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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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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