Home-based businesses highly depend on their digital presence. If you want to sell beyond your neighborhood you have to establish a strong online reputation and make it grow as much as possible. Try out these evergreen digital marketing strategies and see what works best for your venture.
Have an email strategy
Email marketing is still the most effective strategy for small businesses. Just make sure to follow best practices. There are three factors to keep in mind: appeal, personalization, and the mobile experience. Let’s take a look at each.
Appeal: Your email needs to be short, clear, and compelling. The recipient needs to understand your message right away. You also need to include a clear and direct call to action.
Personalization: Add a personal touch to your email content. Address customers by name, include personal thank-you notes after purchases, etc.
Mobile experience: Most people today access their email from smartphones, so cater to that. Make sure your messages, newsletters, etc. display neatly in mobile email apps.
As a bonus tip, try to set yourself up with local or regional internet and email service providers. They will have a better understanding of how the local audience interacts with their email software.
For instance, Jordan ADSL is a good example of a provider that centers on its regional community. You can count on dedicated businesses like that to be more reliable and more accommodating to local entrepreneurs.
Stick to the relevant platforms
Social media is the go-to space for most marketing efforts nowadays, and especially so for small businesses. It lets you directly interact with your current and potential customers, form meaningful connections, build a community around your brand, spread the word, and ultimately get more converting visitors on your website or sale page.
The trick is, though, that you have to be strategic about which social media you will go on. There is a myriad of platforms out there and they all cater to slightly different audiences. They also all work in slightly different ways. That means that you will need to tailor your marketing strategy to each platform.
This can all be overwhelming for a small business, especially when you are just getting started. To make it easier and more effective, choose one or two platforms and stick to them. Make your choice based on who your primary target audience is.
For example, if you market to professionals or other businesses, you need to be on LinkedIn. If you’re targeting young, fashion-forward people, get on Instagram. If your product or service is meant for niche interests, consider dedicated forums, TikTok, Discord, or other fandom and hobby spaces.
Keep the SEO straightforward
The better your SEO, the more visible you are in web searches, and the more potential customers might click on your page. The trick is to consider your product from the perspective of your audience. Describe it in keywords that they would use in a search engine.
What this specifically means is:
- Simple, everyday language
- Lots of lexical words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs)
- Few grammatical words (prepositions, determiners, functional phrases).
Let’s say you’re planning a vacation in Sicily and you’re researching restaurants. Nobody browses for “reputable culinary establishments with pescatarian cuisine in Palermo”. You would search “what are the best seafood restaurants in Palermo” or “seafood restaurants Palermo reviews”. Follow the same line in optimizing your own web pages.
Try online advertising
You may want to invest in paid online adverts. They cost a fraction of traditional ads and reach a much wider audience. You can also tailor them to target a very specific consumer group. These ads typically come in two forms:
- The display appears in strategic places on various websites, usually in the form of banners
- Pay-per-click ads appear on search results pages in browsers
Many social media also let you run targeted ads on their platforms.
Online listings are likewise a great channel for advertising. Consider Google Business profiles, Yelp, and similar business directories. Most of them let you register your business for free. Take advantage of that and remember to include a link to your site or official page.
That way you can reach people who don’t search with specific keywords in mind, but rather browse all businesses in the general category until they find one that might have what they need.
Gather reviews
Reviews are the online equivalent of word-of-mouth, so don’t neglect them. Encourage happy customers to share their impressions. They can do that in surveys or polls on your website, on social media, or any other review platform you decide to use.
The trick with reviews is to monitor them and respond in a timely manner. Always leave a little comment along the lines of “thanks for your business, we’re glad you liked our product!”
Conversely, if you get a negative review, deal with it promptly and professionally. Accept and implement constructive criticism. Address rants politely, ask for offline contact, and resolve the problem as soon as you can. Digital marketing doesn’t have to be overwhelming. It comes down to understanding your customers’ perspectives. Tailor your SEO to the words they search by, be active on the social media platforms they frequent, and be responsive to their feedback. Expand your reach via paid online ads and establish good customer relationships with personalized communication.
