it came to our digital marketing, the first thing we did was to get a website,” says Zach Reece, the owner of Colony Roofers.

“We realized that, regardless of the industry you operate in, a website is the most fundamental part of any company’s digital marketing strategy.”

When setting out, it’s hard to look past the website builders of Wix and Shopify. Once upon a time you needed to be well versed in web design and coding. But not anymore, website builders are more than adequate. Actually, they’re pretty fantastic.

Wix is one of the most popular builders out there, and for good reason because it’s super easy for anyone from any background to create a delightful website that looks stunning and works without a hitch. 

However, if you’re an ecommerce store, I’d use Shopify. Wix is great if you’re just looking to get a site live which looks nice, but if you’re looking to actually sell things online Shopify is made for that and comes with great ecommerce integrations. 

It not only makes it easy to create a website, but it also makes it straightforward to process payments, manage orders and market your business. It’s a killer platform.

They’re both pretty cheap too. Shopify prices start at $29 a month. Wix starts at $18 a month.

What about a Marketplace?

If you’re selling products directly online, it’s very much recommended that you get on a marketplace like Amazon, Ebay or Etsy.

As we alluded to in the last section, you might want to do this instead of creating a website. It can certainly be cheaper, being listed on Amazon for example costs $39.99 per month and there you’ll have access to millions of browsers, whereas with a website you’ll have to pay for the domain registration, hosting, website builder before you even think about getting traffic to your site.

There are considerations to factor in, though, like selling fees and advertising. There are stories out there where businesses have had to sell at a loss just to get brand exposure. We took a real deep dive into all that earlier this year.

My recommendation would be to advertise both on Marketplaces and your own website. Therefore you get the best of both worlds and you’re not solely reliant on the whims of an external company.

And social media?

A few years ago social media used to be sniffed at. But in 2021, social media is the place for pretty much everything, and if you’re not on there, you’re missing out.

You don’t have to be running ads on the platform, but you need a presence as Eric Rohrback, the CMO of Hill & Ponton explains.

“It’s not necessary to be on every social media network; instead, focus on the ones where your prospects spend time. Creating a good Facebook page for your business and regularly providing useful content is the first step toward establishing a strong social media presence.”

And that’s the thing, you don’t have to be posting every day. Just enough to keep your business active. That could be posting your best offers every two or three days. Or something about your company’s culture. Or about something in the news that relates to your business.

Then, once you’re a little more established you can be a little bit more creative.

“I persevered in my attempts to improve the overall quality of the site by developing an online presence and creating profiles on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube,” says David Bitton, the co-founder of DoorLoop.

“I’ve built momentum and buzz for my business by publishing original content relating to my niche on all the different social media sites.”

You can go as hard or as softly as you want, but to begin with, just make sure you’re there. Not sure where to start? Here are the most popular platforms out there:

• Facebook – Facebook has 2.6 billion active users worldwide and is the catchall destination
• Instagram – great for B2C businesses who’s products or services look great to show off in the form of imagery – especially those with millennial or gen z customer bases
• YouTube – another catchall destination, 81% of the US population use YouTube now – but it’s important to note that video is tough to nail
• LinkedIn – perfect for B2B businesses, especially for those of a corporate nature. Full of engaged professionals which 28% of the US population use
• Twitter – a great place to show off your content, especially if you’re a publisher – not always great for engagement, though
• Snapchat & TikTok – the upcoming destinations, great for those aiming at millennials and gen z – just be prepared to get that creative brain whirring

“As a startup company, you should concentrate on a few of them,” says Naomi Stone from Room Service 360.

“Create the content on a regular basis to stay in touch with your audience. Use visuals such as photos and videos to increase engagement. Interact with your audience by responding quickly and resharing. Share industry-related content with your followers.”

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If you’re looking for long term results with your website, then it’s hard to look past SEO. 

“Our focus from day one was SEO,” says Rahul Mohanachandran, one of the founders of Kasera.

“We accepted that it will lead to slow growth but with a better margin, we invested our time and money into doing everything possible on our website to make it SEO friendly, this includes us founders learning SEO ourselves as well.”

SEO is the practice of optimizing your website and content for search engines. There are few things you have to adhere to: content, page speed, user experience, external links to your website and more. 

So taking the content marketing idea we spoke about earlier and combining that with the keyword research you did in part 1, you will therefore be looking at creating a piece of content that resonates with your audience. Say for example you’re a travel business, you may want to create a piece like “the best budget hotels in Boston” for example. 

Then by adhering to the principles of best practice, you will eventually go further and further up the rankings if you’re doing everything right and the content is great.

According to Massimo Chieruzzi, digital marketing expert and blogger at divbyzero, “Content Marketing offers an unfair advantage over the long time. Anyone can raise more money and outbid you on paid channels. But SEO takes time and effort, once you dominate your niche, competitors will have a really hard time beating you.”

We have a great SEO ebook for you to go through which details the best practices in a lot more depth. And it’s so worth it your time to learn, because the results are obvious, as many SMB owners I spoke to can attest.

“The bottom line is SEO is everything,” says Bryan Phillips from In Motion Marketing. “Your site and social media need to be built from the ground up with Search Engine Optimization in mind.”

“I work in the review industry, so I knew my first step to market myself was to build up a strong SEO strategy,” says the founder of E-Student, Sander Tamm. “I wanted my target market, looking for in-depth answers about courses they’re interested in, to be able to find me with a quick Google search.”  

“I used SEO-optimizing practices to help improve my Google ranking before I even started spending a dime,” says Artem Minaev, the co-founder of FirstSiteGuide. “Keyword research and intelligent keyword insertion into your content can help Googlebots figure out exactly what your content is all about and to which searches it’s most relevant.”

It’s important for me to say this isn’t easy, but it’ll be really worth your time to verse yourself with the basics as detailed out in the ebook, because getting SEO right is SO worth your time. 

If you get it right, you’ll be getting “free” clicks to your site forever.

Key takeaways

Start generating great content

• In line with your keyword research, create unique, powerful content that will resonate with your audience
• Contact journalists who write about topics in your industry and ask them to publish your story or write for their website
• Share your articles on social media and optimize them for SEO

Create yourself a website or get on a marketplace. Or both!

• Work out whether you want to have a website or just sell your products on a marketplace
• Use a website builder like Wix or Shopify to get a website set up 
• Browse the likes of Amazon, Ebay, Etsy etc. to find out which marketplace is best for you and create a store

Develop a social media presence

• Decide which social media channel is best for your business
• Create a profile on the one best for you
• Start posting content and create unique content to get even more reach

Lay your SEO foundations

• Download and read the SEO ebook to learn the basics of SEO
• Start optimizing your website to follow SEO best practice
• Combine your great content with your keyword research and SEO best practices

Next up…

Now that your online presence has great foundations, you can start thinking about how you can get traffic to your site right here, right now.

We’re going to take a look at the pros and cons of each marketing channel, we’ll hear plenty of opinions from SMB owners on their experiences, we’ll look more in depth at the cost, and provide you with some actionable tips on how to tackle each channel.

Complete the series in part 4!

In part one, we spoke a lot about getting your research in order and how to conduct it.

For this part, we’re going to look using that research to develop your brand and help you take steps towards choosing what digital marketing channel is best for your business.

So let’s get back into it.

Developing your brand

Something so crucial when developing a foolproof digital marketing strategy is creating a brand strategy that is consistent with what you want to achieve. 

There are a number of different elements you need to consider with your brand strategy, including:

• Brand purpose,
• Brand values
• Mission statement
• Brand personality
• Vision
• Voice
• Value proposition
• USP (Unique Selling Point)

And all of it needs to align and remain consistent, so internally you know how to operate, and externally you authentically resonate with your customer.

A few years ago developing a brand with such depth would’ve been solely for big businesses, but as the competition increased, operating without such depth is sure to leave you behind – in the digital age it’s even more so and it’s increasingly difficult to stand out. After all, if you don’t stand out, your customers don’t have a reason to pick your business. 

Every niche is jam-packed, from glow in the dark clothing to digital marketing software, so to really make a mark you have to be different – either through your branding or your offering.

“We defined our brand as someone who believes in test-based Digital Marketing techniques, ‘No theory, all results’,” says Matt Diggity, the founder of Diggity Marketing.

“Our USP was website development and design. When we launched our website, every company was seeking to build an online presence. Thus our USP worked really well, and we got a headstart in working with over 1000 clients in 3 months.”

This all might take time for you to develop, but make sure you put the time in. These foundations will end up being crucial later down the line.

Which digital marketing channel will work?

Once you’ve got your research, your goals, and your brand strategy in place, you can now start thinking about how you’re going to achieve what you want to achieve.

This is where you need to start thinking about which channel might be best for you. And that’s why we created this infographic. 

All you have to do is just answer yes or no to the questions below and it’ll take you to the digital marketing channel that is right for you. 

You’ll also almost always end up with two or three channels to choose from – that’s because there’s rarely one size fits all, while it’s also never a good idea to concentrate on only one channel.

(Click to enlarge)

You can read more about why each channel is best for you by clicking here.

What kind of budget will I need?

Obviously a lot of this depends on how much you can afford, but most digital marketing channels aren’t all that expensive. 

Getting listed on Google My Business for example is free and there are a number of email marketing platforms that are initially free in the first instance until you have enough subscribers – and even then it’s unlikely to be more than $50 a month.

The influencer marketing price range is huge – it can go from anything from $20 for a local Instagram influencer to millions if you’re hiring someone like David Beckham or Tom Cruise (good luck with that!).

Sponsored articles range widely too, for a website like Small Biz Trends you’re looking at about $2,000 while someone like Ad Age is $17,000.

With Shopify, prices start at $29 a month. Wix starts at $18 a month.

SEO is a little bit different, because the only money you’ll spend is in time if you do it all in house. We’ll get onto more of that in part 3. We did some research on SEO agency costs in 2020, and in the UK you’re likely to pay about £900 per month.

For Google Ads, local service ads, Instagram, Amazon, Etsy, Ebay, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Snapchat, YouTube, you will pay every time somebody clicks on your ad. This could be expensive, as Brian Anderson, the founder of My Supplement Store explains:

“Our first stab at digital marketing was with Google Adwords [Former name of Google Ads],” he says.

“We spent way too much and didn’t know how to track if it was working or not. It most likely wasn’t even set up correctly. We just looked at traffic. Looking back, we should have hired someone to help set it up for us.”

These days there are free tools out there like Adzooma that make it much easier for those starting on Google, Microsoft or Facebook to get to grips with the platforms, because as Brian goes on to say, they are super effective when they work well:

“Over time though, we learned more about Google Adwords and now spend about $10k per month. We sell over $50k, so it is doing quite well for us,” he explains.

On average, Google says they “conservatively estimate that for every $1 a business spends on Google Ads, they receive $8 in profit through Google Search and Ads.”

This of course, doesn’t take into account lack of knowledge in the first instance, but with the aforementioned free tools like Adzooma, this is becoming less of a problem. In part 4, we’ll get into the nitty gritty of how much you’re likely to pay for each click.

But before you get started with anything, it’s crucially important to get testing as Wesley Exon, the founder of Best Value Schools says, “We identified the top five platforms and began our first round of testing to see which performed best.

“Once we narrowed it down to the top 3, we did A/B split testing to test ad performance and measured clickthrough rates and engagement. This testing determined how and where we’d advertise, as well as how we allotted our marketing budget.”

Testing is always recommended in whatever you do in digital marketing. We created the infographic to cater for that, that’s why we gave you multiple channels to try once you got to each destination.

There are going to be so many occasions when you’re on the fence about what to do next, or you and your business partner are split on what kind of approach will perform better. And if that’s the case, and the potential is open to you, then testing takes the decision out of your hands and into the hands of the data.

Key Takeaways

Create a brand strategy

• Together with your research from part 1, define your brand’s purpose, your mission statement, your vision, and your USP position yourself as something different in the market
• Develop your brand values, personality and voice to align yourself internally and create an authentic customer experience

Assess the digital marketing channels

• Using the goals you set up in part 1, work out what it is you want to achieve
• Follow the infographic to the marketing channel destination 

Start thinking about your budgets

• Assess how much budget you can afford to throw at your digital marketing strategy 
• Research how much each channel is likely to cost and how much you pay
• Take a mutli-dimensional approach to your assessment and always, always test

Next up…

Now that you have all your plans in place, you’re starting to think about your marketing channels, and how your budget will fit in with that. 

In part 3 we’re really going to dive into what foundations you need to get in place to move on to those marketing channels. 

We’ll look at how you can get your name out there, where you should start with getting a website set up, getting listed on a marketplace, what first steps you should take with SEO, and how you should approach social media. 

So that’s why, as part of our SMB Marketing 101 series, we’ve put this flow chart infographic together.

It’ll take you through a number of questions specific to your business, and at the end you’ll reach the destination of the right digital marketing channel suited for you. All you have to do is just answer yes or no.

You’ll also almost always end up with two or three channels to choose from – that’s because there’s rarely one size fits all, while it’s also never a good idea to concentrate on only one channel.

Then for more information on why each channel’s best for you, have a read below the infographic.

(Click to enlarge)

Answer 1: Sponsored Articles, Media Buys

This is a great way of getting your brand in front of the right people. Sponsored articles allow you to broadcast your views to thousands of targeted readers on major publications, adding respectability and credibility to your business and/or profile.

If you’re a digital agency you could publish a thought leadership piece about the changing marketing landscape on AdWeek. If you’re a food supplement business you could do a piece for The Mirror about the importance of magnesium in a healthy diet. The options are endless. 

Answer 2: Podcasts, YouTube

Audio and video have really cemented themselves as the best way to digest information on the internet in recent years, and if you’ve got something to say that you think will resonate with your audience, then look no further than Podcasting and Youtube.

Thousands of businesses are reaping the rewards of both channels. Find your niche and find your voice, then let the thought leader in you come out across the airwaves.

Answer 3: Influencer marketing   

Influencer marketing is all about social persuasion. If you’re looking to build out your brand in the fashion industry for example, getting a social media influencer to start wearing your clothing in their Instagram stories is a great way of doing it. 

Influencer marketing is an age-old tactic that has been successful for decades, maybe centuries. But now with social media, its popularity has exploded and that means it’s now a legitimate possibility for any digital marketer.

Answer 4: SEO

SEO isn’t a quick fix, but for long term, sustainable results, there is nothing better. Getting a solid SEO strategy in place can put you in the eyeline of every search term that relates to your business. And you never have to pay for a click.

Say you sell backpacking holidays, if you get on the first page of Google for “backpacking Thailand”, you could get thousands of clicks to your website every month for zero cost at all. You’ll need to put the hard work in to get there, but the results are enormous. Here’s a great free ebook that’ll get you started on the right foot.

Answer 5: Local Service Ads, Facebook Ads, Google My Business

For those offering a service like plumbing or decorating then Local Service Ads, a form of Google Ads, are the perfect solution to connect you with customers in your area. 

If you’re selling products or food/beverages, then Google My Business is a must to appear in searches such as “burger places near me”. For best results, supplement this with Facebook Ads to target customers in your area.

Answer 6: Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, Influencer Marketing

Your ideal audience will be all over these apps, and with them being very visual platforms, you can easily wow them with eye-catching imagery and copy.

Influencers play great with these kinds of audiences too. If someone with thousands of active followers is using a certain type of skincare routine, you can guarantee others will want to follow suit.

Answer 7: Google, Microsoft and Facebook Ads

A very traditional form of digital marketing, these pay-per-click (PPC) channels are all super efficient for making sales through your website with an average of $8 being made for every $1 you spend.

Considering user intent, Facebook Ads will be better for smaller purchases, while Google and Microsoft will be more powerful for the higher end of the market.

Answer 8: Email marketing

Email marketing may be overlooked by many, but if you already have a client base in tow, there is nothing more powerful out there.

Email marketing allows you to talk directly to an audience that has already engaged with you, bought from you, or likes you, and this gives you such a huge leg up when it comes to selling them something.

Answer 9: Wix, Facebook, Google Ads

Whether you’re looking to build up a client base or get people to call you, you need to get a website on the go – it’ll make you look credible and make all your other digital marketing efforts so much easier.

Wix is a great place to start, it’s a simple drag and drop website building tool. Then from there, start running some Facebook or Google Ads to get people to your site.

Answer 10: Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Shopify

Amazon, Etsy and eBay are huge marketplaces that are perfect if you don’t want to create your own website. All you need is your product, and in no time at all, you can start selling straight to thousands of eager consumers.

If you fancy getting a website set up, then there’s no better platform to use than Shopify. It’s a place you can start, run and grow your business all from the same place.

Looking for more?

If you’re in the mood for some more learning, check out the rest of our SMB Marketing 101 series.

We’ve spoken to over 100 SMB owners and employees about how they started in digital marketing and what they’ve learnt from their experiences.

We look at the research phase, setting your goals, developing your brand, setting your budgets, building your presence, mastering each digital marketing channel, and much more.

Here’s part one for you to start with.

Enjoy!

Starting out in digital marketing can feel like walking through a minefield with big clown shoes on. It’s wide reaching, it’s convoluted, and it’s difficult not take a misstep.

In 2021, everyone knows the importance of advertising effectively online, but with so many different channels and entry points, it’s hard to know where to begin.

So in this four-part series, we’re going to help you do exactly that. We’re going to go super in-depth in each section and we’re going to give you plenty of action points for you to implement right away.

We’re not just going to tell you how to market on each channel. We’re also going to look at how to:

• Research your customer & competition effectively
• Align your goals with your business
• Develop your brand
• Choose your digital marketing channels
• Set your budgets
• Build your online presence
• Take advantage of website builders and marketplaces
• Master Social media, SEO, PPC, content marketing, email marketing, influencer marketing, media buys and more

Throughout these guides, we’ll get first-hand insights from SMB owners who’ve taken this journey themselves before.

Now, let’s get into part one.

Getting to know your competition & your customers

Before we start any business venture we need to plan meticulously and get our strategy aligned correctly. And digital marketing is no exception.

“Digital marketing is not a one-off event. One needs to understand the online landscape, see the competition metrics, research into marketing channels and plan the way forward for the marketing journey to succeed,” says Alina Clark, the co-founder of cocodoc.

“Our digital marketing strategy provided the road map and the KPIs that we needed to track straight from the onset. For instance, our decision to concentrate on organic SEO marketing was based on the weighing we did at the strategy point. Digital marketing is wide, and extremely challenging given the amount of competition online. As such, engaging in digital campaigns without a strategy to back it up is going in blind.”

No business, online or offline, is going to reach its full capabilities without taking these steps in the early stages. You can’t even begin to know where to start without getting to know your competition or your customer. 

Not only does this help you to find crevasses and niches in the market, but it also allows you to capitalize on your competition’s shortcomings to really make a mark.

Greg Rozdeba, the co-founder of Dundas Life focused heavily on competition research in his early days, “Our marketing plan entailed undertaking and documenting a comprehensive situational analysis (SWOT analysis) to better understand the digital ecosystem that we would be operating in, and our place in it,” said Greg.

The importance of knowing your customer should also be assessed at this point, and this requires real research. You may think you know your customer well, but there’s so much you could uncover with deep analysis and a hard look at the data.

Eden Cheng, the co-founder of PeopleFinderFree stresses the importance of combining the two, “There are several things I had to conduct research on, primarily on finding out more about the market I was planning on entering, as well as on my direct competition, which is what would dictate the actual execution of my marketing tactics. 

“This also involved identifying my target market/audience and ensuring that my product/service is presented in front of those that would benefit from them the most. This meant thinking in terms of demographics like location, occupation, income, age, etc.”

Truly understanding your customer comes with obvious advantages in so many different respects. Without this understanding, your digital marketing could end up targeting the wrong type of person. 

Your product may not appeal to anyone. Your branding could be completely off message. And this will affect every part of your business, from your sales to your reputation. 

But there are a number of different ways to find out about your ideal customer.

“The first thing we did to set up our digital marketing was to observe our customers,” says Satya Sidhartha Parija, the co-founder of Doctor Spring. 

“We created a detailed persona of our target audience. Once we had that, we went on different social media platforms, each one we could think of, and we observed. We observed our customers’ interactions, behavior, as well as their needs. With this information in our hands, it was easier to personalize our digital marketing efforts to target our specific audience.”

Another way of doing this is by using keyword research – identifying words or phrases that are commonly typed into Google. 

“Keyword research was our first step,” says the founder of ViscoSoft, Gabriel Dungan. “We needed to learn what keywords were trending, what our competitors were using, what terms people were searching for, and historical trends in keyword popularity.”

Then there are customer personas – fictional characters you create to identify a type of user who is likely to be interested in your brand.

“The very first thing I did when I created my first online business was to do a deep dive to build customer personas,” explains the founder of TheGiftYak, Matt Lally. 

“All of my research and data analyzing was the framework for designing my website, initial content and the initial sweat equity that I put into the business. The reason I did this was because I spent most of my career advising high growth startups. I knew that building something without knowing my customer would be a fatal mistake.”

It’s also important to spend a bit of time developing your own knowledge too. Assessing your customers and your competition is great, but you also need something to go above and beyond that, to spark creativity. 

That’s how David Bitton, the co-founder of DoorLoop started out, “I began by reading blogs and forums on digital marketing and how to use it in a company setting. I also started to study videos about it to understand how to conduct an excellent digital marketing campaign.”

What do you want to achieve?

After the research phase, it’s important to set out what it is you want from your digital marketing campaigns – more eyes on the brand, more sales, more newsletter sign ups?

And this is where goals come in, as Cheng attests, “One of the first things I focussed on at the start was to set the goals I wanted to achieve, as without them, I knew that I would simply be blundering in the dark,” says Eden Cheng. 

“This means setting intelligent goals that were SMART, i.e. specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based goals, which would do well in aiding to keep an eye on the big picture.”

“Knowing what you want to accomplish is crucial since it will determine the direction of your digital marketing campaign,” says Edward Mellet, co-founder of WikiJob.co.uk.

 “When defining goals, be as explicit as possible. Simply stating your desire to sell more things is insufficient. Establishing a goal of increasing sales by 10% in the following three months, on the other hand, will provide you a better sense of how to get there.”

Josefin Bjorkland, the co-founder of Topp Casino Bonus did similar, “We worked on setting both long term goals as well as short term goals as the small ones help us keep on track to achieve our bigger goals. Our long term goal was to increase conversions by almost 40% and our short term goal was to gain at least 10 new email subscribers every month.

“We created our digital marketing campaigns according to these planned goals to help us achieve our marketing goals for growing our business.”

Key Takeaways

Conduct thorough competitor research

• Check out the websites that companies in your industry have. Look at how they present themselves, what kind of products they sell, their pricing, their social media accounts, and check their online reviews
• Perform a SWOT analysis to identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
• Look at how you want to position yourself in the market, find your niche and work out what you can do to make yourself stand out

Get to know your customer

• Work out who your target customer is and why you want to target them
• Create customer personas concentrated on the type of customer you want to attract and who is likely to be interested in your brand
• Speak to your current customer base or people who are most likely to be your customers about what they like/don’t like about your brand or brands like yours
• Use free tools like Keyword Surfer to conduct keyword research and find out what the terms people are searching for on Google that are related to your business
• Observe your customers or people likely to be your customers’ behaviours and interactions on social media

Work out what you want to achieve

• Conclude what you want to use your marketing for and what type of objectives you want to execute as a business
• Be specific with your goal setting – make it tangible, measurable and explicit
• Create SMART goals to keep an eye on the big picture

Next up…

From there, once you have your goals and research in place, you can get onto thinking about how you’re going to get towards your goals and the roadmap you need to put in place to get you there. 

“Once we had our bearings, we proceeded to form digital marketing goals that we set out to achieve. We then developed our digital marketing strategies that included segmentation of our customers, positioning, and content strategies. For each strategy, we then developed techniques and tactics best suited for our target audience and our business,” says Greg Rozdeba.

David Bitton did similar, “I produced a chart of the essential objectives and goals after getting insights into what needed to be done. I questioned myself about what I wanted to accomplish and what was realistic for me to inform further what I needed to start.”

That’s what we’ll go into in part two. We’ll speak about combining your research and your goals with the processes you’ll need to take to reach them. We’ll talk about developing your brand’s values. And finally, we’ll find out how you can choose the right marketing channel for your business.

And you can read part two now.