For small and mid-sized firms, the recent economic rollercoaster has created new difficulties. Negative economic conditions have a variety of effects on businesses, from supply chain difficulties to declines in consumer purchasing power.
Companies must adapt their marketing strategies to address rapidly changing consumer behavior and fluctuations in demand, even during times of growth, particularly during turbulent times.
Although digital marketing has been a significant marketing tactic for years, the pandemic significantly increased consumer demand for digital excellence and prompted businesses of all sizes to adopt the strategy quickly. According to Gartner, marketing budgets will make up 9.5% of overall company revenue in 2022, up from 6.4% in 2021.
Small businesses, especially in these times of economic uncertainty, don't always have the luxury of significantly raising their marketing expenses. However, small business owners may use the scalability of digital marketing to fill in the gaps and strengthen their organizations over the course of the upcoming months.
Here are some methods your small business can use to do that.
Be easy to find online
Choose your hub, or the primary location to which you wish to direct consumers. This is typically a website for a business. However, it could also be your TikTok account or your Etsy page – whatever you decide is the best place for you to interact with prospects and customers and convert them into paying clients.
Once you've created your hub, optimize the material there so that it appears higher in searches for you. What search keywords, for instance, should cause your website, assuming it serves as your hub, to appear at the top of the search results? Use an SEO ranking tool to monitor how your domain is doing and make sure your site contains relevant content that includes those search terms.
Give the client experience first priority
The most efficient way to communicate with your customers on a large scale is through digital marketing. You may tailor experiences for various client types and manage the locations where your target market engages with your business.
Once your hub is up and running, optimize the content there to rank highly in searches for you. For instance, what search terms ought to make your website—assuming it acts as your hub—appear first in the list of results? Utilize an SEO ranking tool to keep track of the performance of your domain and make sure the material on your website is pertinent and incorporates the desired search terms.
Put the needs of the customer first.
Digital marketing is the most effective way to interact with your customers on a broad scale. You can control the places where your target market interacts with your business and customize experiences for different client types.
Keep in touch with your audience
Make sure to keep your customers engaged if you want to improve the customer experience. Ask questions, welcome input, and take the time to answer their online comments and direct messages. This can guide your digital content strategy because you need to know what consumers want and which social media platform resonates most strongly with your target audience in order to provide the content they require in a location where they can find it easily.
Keep in mind that all client feedback is worthwhile. You can use gratifying comments as content for your website and social media platforms. Your future strategy can benefit from constructive criticism.
Standardize the tone of your brand
Every brand has a personality that is connected to its market niche, target market, and values. This brand voice is essential for developing, preserving, and enhancing consumer perception of your company. This brand voice is used effectively in digital communication across all platforms, including web copy, email newsletters, corporate blogs, and social media posts.
Being consistent with your brand's voice and values is essential, especially during uncertain economic times when customers may be reluctant to veer from their go-to brands. You can communicate with your audience in a way that supports both their needs and your overall business goals if your brand voice and core values are clear.
Continue to use social media
Being at the forefront of consumers' minds is crucial in a cutthroat market. To build a loyal customer base, it's essential to provide high-quality material, and social media is one of the finest channels for doing so.
Consider using a tool like Loomly to help streamline your social media management procedures and increase your efficiency if you run a small business with constrained bandwidth.
Think about video marketing
The most compelling method of reaching your target audience now involves video marketing, which has surpassed other types of visual content in popularity. Online, social video content is shared at a rate that is 1200% higher than image or text-based content.
Video not only offers the type of easily digestible material that most social media algorithms prefer, but it also fosters genuine brand trust and connections in a way that written content alone cannot. Consider posting short-form videos for TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook, or live-streaming from the social media accounts of your company. You can easily schedule your films using a tool like PLANOLY, a video planner.
Economic uncertainty is not a pleasant problem to face, but it may be a strong motivator for a company to adopt crucial digital marketing tactics that will result in appreciable long-term growth. I hope these pointers serve as a useful starting point for you as you build a strong and sustainable business.
Additionally, keep in mind that not every business will benefit from every business development strategy, so don't be afraid to think outside the box and try something new. Flexibility and a testing mindset are far more valuable than a one-size-fits-all approach in the rapidly expanding and changing field of digital marketing.