Five Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses in 2022
You may not have much time to think about tweaking and improving your digital marketing strategies. The last thing I ever want to do is add items to your to-do list. If you’re a small business owner, you already have a to-do list as long as your arm. I know this because I do too.
Five Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses in 2022
Chances are one of the items you can never quite check off that to-do list is bringing in new leads to your business. So while it may seem that I’m about to tell you five digital marketing strategies for small businesses that will make more work for you, it’s actually the opposite. These are ways to tweak or replace existing strategies so the efforts you’re already making pay off. These ones are low(er) effort, high impact.
1) Podcasts
You don’t have to start a podcast; you just need to find one. We’re seeing great results from our clients appearing on other peoples’ podcasts.
It’s easy to be skeptical about podcasts. After all, it seems like everyone has one now. There are 2 million of them and counting. How many people can possibly be listening to all that content?
Turns out the answer is a lot.
Recently one study showed 71% of people surveyed had listened to a podcast in the past month. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by that, but I was. Then I stopped to think about it. When I think about ten people I know, would I expect 7 of them to be occasional or regular podcast listeners? Yes. That does actually make sense.
Appearing as a guest on a podcast is an excellent strategy for sharing your story. Podcast listeners listen. Many people choose to consume podcasts when they’re stuck doing something else. Whether they’re folding laundry, exercising or commuting, the podcast is their pleasant distraction from something monotonous. So unlike media where people might casually tune in or distractedly scroll by, podcast listeners are much more likely to absorb every word.
The tendency of podcast listeners to focus on the content means that even if the podcast’s audience is small, if the audience is made up of people who want to buy what you sell, your chances of permeating their awareness are high.
2) Pinterest
Pinterest is different than other social media platforms. If you post something on Facebook, the only people likely to see it are your followers and anyone your followers share it with.
On TikTok or Instagram Reels, you aren’t likely to get much traction unless you create a video that is so catchy people start engaging with it right away. Sometimes the information we have to share with the world just doesn’t belong in viral dance form.
Meanwhile, Pinterest is over here making the most out of every single post. Pinterest is searchable. It is its own search engine. If you post something on Facebook about, say, digital marketing, that post will not appear in a Google search for “digital marketing.” But the content you post on Pinterest (known as “pins”) will. This is very, very valuable.
The actual content of the pins themselves is searchable, so Google can serve them to people who are looking for information via search engines. AKA your customers.
We have one client who has been focused on growing their organic web traffic for the past few months. Their Pinterest profile has had 20K impressions so far this month, which translated into 900 clicks on her website. The total visits to their website so far this month is about 2600, so you can see that Pinterest is driving more than a third of that web traffic.
3) Google Business Profile
Oh, Google. I have such a complicated relationship with Google. They change their tools and processes so often that we’re constantly re-learning how to use them to help our clients. I’ve written extensively about using the Google My Business page to leverage the power of Google’s local search. One of those changes I just mentioned is the name: Google My Business is now Google Business Profile. By my count, this is the fourth name change to this service, but hey, it worked for Diddy.
One of our clients enacted our Review Strategy and has raised their review rating by 9% in one month.
If you were using the GMB app to manage your profile, you should know that Google has now canned the app, and now all of those controls move over to the Google Maps admin.
Another essential factor you should take the time to consider is the category in which your business appeared. The category determines precisely how your business will come up in search results. If you could be either a marketing agency or a web designer, consider choosing the one that is most likely to drive traffic.
Google is constantly adding new categories, and we’re continuously checking them to ensure our clients are property listed. For example, in August 2021, they added “Toast Restaurant” as a category. This means that not only is there a restaurant that specializes in toast, but there are enough of them to necessitate their own category.
4) Tweak your tagline
Your tagline should say what your business does in plain language if the name of your business does not.
For example, if your business name is Joe’s Sign Painting, it’s okay for your tagline to be something cutesy like “A Sign of the Times” because people searching for “sign painting” will find you by the name of your business.
However, many business names don’t precisely spell out what you do; for example, say you’re a market research firm called Haptic Insights. That name doesn’t say anything about what you do. Therefore, you need your tagline to clearly state what you do, like “Canada’s most innovative market research firm.”
The reason for this is search. You don’t want to miss out on all the people searching for “market research firm Canada.” The business name/ tagline combo is one area where the adage of “clear over clever” is very accurate.
5) Give it Away
The principle of the lead magnet is to trade something free your customers want for your email address. If you’re going to find people who would be good customers, giving away something your customers want is an excellent place to start. Returning to our previous example, Joe’s Sign Painting, maybe the free item would be a reference chart that shows standard sign dimensions and how big the typeface should be depending on the sign size.
Many businesses are nervous about sharing their best information for free. But as you can imagine, the people who access your free information are the exact people looking for what you offer. By trading their email address for your information, you can follow up and see if you can offer them additional support, the kind they’re willing to pay for.
We have created what we call our Ultimate Checklist for building a small business website. If a website is a project you expect to embark on soon, download the checklist, and the process will be a smooth one.
