From SEO to understanding analytics to syncing sales and marketing data… Follow these tips and tricks to help your small business deliver killer marketing campaigns without the big price tag.
When times get tough and you’re running your business on a tight budget, marketing is sometimes the first pillar to fall by the wayside. Many businesses make the mistake of thinking they can’t afford to maintain their marketing spend or let their marketing campaigns slide to focus on their existing customer base. Yet good marketing is at the heart of every successful business. It nurtures your existing customers and helps generate leads for new clients. Here’s how to make sure your SMB stays on top of its marketing and continues to grow.
Use email to nurture your existing customers
Email marketing is often thought of as targeting the low hanging fruit. You’re engaging with your existing customer base, so conversions should be a done deal, right? Yet how often do you open your mail app to a barrage of emails? Every day? Then you know how difficult it can be for an email to have cut through.
So, what makes for a great email?
Personalisation counts! What would you rather read, a generic email or an email crammed with stories, news, offers or product that you actually care about? The more relevant you can make your content to your customer, the better your open and click through rates.
Of all the bows in your marketing arsenal, email is one of the easiest to analyse. Most email builders come with a swathe of data. It’s simple to check metrics like read time, open and click through rates and they can usually also provide historical data in order for you to see what is working and what isn’t. You can check past campaigns to see what triggered positive open rates, identify where someone may have balked and even see what triggered a purchase. Use this information to help guide you in the future to create email campaigns that are driven by intention and past user behaviour and watch your engagement rise!
SEO counts!
Every business would love to see their name at the top of a Google search but to achieve a number one ranking in organic search results requires effort. That’s where keywords come into play. Using the right keywords can help your business rise through the ranks. Grab a free trial of SEM diagnostic tools like Moz and SEMrush to help you determine the right keywords for your business or campaign. Having the right keywords in place can be the difference between rising or falling traffic.
When creating keywords remember to think how your customer might search for your business – the phrase you use to describe your business might not equate with how Joe Average Citizen searches for it.
Don’t forget to optimise your webpages by including keywords in the tags and meta descriptions. And be certain your website loads quickly and is designed with mobile use in mind.
Analytics are your friend
Ah Google Analytics – the beating heart of any marketing campaign that is run on a budget. Apart from being able to track your audience’s (customer’s) engagement with your site, Google Analytics offers a number of free marketing reporting tools that are valuable for any small business.
A few you should consider checking out include: the channel report, the funnel report and the segment and cohort engagement report. The channel report will help you identify which marketing channels are driving conversions. The funnel report can help you understand why customers aren’t converting and where they are dropping off. While the segment report lets you identify how segments behave over time and which segment or cohort converts. Armed with all this information it becomes easier to see how to convert leads to customers and tweak your channels to provide greater engagement.
Set up event tracking
Do you need to measure a key event? Then Google is your friend again! You can add tracking to every key event. Maybe you want to see whether your free trial is gaining traction or what type of content is most popular. Setting up event tracking will enable you to discover what actions might be leading to conversions. If you don’t have an IT team at your disposal, setting up key event tracking can be a little tricky – but don’t despair, Google offers free assistance for Analytics users to help them set up and make the most of this feature.
Share your sales and marketing data
The final and perhaps most important piece of the puzzle is to sync your sales and marketing data by using an automated marketing tool. All that rich information your sales team has stored in your customer relationship management (CRM) system can provide your marketing team with real insights as to who your customer is and what they want. This is invaluable when it comes to creating new campaigns. Aligning your sales and marketing data puts your customer front and centre in the campaign trail. It helps marketing create campaigns that are relevant and assists sales in nurturing leads and driving the right product to the right client at the right time.
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