Being a business owner means you’re forced to wear many different hats. Some of these hats fall way outside of your comfort zone, and digital marketing is usually one of them.
Digital marketing has long been a practice best left to the professionals, and in many cases it still is. However, with the advancement of technology and lower cost of entry, many savvy (and even not so savvy) business owners are able to easily take on a portion of their day-to-day digital marketing activities.
We’ve gathered nine digital marketing hacks that business owners can own and implement today, without any outside help.
Claim & Standardize All Social Media Channels
Potential clients and customers in the research and purchase cycle review a brand’s social media presence to legitimize the product or service. Not owning these assets, not being active and not offering a cohesive brand experience hurts the consumer experience. Claiming a consistent username and building a cohesive brand experience across all mainstream and upcoming social media platforms help a business ensure they are retaining this traffic and optimizing all aspects of the customer journey.
We recommend using Namechk to see which usernames are available.
Create A Social Media Content Calendar
Having a consistent social media publishing routine helps a brand maintain presence and builds an ongoing dialogue between the business and consumers. But as all business owners know, posting on all social media channels on a consistent basis can be extremely time consuming. One way to stay on top of posting is to utilize a 30 day social media content calendar and schedule a month’s worth of posts in a single sitting.
It’s easy to create your own in an Excel document, or grab this free one from Hubspot.
Install Google Analytics
Google Analytics tells business owners where website traffic is coming from, which marketing channels are resulting in the most conversions, the age, gender and geography of visitors and much, much more. Business owners can use this information to make better informed marketing decisions and optimize their website around their visitor’s needs.
Google Analytics is free and easy to install and no coding experience is necessary.
Create a Customer Journey Map
By identifying key moments in the customer’s journey, for example when the customer needs to find specific product descriptions or needs quick instructions on how to troubleshoot a problem, businesses can ensure they are fulfilling their customers’ needs at all times. Customers have unique needs before, during and after purchasing that all have unique solutions. Businesses that are able to identify and optimize their offerings to align with customer needs are able to attract and retain more customers than the businesses that ignore the customer journey.
Smashing Magazine offers a great look at what a customer journey must include.
Map Out Your Existing Lead Generation Funnel
It is crucial for any business that depends on new client or customer acquisition to have a well documented sales funnel. By having a documented sales funnel, businesses can review it for holes in the sales process, figure out where potential customers are exiting the funnel and optimize their marketing channels to ensure attention is paid to each step in the process.
In our free monthly marketing lab, we take a deep dive into the how and why of a digital marketing sales funnel.
Commit To A Blogging Strategy
Committing time and resources to producing high quality blog content bi-monthly is one of the most effective methods of earning new traffic. Much of Google’s ranking algorithm is based on a freshness score, determined by how frequently the site is updated. Google rewards sites that frequently provide in-depth articles on very granular subjects. Blogs also make for great sharable content on Facebook, can be broken into many different Tweets and can feed into your email marketing strategy.
Moz has a great article about how Google’s freshness score impacts search rankings.
Setup A Robust Tracking System
If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. In this day and age, it’s possible to track just about every digital interaction consumers have with your brand. It may be as simple as developing a standard process of appending UTM tracking parameters to all links shared on social media, email messages and third party sites. Incorporating those tracking links with Google Analytics Goal Conversions is an extremely effective way to measure the effectiveness of specific marketing channels.
Maybe call tracking is a good fit? See how our clients are utilizing CallRail to track their inbound calls.
Take Control Of Your Email Marketing
It’s easier than ever to implement an email signup form on a website with free platforms like Mailchimp. The next step is setting up an automated sequence of emails to send to each new email opt-in over a specified period of time. For example, automate an immediate thank you or welcome email. Follow this up in ten days with another automated email with more education about the business or service. About 30 days after the initial opt-in, schedule a final sales pitch email to send. Welcome to marketing automation!
Besides, email is 40 times more likely to generate a customer than Facebook or Twitter.
Research Paid Opportunities
In many industries pay-per-click search ads are a great way to target potential customers who are in the research phase or possibly already looking to buy. Other easy-to-implement paid opportunities exist. Create a Facebook “Like campaign” to grow a businesses social following, use LinkedIn ads to target specific job titles or companies with creative messaging and link back to the company’s website. When done right, pay-per-click can be a low cost means of generating new client leads and conversions.
Not ready to take on your own PPC? Check out our guide on how to choose the right PPC agency.
Interested In Learning More?
These nine digital marketing hacks are a great starting point for your business, but why stop there? Every couple of months The James Agency hosts a free digital marketing lab at our Scottsdale office. Free food and drinks included! In this no-strings-attached marketing lab, we dive deeper into the psychology and theory behind many digital marketing practices to further identify when and how digital marketing can benefit businesses. If you’re interested in attending the TJA Marketing Lab, just fill out a quick form and we’ll follow up with the details!
