Digital marketing is an effective way to market your business online. It’s also one of the most cost-effective. There are dozens of companies out there that offer digital marketing services, but you need to make sure you hire the right company for your business. This blog post will look at digital marketing tips for businesses with a small budget in South Africa.
Reach a broader audience with online marketing
It doesn’t matter if you’re a startup or a well-established company; digital marketing can help you reach a broader audience in a cost-effective way with the help of online advertising and SEO. Using websites like SEMRush.com, Aimop.com, Hubspot, and more, you can create some content and put it out to the world. That’s effective digital marketing.
What do you do, once you have done that? If you want to keep your costs down, you need to plan out how your content is going to be promoted. In other words, whether you want to use SEO, social media ads, graphics, or a website, you need to determine what you’re going to do once you have your content online. You don’t want your content to get buried in the ether.
When we think about our marketing strategies, with large budgets being the most common, we must keep in mind that not all your efforts will be noticed. If you want to bring your marketing in a way that your audience notices, you must plan for it in advance.
Digital strategy through Search Engine Optimisation
If you are planning to use SEO, make sure you know how and when you’re going to promote your content. Too much of your SEO efforts will likely be wasted if you don’t have a strategy in place. And you also want to be able to manually approve any images you use. I always make use of the five fingers of SEO for keyword placement namely:
- Page Title
- URL
- H1 Tags
- Image Filename
- Image Alt Text
Your content Strategy
Your marketing strategy needs to be crystal clear. Whether you’re using SEO in the beginning or completely shifting to a different strategy, you should keep it concise. Write down the content of your strategy and include in bullet points or tables what your marketing looks like in detail:
- How it will be promoted?
- How to find the audience you want?
- Where will you promote?
- What will you promote?
The strategy is all about grabbing the attention of a specific audience who are searching for your service or product.
There are plenty of digital marketing companies out there, but you need to make sure you hire the right company for your business.
When it comes to digital marketing, you can really benefit from working with a company that has a lot of experience and knows what they’re doing. For example, if you’re a local business looking to get more customers in the door, a digital marketing company can really help with getting your business on the map.
Choosing the right digital marketing company
When you’re looking for a good digital marketing company in South Africa, here are five things to consider:
- Companies that focus on a specific niche or region can save you a lot of money. When I was setting up my digital marketing company, I knew I needed a team that could work on topics such as B2B and B2C in the logistics, industrial services, business services, and technology industries.
- When you explore online, and you find some great companies, explore the industry they’re in to see if they cover the niche you typically sell to. Don’t just Google the company; see what’s their name online. If they play on a topic, it’s a safe bet they’ll be able to connect you with a good virtual marketing service.
- Local businesses can save money on their sales and marketing costs by working with a company that already has experience with the local market. Don’t hire someone from another continent full of misconceptions just because they’re good at marketing. What I mean by that is if you work with a virtual specialist, there’s a rule of thumb they’ll link you to the same companies from outside of South Africa. This can lead to expensive mistakes with emails, and your business won’t be able to achieve the target audience you’re looking for.
- If you don’t buy from someone who understands what they’re talking about, they could waste your money. You’ll give them your business, think they’re the best and then find out they care about two pieces of chocolate instead of what they sell.
- You want to find ways that your company can connect with people but do it in a way that’s relevant, efficient, and effective.
Some tips in improving your online presence.
Create a website and utilise social media. According to SEO experts, the most important aspect of digital marketing is having a strong online presence. You can’t afford not to have a website, especially if you’re a business that deals directly with customers. Having a website is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity.
Digital marketing is the new marketing. It can be frustrating that your business has a big-time internet website but no outreach to potential customers. That’s why having all of your clients come through your website is so important. This way, you can send them to your customer service department for online chat, store catalogues, online reference, etc.
As a small business owner, online presence is possibly the most important thing you’ll need to be doing. You can get started with creating a website for nothing. This way, 99% of your customers will automatically come through, making it easier for you to succeed.
Check out Google’s tools for businesses. Google offers free tools such as a map tool (Google My Business), SEO report, keyword tool, reviews tool, and more. These tools are so powerful; you should be using them as often as possible. Analytics can give valuable insights into how successful your marketing efforts are. Not only that, but you can utilise these tools to increase the efficiency of your business.
Google has a vast business listing worldwide, and there are so many potential customers who are not able to find you, thanks to Google search results. Not only that, you can check out competitors’ websites to see how they are doing.
Also, businesses are regularly sharing links on social media channels such as Instagram. And that’s not a bad thing, but having a Google map tool (Google My Business) or YouTube reviews tool on your website will make it easier for potential customers to find you.
Organise and optimise landing pages. Place your advertising where your business is known to go, on Google searches, word of mouth, your website, and other places. Google prefers that you create landing pages for your ads. This way you can also track the effectiveness of your campaigns, by implementing conversion tracking and measuring your return on investment more effectively.
I hope you found this article helpful! Read our post, Will Digital Marketing Replace Traditional Marketing?
Stay tuned for more.