Internet Marketing for Small Business is one of the greatest challenges that small business face in recent times. I would like to narrate my personal experience as a digital marketing advisor for small businesses in the United Kingdom.
How it started
Firstly, when I started off, I did not have much insight and knowledge of digital marketing and as to how it exactly works. So, when I had time, I would go surfing on the internet to do some research on the pros and cons of the discipline. As time went on, I realized that I was just reading and reading, stumbling upon loads of information but at the end of the day, I had not learned much. Because my learning was not properly planned as to what I should learn in a methodical order.
As a result, I started my usual online research to find a suitable institution to start on an online paid course. Unfortunately, finding an online course provider these days is a challenge all on its own. I came across hundreds of online platforms for learning digital marketing. For this reason, I was not sure which course provider to choose and how to assess if they were credible. Therefore, I decided to get opinions from reviews and influencers on the web, which led me to the College of Contract Management, who have a Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing and SEO course which focuses on the key pillars necessary to build the foundation of learning required for Internet Marketing for Small Business.
The Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing and SEO transformed my life
The Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing and SEO elaborates on the three main areas of optimization, search engine marketing and SEO content writing. As a matter of fact, before I came across this course, I never knew that SEO content writing played a big part in digital marketing. On completion of the course, I learned the proper steps to develop a digital marketing plan and implement it to offer advice to upcoming small business start-ups.
My consultations for Internet Marketing for Small Business
Now, let us dive into the strategic digital marketing advice that I give my clients regularly during my consultations.
The most important concept that any start-up small business needs to understand is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). We hear about this term almost everywhere in the online marketing business world, but do you understand the meaning of how to utilize SEO for your daily business? To explain it in a brief and simple way, all internet usage starts with search. People will type words into search engine tools, like Google, Yahoo and Bing and the search engine will pull up the web pages which have the keywords that you typed. How does this happen? There are a lot of technicalities behind this whole search engine process and I cannot cover all of them here.
Keyword research
Usually, I provide a live demonstration for my customer as to how basic SEO strategies can be implemented, such as having your website optimized with keywords. To illustrate this further, I tell my clients to do keyword research initially to identify and jot down the most relevant keywords to the industry they operate in. For example, if the course provider is an online education provider like the College of Contract Management. Thus, the most appropriate keywords will be targeting their products (online courses) and the nature of their business. Therefore, the most appropriate keywords will terms such as live online courses, construction courses, NVQ, contract management etc. Finally, keyword research is an important factor in the SEO strategy in Internet Marketing for Small Business. For this purpose, popular tools like the keyword planner can be used.
Blogs
Secondly, I would always check on how often the new content on the customer’s website is updated. Because one of the best ways to improve the website ranking on search results is by adding new content regularly. The best way to do this is to write blogs and publish them daily. The blogs should be unique in content and include the keywords. When it is published on the client’s website regularly, Google will start indexing the website. This is a long-term strategy – it does not happen overnight – so it can take some time to see positive results.
Social media profiles for Internet Marketing for Small Business
Moving ahead with our strategies, I advise my clients to create a social media business profile in platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. Both these platforms have a different set of audiences. Facebook has more informal active users networking to share ideas, hobbies, pictures and videos etc. On the other hand, LinkedIn is more professional, with corporate executives and business professionals networking for recruitment purposes. In order, to promote their personal profiles. These social media platforms also need to be engaged with regularly, which will help the business build its brand awareness with time. The advantage of using these platforms is that a business can advertise its products and services regularly.
Have you ever collected e-mails from people who might be interested in your product or service? If not, this is a must-do strategy to build an e-mailing list. Most of the small businesses which I consulted never had an e-mail subscription option for sending product updates or newsletters. Hence, include an e-mail subscription option on the home page of your website. As this will act as a great tool for lead generation. Especially during new product launches, promotional offers and similar initiatives for Internet Marketing for Small Business.
Backlinks
Most small online business have not even heard of backlinking. Even if they have, they don’t have a clear idea of how to implement it. Backlinking is a very powerful tool that I always advise my clients to use to improve their website search rankings. Furthermore, this is a long-term process which goes hand in hand with blog writing. To explain it simply, we have to place the URL links of our website on the blogs. Which we write and publish it on various other web platforms. Therefore, when someone reads our blogs and clicks the URL links we placed, the reader is re-directed to our website. If this strategy is successfully implemented, then you can expect to get a lot of traffic to your website and so improve your overall web rankings.