With COVID-19 taking a toll on all aspects of daily life, 2020 has indeed been a challenging year for all of us. While we are trying to hold on and stay safe from the virus, businesses across the world are finding mere survival a Herculean task. This is especially true in the case of small businesses that do not have a huge debt fund to fall back on.

At the moment, with social distancing protocols in place, businesses are having a dearth of physical options. The silver lining here is the fact that this global crisis is chaotic, and if small businesses can focus on their digital marketing plans, they will be able to establish long term credibility among their target audience.

With the overall market moving towards a higher digital dependency, small businesses who are serious about their digital marketing ventures stand at an advantage in terms of customer reach and subsequent revenue generation. In this article, we will explore the ways in which small businesses can look to improve their digital marketing strategy.

Quantify Your Goal

A major hindrance to the growth story of most small businesses is the fact that the entrepreneurs are themselves unsure of their digital marketing goal. Start by having a brainstorming session wherein the business’s executive board sits down to identify whether you expect to convert leads, increase the overall web traffic or drive home a higher volume of qualified leads.

Businesses may also look at digital marketing to increase customer engagement and support the firm’s revenue generation. You need to prioritize these goals in order of their importance for the brand or product in question. This will allow you to come up with a customized digital marketing plan that goes beyond attracting internet users to click here and there on a random page.

Invest in a Formal Online Presence

As of 2020, if you do not have an online presence, you cease to exist. This is true in the case of individuals, products, and brands. As a small business, start by coming up with a website of your own. These days, creating a website is easier than ever before.

To get people to visit your website, make sure that it has videos, images, and is SEO optimized. Also, be regular in updating the website with details of the products or services that you are offering. You may take things a notch further by regularly posting blogs or ideas on industry-relevant subjects.

This will ensure that your target audience keeps visiting your website even when they are not planning to buy anything. That way, they will familiarize themselves with your brand name and logo and are more likely to choose you over your competitors when they have to make a purchase.

Initiate Email Marketing Campaigns

As a brand, if you can connect with your target group at a personal level, they are more likely to choose you. An effective way of doing that would be by initiating email campaigns.

When a potential customer visits your website, subscribes to your channel, or follows your social media page, ask for their email ids and whether they would like to receive updates from you. And if the answer is in the affirmative, waste no time and send a thank you email as the first step to initiating a digital business relationship with them.

For existing customers, you can send out emails wherein you talk about the products or services that you are offering in the lockdown. If you are changing addresses, business hours, launching a new product, or temporarily discontinuing some service, keep your regular customers in the loop by sending them emails. This will help in giving a personal touch to your business relationship and help you in earning their loyalty.

Opt for Cost Cutting through In-House Digital Marketing

Another major advantage of digital marketing is that you do not need years of experience to be great at it. As a small business looking to cut down on costs, you can start by having your internal team conceptualize, direct, and edit your digital marketing campaigns. The employees working on these projects will not be tagged only to such campaigns and will be doing it as a part of their regular duties.

These days, you (or a member of your team) can choose a suitable YouTube video editor and use that to compile the efforts of the team in a way that showcases the brand well. This is a win-win situation. From an employee perspective, this is a golden opportunity to cross-skill oneself and improve one’s employability. From the employer’s point of view, this results in effective communication with the target group at minimal investment.

Use Video as a Tool for Digital Marketing

Establishing a business is all about understanding what a potential customer may want, get it ready, and offer it to him or her in exchange for money. In today’s world of high internet penetration, what users want to see is a video, and if you can give it to them, you stand ahead in the rat race. You can explore your options for video editing by clicking here.

Contrary to popular beliefs, making a video does not take a lot of time, expensive equipment or technical expertise. Most of the top video display websites are free to register in, and almost all smartphones today are equipped to shoot video. As for the editing bit, there are several free editors available online that allow people with no experience in this field to come up with superior quality videos.

If you are serious about your video marketing plans, you can also reach out to industry-relevant influencers to see if you can collaborate with them for a video session. That way, your business will get access to the millions of followers of the influencer, and you will effectively reach out to your target audience.

Amidst all the chaos of 2020, digital marketing is a ray of hope that will help businesses survive the tide. Now it is up to small businesses to see how they leverage the power of the internet and use digital marketing to grow their businesses.