Owning a small business is not only competitive it’s also quite unpredictable. As such, it’s essential these business owners employ small business marketing strategies to ensure the survival of their business. Here are 7 deadly online marketing sins small businesses should avoid.
1. Underestimating how important the website is: In this digital age, a large number of people would opt for shopping online rather than paying a visit to physical stores. Despite this, there are still a large number of small businesses that do not give potential clients the option of shopping right from their website!
2. Not maintaining the website: simply having a website does not mean you have exhausted small business marketing methods. You also have to ensure that your website is of high quality. If web users are not impressed by it, they’ll leave and most likely never return, like 98.5% of first time visitors do. Not only should the website be user friendly, it should also be aesthetically appealing.
3. Failure to advertise your website: The whole point of having a website is to expand your online presence. If people don’t know it exists, how can they visit it? You need to promote your business’ website effectively so that you can reap the benefits of having an online presence. You could use search engine optimization, social media marketing, pay per click ads and more.
4. Not making use of local search submissions: According to Google, small businesses find 97% of their businesses within a 5-mile radius of their location. It’s crucial all small business owners run marketing campaigns that are localized to laser-target these potential customers.
5. Not measuring online marketing results: When it comes to marketing online, you can measure how many people visit your site, what pages they click on, in what order, what they purchased, where they left your site and more. This helps you track how close you are to achieving your online marketing goals.
6. Inconsistency: Small business online marketing has to be consistent and fresh for it to be interesting to potential clients.
7. Failure to set goals, funnels or conversions: Although some small businesses have Google Analytics installed, they fail to set up goals such as ‘time a visitor spends on your site’, ‘bounce rate below 50%’ Furthermore, some ecommerce sites still don’t analyze their funnel metrics so can’t see how much of their traffic is converting to sales or how many people abandon their shopping cart.
Keep these 7 sins in mind when crafting your online marketing strategy as the businesses that don’t may not see it through the next downturn.
