My small business web marketing strategy is to keep it simple.
Simple for me is:
- in focus,
- scalable,
- systematic and teachable,
- can be used and
- it is easily measurable.
Of course, it must also be effective.
When diving into web marketing for your small business, it’s a good idea to explore your options, but then you have to make a choice. Unless you have millions of dollars and a great team, there is no way you can execute every web marketing strategy effectively.
Elements of a Great Web Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses
For me, simple business marketing strategies are those that are focused, scalable, systemic, and can be leveraged.
1. Focus on your company’s web marketing strategies
Focus on criticism. “Pick and stick” to some basic web marketing activities. Excel at those activities and do them consistently.
Consistency is a natural consequence of being focused. Don’t try to do it all in 2 weeks. Instead, once you’ve chosen your top web marketing strategies, develop an action plan and stick with it.
For example. If you decide to focus on article and video marketing, develop a posting timeline. Resolve to post a certain number of articles and videos each month. Take action consistently. Also set a realistic timeline. At first, you can review your timeline.
Think in terms of years, not weeks. If you publish 2 articles and 2 videos every month, in 2 years you will have almost 100 articles and videos published. Even if each article and video drives 1 visitor to your website each week, that’s 200 visitors per week.
Additionally, you will establish a large bank of articles and videos which in itself will build credibility. A few articles and a few videos will not have the same impact as hundreds of articles and videos.
I post articles primarily on EzineArticles and videos on YouTube because those publishing platforms get the most views and drive the most traffic.
2. Choose marketing strategies that are scalable
Scalable, in the sense that I mean, is being able to start small with no or limited budget and build on your success. As revenue grows, you can “stretch” it by investing the growing profits in your chosen marketing activities.
The reality for many small businesses, especially when starting out, is that there aren’t many resources for marketing. Being able to start with little or no investment is important.
3. Systematic and teachable
I am a hands-on DIY salesperson for my business. When you know your core marketing activities well, then you’re in a much better position to hire them because you know how they should be done. You also know how to measure results.
Simple means that it turns your web marketing strategy into a system. You have a plan and you execute it consistently. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Instead, wash, rinse, and repeat…once you establish an effective system.
Keep doing your main activities over and over again. Keep in mind that it can take a bit of time to develop an effective web marketing system. Once you do, you can easily hire or train someone in your organization to do it.
Example: Going back to the article and video marketing example, you’ll not only have a posting timeline, but you’ll also develop article writing techniques and video templates that you can use over and over again. Over time, you’ll write articles and create videos faster.
4. Leverage Your Marketing Activities
Leveraging your marketing activities builds on previous work. Taking advantage of web marketing activities allows you to exponentially increase your web presence.
You can get more out of it by choosing marketing activities that complement each other.
The best way to explain this is with an example. Going back to the article and video marketing example, you can take advantage of those two complementary activities. Your article content can be your video content.
Leverage also comes naturally as you build a web presence. As you publish more quality articles, you have more content available to your readers. The same with the videos. Once they read your articles and watch your videos, your other work is there for people (ie potential clients) to read and see.
More content also builds credibility…as long as it’s quality content.
5. Easily measurable
Choose small business web marketing strategies that present you with ways to measure results. If you don’t know what’s working, then you won’t know what to do. You want to focus solely on effective activities.
The first part of being measurable is determining the results you are looking for.
- Is it the number of visitors to your website?
- How about the number of views of articles or videos?
- Is it the number of new customers?
It’s probably all of this. Ultimately, it is the number of new customers and revenue. However, it is important to measure a variety of figures/data.
Do some research to find out what are the good numbers and what are the bad numbers. You need to set the goal posts.
However, don’t prematurely stop a marketing strategy or activity because you’re not getting great results right away. Online marketing takes time. You will need to tune and test your activities and your system.
Which leads to the second part of being measurable: test and adjust. Analyze what works, and then tweak the weak areas. This is an ongoing process.
For example, some types of articles receive more views and clicks than others. In your marketplace, you’ll need to test different article approaches to see what works best for your business.
