You’re probably here because you realised your business could earn more if you improved its digital marketing efforts.

Of course, you’re right. Before we dive into the top marketing tips, here are some statistics on what consumers say about digital marketing efforts.

• An average person checks their email 20 times a day. 
• Over 80% of accounts on Instagram follow a business.
• 81% of millennials view their Twitter accounts daily.
• 60% of consumers subscribe to a brand’s email list to get regular updates about the brand.
• More than 300 million people worldwide use Pinterest every month.
• 62% of people say they become interested in buying from a brand after seeing its Instagram/Facebook story.

I can go on and on and on to show you how much you stand to get by up-ing your digital marketing game.

Here are 10 digital marketing tips your business needs to flourish in 2022

1. Start with a Marketing Objective

What’s the first thing you do when planning a trip to Santorini😉? Create a list, right? The same thing applies to marketing. An effective route to goal setting is being SMART about it. SMART is an acronym for:

Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Specific: Your desired outcomes should be clear. It should explain how, why, when, and how much.

Measurable: It should also be trackable by your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Whether it’s the number views, or sold, or people reached, etc.

Achievable: Your marketing goals should be realistic. They should be challenging yet practical. For example, if your goal is to get 10x more clients in 5 months. To know if it’s achievable, ask yourself if your current business capacity is able to accommodate more clients effectively. Do you have enough staff to attend to them? Or do you have the capacity to hire more clients when that happens? Remember that the goal is to challenge yourself rather than break yourself.

Relevant: Does your goal align with your current business positioning or strategy? 

Time-bound: Don’t forget to set a time range for your goals. Within 6 months? or 2 weeks? 5,000 views – 7,000 views by October 2022? Having a time frame would guide you to set reasonable goals and as well help you track your goals.

2. Create Quality Visual Content

According to Wyzowl, 96% of consumers watch a brand’s explainer video to learn more about a product or service. People are more likely to remember about 65% of the details of a video even after 3 days than content with just text.

What does that mean for you as a business owner? To get more eyes on your brand’s content, invest in quality visual content like videos, designs, memes, and pictures. Make it so good and of high quality that your potential customers want to share it in their stories.

3. Build a Consistent Online Presence

People need to see you often for your social media progress to be measurable. They must recognize your company as a reliable one. Maintaining consistency enables you to better comprehend your customers and perhaps form genuine connections with them. Your brand’s integrity, trust, and reputation are also built through consistent content creation on your business page. To achieve this consistency, you’d need to do a study of your target audience and determine the best posting time that works for you. You could also take advantage of scheduling apps to plan your content ahead.

4. Build a Website for your Products/Services

One of your goals as a business owner on social media should be to make things as simple as possible for both your customers and potential customers. And one major way to do that is to outline your services and products in a detailed pattern. For the longest time, creating a website was a job for only web developers. But thanks to innovation, you can create a mini website yourself with apps like Canva and Bumpa. Creating a website is important because it serves as proof of your credibility and reputation. Some of the things that should be on your website include a detailed list of your products/services with a price list, contact details,  and customer feedback.

5. Use Google My Business

This is an effective tool to help you rank better on Google. For example, if you sell books, you want your business to pop up when people within and outside your axis search for where to buy books. 

To get the most out of Google My Business, you’d need to optimise it and by doing so, you’re communicating to Google that you’re a relevant business that they should push to rank better. Some of the things it should contain include categories of products you sell or services you offer, pictures of them, answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ), customers’ reviews, your location, and contact details. Trust me when I say it’s a digital tool you don’t want to sleep on.

Here’s an example of what a Google My Business page of a bookstore looks like.

6. Grow an Email list

See an email list as a community of friends whom you update on the journey of your business from time to time. I know this sounds like what social media platforms like Instagram would achieve, but this is more distinct. Before people subscribe to join your email list, it’s because they find your brand’s processes, products, or services interesting and would like to know more. On your email list, your audience can learn more about your brand’s journey, and that makes them feel closer to you enough to want to buy from you. Aside from sharing your brand’s journey, your email is a great place to update your audience on new products and services they’d likely need. Don’t forget to give them updates on promos and discounts, and as you explore email marketing, you’ll get better at convincing them to buy from you.

7. Partner with Influencers

At different points in your business journey, you’d need to partner with online influencers to increase your audience reach. The key to the best influencer for your business is to focus on influencers that have your potential customers as their followers. For example, if you need an influencer to promote your makeup business, an influencer you should work with is someone within the beauty industry.  This is because most of their followers would be beauty enthusiasts and that way, you’re able to gain more traction. Another criterion to consider is the quality of their followers. Are their followers true fans who engage with their content or are they bots? For example, between an influencer with 500k followers and 2000 comments vs an influencer with 40k followers and 1,500 comments, which would you go for? Also, I recommend you partner with micro-influencers. They usually have a tight-knitted community that can convert to sales for you.

8. Invest in Content Marketing

See your content marketing efforts as the things your business does to make buying from your brand easier. With content marketing, you’re attending to your potential customers’ pain points through your products. You’re making them see how your products can solve a problem they have or may have in the future. One way to invest in content marketing is building an educational blog on your website. Why is this important? When people come across your website on Google, they may need to know how to use a particular product, for example. Your blog would educate them on that. However, since the end goal of this is to drive traffic to your website and lead to sales, I recommend you take full advantage of its benefits by investing in a Content Marketing expert to build an educative blog for you.

9. Leverage Facebook advertisement (ads)

Facebook/Instagram ads help you multiply your reach. If you are able to reach 10,000 people on Instagram with ads, you can reach 100,000 people or more. How does this work? You target your audience based on common interests like location, age, and gender. Then, you pay Facebook a particular amount per every time someone clicks on your ad. The more money you spend on ads, the more you reach people.

10. Closely Monitor your Analytics

“How did this marketing campaign perform?” “Which of my content types is doing better on Instagram/Facebook/Twitter?” “How well did this influencer campaign perform?” “How can I do better?” While you implement all these marketing tips, these are some of the questions you’d ask yourself to track your business growth. The amazing thing is we don’t have to track them manually; tech has proven tools to make the job easier and faster. For example, social media platforms provide analytics weekly, monthly and yearly. That way, you are able to track your growth at different intervals. To track activities on your website, Google Analytics is your go-to guy.

I hope this article brings you clarity and helps you take that first step to improve your business.

Did any of these tips stand out for you? Let me know in the comments section.