Small businesses are often run by and employ people who wear many hats - Customer Service, Business Development, HR, Accounts and Maintenance probably all come under your remit at one time or another. With so many demands on time it can be difficult to find the time to add digital marketing to your list of things to do, albeit, arguably, unless you are outsourcing digital, it is something which you should try and find the time to work on regularly.
Your website and web presence should not be viewed as a static thing, more something which needs to be constantly updated. To this end, having an idea of what you can fit into your day on a regular basis is helpful.
Before you start, it is important to have done some initial groundwork, this will help you to create a strategy based on your goals. There is limited value to be found in firing out random social media posts or writing the odd blog post when you feel you have time if you are not doing so with your goals in mind.
Working with personas
An important first step with digital marketing is to look at who you are trying to reach with your message. Start by thinking about who your ideal customer is, how old are they, where do they live, what do they do, why do they need/want your product or service, what would stop them buying/ordering? Having a clear idea of who you are targeting helps you to refine your message to be more attractive to that person.
Define your goals
As important and knowing who you are trying to reach, understanding what you want to achieve is a key part of forming a digital strategy. Do you want to raise awareness of your brand/company, physically get people through the door, build your mailing list, improve sign-ups or sell a specific product?
Think about channels
When you are looking at suitable channels, think about your target audience again and what is a good fit for them, you can then use those channels to engage with that target audience. Remember - this could mean social channels, paid search, paid social, your mailing list or your own website. Think about the age range of people that use particular social channels – for instance – Instagram is probably not the best vehicle if you are targeting an older demographic.
Now you have a clear idea of who you are targeting, where and why, you can make a start.
So - what can you achieve in an hour a day?
Social Media
Using a scheduling service like Hootsuite or Buffer can help with keeping your social media up to date - spend 15 minutes scheduling some posts. Read more for ideas on what to post to social media see this blog.
Blogs
Half the battle with writing a blog is having a subject to write about. Spending some time thinking about blog titles is time well spent. Looking at your ideal customer again – what questions do they have? What information are they looking for on the internet? How can you help them? These types of questions are often good sources of inspiration for blog posts. Once you have a list of posts, you can spend your 15 minutes making a start writing some content. Find out more information on blogging for your business.
Email Marketing
Can you do some work on an email automation? Using an email client like Mailchimp enables you to run an automated series of emails for new subscribers to your list. In its simplest form this could just be a welcome email and follow up. Automations can be made more complex with different options based on subscriber behaviour but having a simple welcome campaign in place is a good start and will help to nurture your list.
SEO
There are a number of ways you could spend 15 minutes a day looking at SEO. Thinking about your website, reviewing title tags, meta descriptions and website copy to make sure they are well optimised for your keywords is something which should be done often. Adding fresh content in the form of blogs, news items and other site content is another type ofon-site SEO. Remember though – your content should always be written with your keywords and user intent in mind.
Of course this list is by no means exhaustive, it is just intended to give you an idea of how you can start to make a positive impact on your digital presence just spending a short time a day looking at different areas – but, do try and be honest with yourself and think about outsourcing if you know you are not going to be able to do it for yourself. Rumble Digital Marketing offer a range of services designed to assist and complement your own efforts in Digital Marketing - either on a monthly retainer or as and when you need the help. Get in touch for more information.