5 Digital Marketing Tips for Small Businesses 2022

5 Digital Marketing Tips for Small Businesses 2022

21 Jun, 2022 | Build a Presence, Digital Marketing & SEO Audits

Social Selling | Ryan Marketing Solutions | Ireland

Let’s say you just have started recently your business and you are very excited about things to happen. Everything is exactly how you have planned (central location, awesome products or services, etc) but you hardly get any customers in. Guess what? You’re not alone.

More than 20 percent of small, medium size businesses fail within the first year of existence. By the end of the second year, 30 percent of businesses will have failed. After 5years more than 50% have shut their doors.

This is due to different factors such as:

  • Inefficient Business Planning – before starting a business you should have a properly laid out business plan. This should include but not limited to management needs, competitor analysis, capital needs, marketing initiatives & budgets, opportunities and threats to your brand, clear purpose of your business, etc.
  • Poor management – In the first year of business the business owner is the only senior level within a company. Usually, the owner might be good at selling the product or service, accounting but he might have bad managerial skills. Overseeing other employees, looking after the marketing, hiring staff, financing is hard to do on your own therefore a dedicated person or team is required.
  • Financial Impediment – This is the primarily reason why businesses fail. Misunderstanding, mismanagement of business funds can quickly escalate and put owners into great difficulty. Every financial aspect of the business (rent, utilities, salaries, income, and vendor payments) has to be taken into consideration. Simply, you can’t spend more that you generate.

Below I am going to list 5 Digital marketing tips for small to medium sized businesses that will help increase brand awareness & reach, drive more sales and make your business more profitable.

#Tip No1 – Find out who and where your business customers are 

If a start- up business this can be achieved through research on your competition.  Find out who are their customers, their interests, needs, expectations, behaviour.  Then ask yourself, what do I bring new to the market? How do I differentiate myself from them? Is my product or service better than theirs?

One way of doing competition research is by using Social Listening Tools such as Hootsuite, TweetReach, BuzzSumo, Sprout Social, Buffer, etc. It’s a laborious process and involves some skills. (That’s why Ryan Marketing Solutions is here for to help you).

If the business is already established you can use analytics to accurately determine who, where your customers are. Google’s, Bing,  Social Media native analytics tools can show you precisely how & when your customers interact with your content, what device they are using, conversion rates, engagement rate, etc.

#Tip No2- Build up your Social Media presence 

Social media is the No1 tool that helps businesses boosts their online presence.

Did you know that there are over 3.5billion (keeps growing) active social media users, and every 6.4 seconds a new social media account has is created.

Did you know that every social media user has an average of 7.6 social media accounts? And they spend more than 145 minutes on social media every single day.

These are facts that cannot be ignored. If you want to drive awareness to your business brand there is no better way than building up your social media presence. Ideally you should do an audience research prior to creating those, to establish what channels your customers are using.

For example, 84% of digital marketers are targeting Millennials- GenY (born between 1980-2000) in their social media strategy, followed by Gen X –born between 1960- 1980 (52%), then Gen Z – born between 1997- 2012 at 22%.

There’s no right or wrong in choosing a social channel. Personally I would create channels on every social media platform available and choose to advertise my business products or services ONLY on those where my customers are.

#Tip No3 – Focus on creating unique, consistent, relevant content to your brand

There are many types of content that business owner can utilise in their digital marketing strategies. The most engaging content out there at the moment is video.

Recent conducted studies found that 54% of customers desire to see more video content from business or brand they’re interested in. Furthermore, 88% of video marketers are pleased with the ROI- Return of Investment of their video marketing accomplishment on the brand social media channels.

From above findings we can deduct that demand for video content is desirable by many consumers and there is high demand.

Video content gets more views, is more engaging and is by far the most preferred type of content. If you want to get up to 66% more qualified leads per year then focus on creating quality, original videos (Take a look at Ryanair channel on TikTok ).

To create video content might sound daunting but there are tools (free or paid) that can help you accomplish that. You can also use social media channels live video features to create content. However, producing a good quality video does not come cheap, and it might raise the cost of your digital marketing campaign.

Other type of content includes:

  • Infographics
  • Blogs
  • How To Guides
  • Live Chats
  • Photo Galleries
  • Whitepapers
  • Downloads
  • Q&A
  • Newsletters
  • Podcast
  • Gif’s
  • Images
  • Client Testimonials

As you can see there are a multitude of content types available to create. It’s up to the business management (marketer if they have one) to choose the most suitable type. As a general rule focus on creating unique, relevant to your brand content that keep your customers engaged.

 Consistency is another element that you should be aware of. For example, you can’t just simply put a blog post out there and do nothing for the next 3 months. Search engines spiders (not that scary insect that you might think of) will avoid crawling your website if there is not any new content added. In time this will affect your SEO – Search Engine Optimisation rankings.

#Tip No4 – Use Search Engine & Social Media Advertising 

 “The advertisement is the heart and the soul of the commerce”.

 If you’re just starting up or you’re an established business advertising can only bring benefits to your brand. Marketing can be divided into 2 main categories: Outbound Marketing & Inbound Marketing.

 Outbound Marketing includes TV advertising, email marketing, Flyers, Brochures, magazines, posters, radio advertising, newspapers, etc. They tend to be less used nowadays because targeting customers is difficult, cost ineffective, ROI tracking is difficult or impossible, etc.

If you choose to advertise your business through such channels, be prepared for huge charges. Not saying that is not effective way but it will incur huge marketing costs.

In contrast choosing inbound marketing (content marketing, social media, email marketing) will help you reduce your marketing costs, get recognised sooner and build long term relationship with your customers. Maintaining relationships and building trust is the key element in any digital marketing campaign.

Advertising through social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram) incurs high benefits because of its huge audience size. You can also choose your target audience (Do not go with the ad default options) and create personalised ads for each category of customers.

Also you’re in control of your spending as you choose the daily amount spent and how many days want your ads to run for.

If you opt out for Google’s PPC or Bing advertising (search or display) you’ll get almost instant results. But those results come at a price. If you’re just starting up I recommend hiring a digital marketer or marketing agency who knows how to properly configure those ads. You can’t just simply go with the default ads settings as your entire budget will be spent very fast.

As a general rule use Display & Social Media Advertising to increase brand reach and awareness or if you’re selling cheap products or services. Use Bing & Google PPC – Pay Per Click advertising only if you want to sell a premium product or service.

#Tip No5 – Use Influencer Marketing 

This type of marketing is relatively new compared to social media marketing but is one of the in vogue digital marketing trends at the minute. If done right it can increase trust, credibility of your brand, increase ROI, awareness and get more conversions. 

Did you know that 8 out of 10 consumers have made a purchase from an influencer’s suggestion? Or that 80% of Business to Consumers B2C businesses currently or intend to work with influencer marketing.

There’s no doubt that Influencer Marketing is profitable if done right. It won’t be cheap but with the right niche influencers your brand can grow to new highs.

As fresh social media platforms emerge (see TikTok, SnapChat or the new METAVERSE thing) there are more influencers marketing opportunities to avail of.

Need Inspiration? Have a look at your competition. Do they use an influencer to improve their brand awareness? Who is their brand ambassador? Or they didn’t. If not is an opportunity for you that you can’t miss.

Conclusion

Running a business in today’s market proves to be a huge challenge, especially if you’re just starting up. But with the right approach, mindset, skills you’ll succeed. A mix of social media, SEO, video & influencer marketing might be the key for unlocking your success.

 There’s not a nailed template or path you should follow. Every business is different and addresses different markets. Try to be unique, transparent, and consistent in the type of content you create. Also adapt to the new trends, don’t get stuck in the past.

If your business needs help, advice, consulting don’t hesitate to contact Ryan Marketing Solutions. We are here to help your business thrive and succeed.

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Build Faster, Protect your Brand and Grow your Business with Ryan Marketing Solutions

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SEO Tips For Small Businesses 2022

SEO Tips For Small Businesses 2022

2 Jun, 2022 | Build a Presence, Digital Marketing & SEO Audits

Social Selling | Ryan Marketing Solutions | Ireland

Are you a small business owner and noticed that your website does not appear in Google’s, Bing, organic searches? Want to increase the discoverability of your website pages? Looking for ways to address this issue? Then this blog post is for you.

Organic searches relates to any non paid search result from a search engine (Google, Bing, AOL, etc). It can take different shapes such as: video carrousels, featured snippets, top stories, and lines of text –“blue link” results. 

They are very important because it represents the most effective way of driving high quality traffic to your website. Below I am going to list 10 Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tips that will increase your rankings on search engines organic searches.

Create Video Content – Video represents the main source of information for 66% of the people. It has the highest engagement rates from all types of content out there.

Did you know that brands creating and using video content grow their company revenue by 49% faster, than the businesses that do not utilise it? Or that the video increases the chance of being listed on Google’s organic search results by 53 times (Forrester Research Study)?

Therefore, video should be the number 1 content type for your digital marketing campaigns. To create video content you can use tools like Biteable, Vimeo Creator, Animaker or use Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) native tools.

Use Internal Links Between Your Website Pages – This is part of on-page SEO optimisation. Creating links between your website pages, blog posts improves your website page rank in SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) and keeps visitors longer on your website. Increased page views translate into a lower bounce rate and higher engagement. These links can be added manually (if don’t know how we can help) or automatically, using plugins, in websites built with Content Management Systems (CMS). Fortunately, for your business, not many are using this method (or think is not important) so it represents a good opportunity for you to rank higher than your competitors in SERP. 

Publish NEW Content Regularly – It is essential to create new content regularly for your social media channels or for your website. Google’s RankBrain algorithm plays an extremely important factor in search engine result pages SERP.

If your content (video, text, images, etc) is organised, engaging and captivates the user attention you have more chances to rank higher in searches than your competition.

 According to experts User Experience (UX) is the primary determinant factor for optimising your SEO for RankBrain, Goggle’s AI algorithm.

When creating content you need to focus on some important aspects such as:

  • Voice Search – this is a very popular way of searching content by users. It is predicted that in 2022 more than 55% of households will own a voice search device. Innovations like Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri have come a long way and are used by a large chunk of the population.

As a tip when optimising for voice search use long keywords, phrases that user use every day. Try to create pages, blog posts that answer FAQ’s. For example use the following “Where,” “When,” “Why,” “How,” “Who,” “What,” in the titles of the page(s). They are extremely useful for voice searches. Voice search is on a continuous ascension, and ignoring this trend can cost your business a lot.

  • Content Quality – Google has stated numerous times that content quality is critical for search engine rankings. Extensive audience persona, search intent research is required in order to create quality content. As a rule focus on what your business audience prefers. Video is more appealing to the younger audience whereas text, graphics images is more suitable for more mature audience.
  • Long Form Content – According to SEMRUSH long form content will help improve your SERPs. Your blog posts should have more than 1200 words. It has to be structured in sections to be more scannable by readers.

 Ensure your content is linked to reputable, authoritative sources with a high authority score (whenever possible). Also include sharing links above the main headline and after the last paragraph of the article. DON’T waffle, write quality content that will keep your readers engaged.

Optimise your images – this is a well known fact that image optimisation will improve your SEO. Images are used to give a better structure to your page content. They are an important part of the on-page Search Engine Optimisation.    In the near future users will be able to use images to obtain more information, purchase products and many more.

It well known that an image says a thousand words. They are useful for helping users understand and engage better with your written content. Also they are beneficial for breaking –up big chunks of text in your website blog posts or pages.  To optimise your images you should use the following:

  • Add ALT text to let search engines know what your image represents. Also important for screen reading tools to understand the appearance of your image.
  • Name correctly the file. Add a keyword or 2 in the name of the file.
  • Reduce the file size – use compression tools such as Jpeg Optimiser, tiny PNG or for advanced professional use Photoshop, save for web tool.
  • Add Image Captions – It is up to you if you’re using the caption field or not. But sometimes it can be used to add a description of the image, insert focus keyword, a joke or a personalised message.
  • Choose the right file type – As a rule use PNG for higher quality images or those that have transparent background or includes text. Use JPG or GIF’s for others. There’s another file format developed by Google, .webp. It helps reduce the size of the image without reducing the quality and make the web faster.
  • Add images to your sitemap – very useful for businesses that use imagery to showcase their products or services. By giving search engines (Google, Bing, AOL) clear information about your images you increase the probability of showing them in image searches. In turn this will improve your discoverability in SERP.

Focus on Local SEO – Local SEO is important and is continuously evolving. Almost everyone looks for products or services in a defined area or region.

Therefore, is necessary to add you business in all local online business directories. As a first step you should create a Google My Business and a Bing My Business Page. Here add your business location, contact details, opening hours, videos, images, etc.

Focusing on Local SEO is extremely useful as there is always less competition and your business has a much better chance of getting high rankings on local searches.

Wrapping Up

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an important way of making sure your brand, business gets discovered on search engine search results. It is also an important factor in any digital marketing strategy. If done right it can help boost your business online presence and discoverability. This translates into more customers and conversions.

If you need advice or help creating, implementing a SEO strategy for your small business do not hesitate to contact Ryan Marketing Solutions.

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How To Establish a Digital Presence for your Small Business

How To Establish a Digital Presence for your Small Business

10 Feb, 2022 | Build a Presence, Digital Marketing & SEO Audits

Are you a small business owner and looking for ways to get more clients for your products or services? Want to establish a digital presence for your brand but doesn’t have a clue what steps to follow? Then this blog post is for you.

Nowadays, competition is fierce amongst business (big or small) to get more customers to their business. An online presence is essential in order attract more customers and your business be successful. Latest statistics shows that:

  • 36% of all small businesses are making their sales online, through ecommerce.
  • 1.79 billion People bought a product online in 2021 (expected to grow in 2022).
  • 70% of small-to-mid-sized businesses are investing more into their digital online presence.
  • 88% of all online shoppers perform online research before using a service or buy a product

Therefore, if you expect to grow your business without having an online presence is going to be very difficult if not impossible. Below I am going to list 5 steps to help your business establish an online presence.

1. Get listed on Google My Business & Bing My Business

Google and Bing are the major search engines that people use to search for things online. It is a good practice to establish an online presence on these Platforms before any other channels.

The process is simple and straight forward and consists of registering, creating a profile and verify your business. In literally few hours you can have all your business details (services, products, opening hours, images, locations, videos, bio etc) set up and available to see on two of the biggest search engines in the world.

Tip! List your business on Google My Business first then import all the information in Bing My Business.

2. Set up a Business Page on Facebook (Meta) and Instagram

Did you know that Facebook has an advertising audience of 2.14 billion and the largest demographic group of Facebook usersis between the ages of 25 and 35 years? Did you know that there are over 1 billion active users on Instagram worldwide? If you didn’t it’s time to get listed on those social media platforms.

Not only you’ll increase awareness and reach of your brand but you will also avail of the most efficient communications channels available today, for free (we’ll talk in a different post about Facebook & Instagram advertising).

Once you have created the Facebook Business page you can start posting on it information about your services or products, offers, pictures of services done, videos, etc.

Tip! Join groups similar to your brand niche and start sharing your posts, website blog posts on these groups. You’ll improve discoverability of your brand and reach new audiences.

3. Build a website 

If you’re looking to build trust and familiarity for your brand then a website is a must have asset. It will create and enhance your brand image, make it easier for customers to find information about your product or services and is an excellent channel to interact (use chat box, contact forms, etc) with your customers.

Good website content (unique & relevant) will help boost your Search Engine Optimization – SEO on the long term.

You can hire a web developer or you can create the website yourself using tools like WordPress, Shopify, Wix. It’s up to you which way you approach this but it has to be done professionally as it represents a mirror to your business.

Tip! Make use you use responsive design (website pages will adjust automatically to user device) as more than 78% of the online searches come from the mobile devices (smartphone or tablet).

4. List your Business on Online Business Web Directories

A business directory is an online listings of businesses. It comprises of businesses segmented on different categories, niche or location.

Sometimes this is an overlooked method by businesses simply because their managers think that is not worth doing it or because they do not know it. But this is the easiest way to get QUALITY back-links to your website and is free.

Such example of these directories: Golden Pages, Yalwa, Yahoo Local, Google Local, Hotfrog, etc. There are many benefits for adding your business on these platforms.

Amongst those are:

  • Higher traffic to your website, which can translate into more leads or conversions.
  • Improve SEO by having back links to High Authority domains.
  • Search Relevancy- Helps search engines better understand the structure of your business. In time this will help rank you better for your business products or services.
  • On some of these platforms customers can leave reviews to your business. These are very important because customers are looking for these reviews before making a purchase or use a service. Keep in mind that customers trust each other more than brands alone.

Tip! Check on Google the “top 10 online directories” for your niche, or location. For example you don’t want to list your business in London UK if you’re offering services in Dublin, Ireland

5. Create a YouTube Channel

YouTube is owned by Google and has over 2.3 billion users according to the latest statistics. Is the second largest social network platform after Facebook and it continues to grow. Also it can be categorised as a search engine (comes second after Google) since people are using it frequently for different tasks (tutorials, music, entertainment, etc).

YouTube is one of the most powerful tools out there that can help your business grow and reach new audiences. It gets over 30 million visits per day and nearly 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every day. Surely you don’t want to miss that opportunity.

Sometimes videos are harder to make if don’t have knowledge, and can be quite overwhelming for many business. But there are now free & paid online platforms that allow you to create and edit videos. It takes time (and a bit of skill) to create videos but the outcome is definitely worth it.

Tip! If you create videos for your brand or business make sure you keep the content interesting and engaging. Use High Definition videos as they get a higher search amongst users.

As you can see there are quite few ways of putting your business, brand online in front of new audiences. You don’t have to break the bank in order to achieve that, but a fairly amount of time has to be dedicated. You don’t have to be skilled either. Surely there’s someone in your organization that has the ability to do those tasks.

If you got no time, skills or interests to do those we at Ryan Marketing Solution can help you. Whatever your query is, we are here to help you grow your business and be successful. If you find the information from this blog post useful please share it with your friends.

Drive your Business Forward Faster with a FREE Marketing Strategy Call!

Build Faster, Protect your Brand and Grow your Business with Ryan Marketing Solutions

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Best Strategy-Driven & Brand Focused Marketing Services Company

Best Strategy-Driven & Brand Focused Marketing Services Company

25 Jan, 2022 | Build a Presence, Consulting & Coaching, Digital Marketing & SEO Audits, Marketing Strategy & Sales

Social Selling | Ryan Marketing Solutions | Ireland

We are delighted to be awarded with Best Strategy-Driven & Brand Focused Marketing Services Company in the Irish Enterprise Awards 2022! 

A big thank you to the people that nominated us, to the EU Business News and Irish Enterprise Awards for awarding us with this 

These awards commend the businesses who continue to demonstrate excellence in their day-to-day operations and prove that the Republic of Ireland is home to some of the most innovative and diverse enterprises, businesses, and initiatives throughout Europe.

What a great start to 2022 to receive this fantastic news! To all our incredible clients & supporters who helped make this happen – thank you! 

We can’t wait to continue to help businesses solve their problems & build their brands 

You have to believe it, before you see it!  

If your business is looking for Digital Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Consulting & Coaching services don’t hesitate to contact Ryan Marketing Solutions. . If you find the information from this blog post useful please share it with your friends.

Drive your Business Forward Faster with a FREE Marketing Strategy Call!

Build Faster, Protect your Brand and Grow your Business with Ryan Marketing Solutions

Schedule Your Free Call Today!

Top 2021 Marketing Strategies & Principles That Will Help Your Business Get Attention

Top 2021 Marketing Strategies & Principles That Will Help Your Business Get Attention

14 Mar, 2021 | Digital Marketing & SEO Audits, Marketing Strategy & Sales

When it comes to marketing these days it can be very confusing to businesses to pick which strategies & tactics to use to ensure they reach their goals and overall objectives for the company. It doesn’t matter whether you have the best product, service or business, if you can’t first get someone to care enough to pay attention.

Every company now is fighting for attention, which means everyone is your competitor right now, and the  only way to overcome this & win is to stand up, stand out, and get noticed.

This is why implementing the best marketing strategies is key to helping your business get more attention & in turn grow. So let’s help you achieve this starting from today!

 

Marketing At Present…

Today’s environment is so noisy and knowing what’s what is hard. You’ve got people over here screaming at you, and you’ve got people over there screaming at them, and you’ve got people way over there and some over there too, hiding inside with the covers over their head, just waiting for this all to be over.

But as confusing and as messed up as things may appear to be, one thing has become more clear and more glaringly obvious than it ever has been before. Attention & getting notice is key!

 

Specialisation

The first thing that you need to do in order to get attention is to understand one of the most important fundamentals and principles when it comes to marketing strategy, and that is specialisation.

The reality is, in today’s hyper competitive and really saturated world, especially when it comes to business and marketing, well, you can’t be all things to all people; you have to specialise, you have to focus! This means really focusing in and really specialising on either a certain area, a certain product or a certain service, or even a certain market, or segment of the market.

Being a jack of all trades or a generalist is just not the way to succeed because there’s too much noise in the marketplace. Also, there’s no real kind of value or no real reason for somebody to want to go to you or to be able to recommend you or to even have the desire or the understanding that you’re going to be able to help them when you’re claiming to do all of these things for all these different people.

Plus,  when you’re a generalist or you’re keeping your offer, your marketing or your message really broad, well, it naturally forces you to kind of broaden that message, which means you have to water it down.

You have to be less specific so that you can include all of these different people. In reality, when you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one.

 

Differentiation

See differentiation is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, but it’s how are you different and different in a way that’s actually better,  in a way that actually matters to your market, but how are you different from your competition? Or different from others who are offering a similar or even somewhat kind of different thing than what you’re offering?

Basically, as mentioned at the very beginning, everybody is vying for your customer’s attention right now, which means that you’ve got a number of different competitors you’ve got to try to compete against.

You, of course, have your direct competitors who are selling something similar to you, or exactly the same as you, to the same kind of market that you want to reach. However, you also have indirect competitors, which are people who are selling either something different to the same market or something similar to a different market.

Therefore, these are areas that you’re going to have to find, investigate and do research into to figure out what you can do to stand out and really differentiate yourself from everybody else.

Questions to ask yourself:

  • What is your competitive advantage?
  • How are you different?
  • How are you better and how are you better in a way that actually matters to your customers?

Also, this is an opportunity for you to stand for something, to allow your personality and your authenticity to really come through;

  • What are your brand values?
  • What are your, sort of, characteristics?
  • What does your brand or your business stand for?
  • What are some of the attributes that somebody would be able to relate to you on and to your business on a more personal level?

 

Segmentation

The reason segmentation is such a powerful marketing principle is because by kind of narrowing the focus on who it is that you’re going to concentrate on, who it is that you’re going to focus your marketing and your business on; it allows you to not have to try to reach everybody, but rather just to try to reach a few select people.

It’s a whole lot easier to get the attention of 10, 100, 1000 or even 10,000 people, than it is to try to get the attention of millions, if not billions of people, which would be crazy and prohibitively expensive.

So when it comes to segmentation, what you want to do is you want to take a look at all of the different segments of your target market that you could serve. Then you want to really dial in and really drill down into who it is that would get the most value from your business, from your brand, from your product, from your service and focus there.

This is the reason why using the 80/20 principle or Pareto’s Principle is so helpful. Essentially, the fact that 80% of your revenues are likely to come from just 20% of your customers/clients. When you apply this principle to your business, it starts to become really obvious where you’re going to focus, as it clearly highlights the 20% of people that are going to give you 80% of your business’s revenue & profit.

There is also another rule called the 120 over 20 rule, which basically states that, the top 20% of your customers will give you 120% of your revenue because the bottom 20% of your customers are going to end up losing you money. Again, the point being that you really want to focus on that top 20% of your customers, and of those ideal people who love you, love what you do, are happy to pay you for the true value you provide and also want to tell everyone they know about just how great you really are.

 

Concentration 

Essentially what concentration says is that once you’ve applied your segmentation, you’ve divided & really categorised your different segments of customers, you’ve done your 80/20 analysis and you’ve determined your top 20% of customers;  you now want to concentrate & focus on those people and ignore everything else.

However, obviously you don’t just never communicate with anybody else, but you do want to start focusing & tailoring your message, your service to deliver towards that top tier or 20%. Really focus all your time, effort, money, energy & resources on serving them to the best of your ability. In turn, you can get more of them, keep them for longer, and consequently help increase your revenue and your profits.

 

Tips & Treats

Now that you know the principles to successful marketing strategies, what are some tactics that you can use right now to take all of those principles and start getting even faster results?

First off you need to look into the who, the what, the where, the when, the why and the how of putting this all together.

 

The Who? 

This is all about your ideal target market or ideal customer avatar or buyer persona; which is who is the person, who is the market, who is the segment that you’re trying to serve?

Your goal here is to try to understand them better than they even know themselves. Get into their heads, get into their thoughts, get into their feelings and try to figure out what is motivating them? What is incentivising them? Why are they doing the things they do? Why are they buying the things they buy?

This is why it’s incredibly important to talk to your customers. However, if you don’t have customers yet, it’s important to talk to your prospective customers, so you can start to understand what is driving them.

Who are they? What makes up their gender, their age, their income, their occupation, where they live, what are their values, their attitudes, their lifestyles, everything.

This is such an incredibly important thing to do because when you do this, you’re going to be able to be a little more polarising with your content, because you’re going to be able to speak directly to the wants, the needs, the dreams and the desires of a specific market, at the exclusion of everyone else.

This is going to mean that those that love you are going to love you more.

 

The What? 

This is the offer, message, content and the context behind what it is that you sell & how you speak to them. This is where the example of miracles and miseries comes in.

Their miracles are their wants, their dreams, their desires and everything that they’re trying to get. Whereas, their miseries are their fears, their frustrations, their pains, their problems and everything they’re trying to move away from.

Your business serves as the bridge that helps them cross the gap from misery towards miracle from their current pain to their desired end state.

This is why the better you understand what their pains are and what they actually want to get, the better you’re going to be able to create messaging, content and marketing that really resonates & really strikes a chord with them.

 

The Where?

This is all about where are you going to market your business? How are you going to stand out? How are you going to find your people, stand up and get their attention?

When it comes to marketing choices available, there is no shortage of different options to choose from e.g. email marketing, social media, paid advertising etc.

However, if you’re totally lost and you don’t know where to go, you really can’t go wrong with Facebook, Instagram or YouTube.  Facebook has over 2 billion monthly active users. Instagram has over a billion, and YouTube has over 2 billion.

However, with this all being said there is one strategy/content choice that really stands out then all the rest in the current environment, and this is video content.  This is obvious for something like YouTube, but even for Facebook & Instagram, video is still the preferred media choice, both by the algorithms themselves, but also by your customers.

 

Final Thoughts

Marketing is ever changing, however, by implementing the above principles your marketing strategy is off on the right track.

You may ask but when is the best time to start? As the ancient Chinese proverb says, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. However, the second best time is today. So if you’re not already investing in a marketing strategy on these platforms to grow your business, to try to get attention; today’s the day!

And if you’re wondering why you’re doing this is? Then like we talked about at the beginning, to get attention, to grow your business, to generate more leads, to generate more sales, to increase your revenue, essentially, to set yourself up for success.

However, if you’re still unsure on where to begin or want help along the way then we at Ryan Marketing Solutions are here to help. Contact us today and we can schedule a FREE consultation call to answer any questions you may have.

Drive your Business Forward Faster with a FREE Marketing Strategy Call!

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Digital Marketing 101 (A Beginner’s Guide to Marketing)

Digital Marketing 101 (A Beginner’s Guide to Marketing)

14 Mar, 2021 | Digital Marketing & SEO Audits

Ever wonder what is digital marketing and how is it different from traditional marketing? What is the benefits, how can it be done & will it actually help my business grow?

Well today I am going to tell you some of the important things you need to know about digital marketing. Right now, digital marketing has been made to seem way more complicated than it actually is. It is a shame really because it’s actually pretty straightforward once you know & understand the strategies that I am going to be sharing with you.

 

Differences between Digital Marketing & Traditional Marketing

 Digital marketing is really just marketing done through the use of digital channels,  like search engine optimisation (SEO), social media, pay-per-click (PPC), Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, email marketing, website optimisation etc, anything that really takes please online or through the use of a digital media.

In contrast, traditional marketing using traditional media things like TV, radio, newspapers, magazines or billboards; basically anything not digital now.

Traditional marketing and/or traditional advertising still works but there are some significant advantages to using digital marketing. Digital marketing gives you a much larger audience size, really you can reach anybody that’s online, and from this you can be really targeted to hit the right people/audience that are the perfect fit for your business. You can be laser focused and selective on the most ideal & perfect people you want to attract. Furthermore, it is significantly more cost effective than running an ad in say The Sunday Independent or a television ad. These are designed to appeal to mass markets and to try to reach everyone, which is probably not your goal.

Also, digital marketing allows you to get immediate feedback and this is probably one of the best benefits of the channels. After all if you think about running a magazine ad where you’ve got to think of the copy, the creative, what you’re going to say, get it all written up and sent to the magazine it’s got to get published and then have to wait weeks or months before starting to see if it was worth it or not. However, with digital marketing in theory you can write an ad, have it online in a matter of minutes and get immediate feedback. Leading to immediate correction & immediate results.

Also, digital marketing tends to be a whole lot easier to measure and to track because everything’s digital, which means we’ve got a digital trail allowing to measure costs, results and everything in real time. You can make adjustments, tweaks and optimisations on the fly.

However, in contrast with waiting three months for your magazine to come out to figure out if things worked or not. Also, you can’t measure clicks on a magazine so the best you can hope to do is either have them fill out a form on the magazine or get them to visit a digital channel which ties us back into digital marketing anyway.

There’s obviously some serious advantages here to choosing digital marketing but again that’s not to say that traditional marketing doesn’t still work; it does. However, the point here is to take a look at either traditional or digital marketing and then sort of take a few steps back to the strategies, the fundamentals, the principles, the consumer psychology, the buyer behaviour, why people do the things they do and then focus on mastering & learning that then you can apply that to digital channels or traditional channels.

 

Strategy vs. Tactics

Strategy is all the big picture stuff and this is really where you want to focus your efforts first and foremost because this is the foundation that all of your future marketing efforts, tactics, tools and software that are going to be built on. If you get this part wrong then nothing else matters because nothing else will work. Now there are a ton of different strategies, approaches and ways to look at your digital marketing but pretty much no matter how you look at it, it always comes back to four basic & really solid principles, that have stood the test of time and are going to be just as relevant today as they are a hundred years from now:

  • Model
  • Market
  • Message
  • Media

 

1.   Model

Essentially the model is your business, your offer, your package, your servicing and the pricing that goes with it. How you deliver whatever it is that you deliver to the market it’s important that you design your model around what is the most enjoyable, profitable and in demand by the market. The worst thing you can do is build a business that you absolutely hate.

 

2.   Market

These are the people that you’re going to serve.  You don’t want to try target everyone & anyone, instead you want to focus on exactly who is going to get the best results from your product or service. Furthermore, ensure that you choose a market that you are going to most enjoy serving. In marketing, we call this an ideal customer avatar or an ideal client avatar. It’s made up of demographic details (like age, gender, income, occupation), geographic details (including city, state, province or country they live in), and psychographic details (including their values, their attitudes and their lifestyles)

 

3.   Message

This is where you clarify and connect with your ideal target market by speaking directly to them, about their pains, problems, frustrations and how your business is uniquely positioned to help solve these problems for them. This can be done by telling stories about previous customers and their client results, through testimonials & case studies. This proves that you know what you are talking about, and have done what you are going to do. 

Therefore, to craft a truly effective message you’ve got to understand who your market is, what really makes them up and what makes them do the things they do. This can be done through market research and having conversation with your customers.

 

4.   Media 

This is where you’re going to use your marketing and which digital channels you’re gonna choose. Most businesses do this completely backwards, they start with the media by hearing a great thing about Facebook ads, youtube marketing or starting a podcast, and then rush in to using this platform forgetting all about the message, the market and the model. Therefore unsurprisingly, a business is being built on a not the right foundation and in turn isn’t providing the value they customers desire.

However, if you go through the steps in the right order starting with the model moving to the market, identifying the message, and by the time you get to media the choices should be evidently crystal clear and you should know exactly where your ideal target market is present, active online and in turn is going to enable you to there and ignore everything else.

The reality is you don’t need to do everything, you don’t need to be everywhere, you just need to be in the places where your ideal target market is present & active.  This is going to save you a ton of time, money, headache & wasted energy by spreading yourself too thin on channels that simply aren’t going to deliver results.

Tactics on the other hand are how you’re going to execute the strategy. These are the details, the actionable steps or executable things that you’re actually going to go and put into practice. The tactics being things like what frequency are you going to post, what kind of content are you going to post, what schedule, level of consistency and how many memes.

A tactical question would be what’s the best time to post on social media, whereas a strategic question would be which social media platform should we be on.

 

Organic vs. Paid

Organic content and organic digital marketing is essentially anything that you create for free so anytime that you make a post on facebook, an instagram story or a youtube video etc. It is content that you’re not paying money to have it promoted; you’re creating organic content. Nonetheless, this doesn’t mean that it’s free content because good content that’s time, energy & money in recreating it. It is classified as organic as you haven’t paid to promote it.

If not paying for content to be promoted then paid marketing is the opposite of this. You are putting out content & paying networks to promote it, distribute it to even more people. Basically, with paid media, paid marketing or paid ads you’re running advertising to whatever message or whatever content that you’re putting out there.

Now the big players in the space right now are obviously the kingpins like Facebook ads, Instagram ads, YouTube ads, Linkedin ads and Google ads.

Organic content shows up in the news feeds of people that follow you, whereas with paid marketing it shows up in the news feeds, on the phones and on the devices of the people that you choose through targeting.

Nonetheless like with everything in marketing these days they are positives and negatives to both.  Organic is free essentially in nature but it’s going to be a little more limited in reach because the way the algorithms work is that they favour paid media because that is where they make money. Paid marketing on the other hand has the obvious downside of costing money. Still on the bright side it allows you to reach more people very quickly, so essentially the choice between organic and paid comes down to time versus money, and also the rate at which you want to experience results.

Direct Response vs. Brand Awareness

Direct response marketing is ultimately having the goal of getting an immediate and tangible return on something, like a lead, sale, phone call, a visit to your website, or a sign up. This sometimes isn’t always very creative. It is usually just creating an ad or creating a piece of content to generate a lead, send out an email, measure the number of conversions, promote a video, or track how many people signed up for a free trial. Immediately you’re going to be able to track and measure it so you can do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

Conversely, brand awareness marketing is essentially more focused on longer term, building trust, authority and getting your brand name known in the market.

In direct response we’re measuring things like leads, sales and conversions, whereas with brand awareness we’re measuring things like trust, authority and possibly mentions. Brand awareness is a lot harder to quantify and to measure, as they’re a lot more intangible. The reality is in the long term is to build a scalable, sustainable and profitable business, and to achieve this you need a good mix of both direct response marketing and brand awareness marketing.

One of the biggest mistakes in all of marketing is running brand awareness marketing campaigns and expecting direct response results; this is a recipe for failure and one of the biggest reasons that many people claim their marketing isn’t working.  It’s because they’re using the wrong tool for the job, like following a recipe to bake a cake and then getting really frustrated when it comes out like muffins or bread. This is why it’s incredibly important that you use the right recipe; your strategy for the job.

 

Difference between Search and Discovery Marketing

The key to success of marketing is intent. In short, you need to know the reason that someone’s using that specific platform at that particular time. When we talk about search marketing we are talking about platforms like Google and social media platforms. When someone logs on to Google for example, they have an intent; they want to find an answer, a solution or a product. They’re there to do something, buy something, learn something or take some kind of action, this is where search marketing & discovery marketing comes in. You want to show up in front of them and basically answer their question or give them the solution to whatever it is that they’re looking for.

Some search marketing strategies here are using search engine optimization (SEO), Google ads, which is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and discovery marketing. However, this encompasses brands like Facebook, Instagram and Youtube to a certain extent. Essentially a user on these platforms may have intent but they’re probably more casually browsing after all, as nobody really shows up in the morning logs onto Facebook or Instagram with a credit card in hand looking to buy something. This is why if you’re doing search marketing well you can afford to be direct. They’re looking for something you have the answer too, so you can just give it to them.

However, with discovery marketing on the other hand you’ve got to be more creative and a little more entertaining. You’ve got to get their attention, then keep it and allow them to become interested in what it is that you’re selling or promoting now.

 Both search marketing and discovery marketing are incredibly important parts to building an overall successful sustainable business but just like with direct response marketing & brand awareness marketing you want to make sure that you’re using the right tool, for the right job, at the right time and in the right place.

Drive your Business Forward Faster with a FREE Marketing Strategy Call!

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