One of the mistakes that many small and local business owners make when they set out to create a digital marketing campaign, is that they spread themselves too thin. What we mean by that is that, instead of focussing on one or two digital marketing tactics, they try just about everything. Apart from it being a nightmare to manage 10 or more different marketing channels, it also means your resources can be stretched to the limit, including your time and your budget.
For a digital marketing campaign to be successful, it requires careful planning, including setting its goals, research, such as spying on your competitors’ campaigns, implementation, and most importantly tracking and analysis to see what is working and what is not. If you attempt to do all of these but multiply them by 10 or more different marketing methods, you are almost certain to fail.
Instead of taking a scattergun approach, you need to focus your marketing efforts on one or two methods to start with, optimise them, and then think about moving on to others. For a start, your stress levels will be much lower, and just as important, the chances of your campaigns being successful are increased enormously. As for what online marketing avenues you should go down first, here are 5 which we highly recommend for small and local businesses.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Often cited as the holy grail in digital advertising, SEO is one of the most effective ways for a business to get traffic to its website from Google and other search engines. However, it is not something that can be done in days or even weeks, so a degree of patience is required. It is also complex and has a steep learning curve, so unless you are already an SEO expert, it is highly advisable that if you want to use SEO, that you employ a professional SEO agency.