8 Smart Digital Marketing Tips for Your Home Business

Digital marketing is a big part of running a small business today.

14:14 19 November 2018

Thanks to digital marketing, your home business can connect with customers directly. It also allows small and medium enterprises to compete – on a level playing field – against bigger corporations for the same market segment. Even better, digital marketing is highly accessible, especially now that you have more marketing instruments to use.

Naturally, you want to boost your return on investment (ROI) whenever you run a digital marketing campaign. This means fine-tuning the campaign itself, adding supporting elements to your digital marketing efforts, and going the extra mile in some cases. That is exactly why we are going to take a closer look at the best digital marketing tips you can implement right away.

Use Timeless Content

Content production is important when you are serious about marketing your products and services online. To connect with customers directly, you need to deliver value and engage them on a regular basis. This is done through articles, videos, and even the social media posts you add to your pages; all of these are pieces of content that need to be produced as part of the digital marketing efforts.

The key here is balancing between trendy, in-the-moment content with content that you can use timelessly. An article about popular memes, for example, is in-the-moment. You can only talk about popular memes based on what the audience love in that moment. An article on how the audience can maximize the use of your products, on the other hand, tends to be more timeless.

Develop a Portfolio

Even when you are selling tangible products, having your own online portfolio is beneficial. Users are more engaged when they see visual content, and an online portfolio is the perfect way to feature the best visuals related to your products and services.

You can tell a more compelling story about your business and your products too when you have an online portfolio helping you convey that story. Combining images and words – along with other elements needed to tell a compelling story – is how you win the attention of more users.

Creating a portfolio website is even more important when you offer services rather than products. Showcasing the latest interior design projects that you handle, for instance, is how you win more clients. Fortunately, you can now rely on platforms such as Format and the portfolio website templates they have for you to get your own portfolio up and running in no time.

Back to Emails

Email marketing is a digital marketing instrument that you don’t want to neglect, especially in today’s market. It may be an instrument that has been around for years – and extensively used throughout those years – but it is still one of the most effective ways to engage users and convert them into customers.

Running an email marketing campaign is a complex task, but it is a challenge worth overcoming when you realize how big the ROI of an effective campaign can be. That said, you want to be subtle about asking visitors or users to sign up for your newsletter; the usual modal popup is no longer the way to go.

Rather than hard-selling your newsletter, try to offer users value in the way you do with your content. Send exclusive offers to subscribers, include content tailored to their preferences, and don’t forget to engage subscribers in a more personal way. Let your email marketing campaign do the talking; you will see a spike in subscribers almost immediately.

Optimize for Humans

In the old days, we focus more on optimizing our sites for search engine crawlers in an attempt to gain more exposure. Similar to the way modal popups are no longer effective, this too isn’t an approach you want to take in today’s digital marketing landscape.

Rather than optimizing your site – including your online portfolio – for crawlers, think about the users more. Make sure visitors can find the information they need quickly. Deliver exceptional user experience and keep visitors happy whenever they spend time on your site. The crawlers will pick up these metrics too.

Go Local

There is no need to market to the whole world when your business only caters to a particular market segment. Rather than wasting valuable resources reaching audience groups that you cannot turn into customers, you now have the ability to fine-tune your digital marketing efforts to reach a particular market segment.

Everything can be customized, and the entire digital marketing campaign can be made more targeted with the tools available today. Aiming for certain keywords used by your target audience and adding location information to your online portfolio website are among the things you can do to reach those audience groups effectively.

Place Effective Ads

Yes, advertising is a part of digital marketing too. What’s great about advertising your home business today is that you don’t need a big budget to run an effective ad campaign. You also have more advertising networks to utilize, including networks run by social media sites.

Facebook Ads and Google AdWords are the two networks you want to begin with. Through Facebook Ads, you can reach Facebook and Instagram users in a highly targeted way. Google AdWords, on the other hand, lets you benefit from a wider network of publishers and incredibly detailed targeting tools.

Placing ads let you gain traction early in the game. When trying to promote your social media pages, you can now place ads to reach potential customers in a targeted, effective way. Once the traction is there, you can return to relying on organic traffic and engagement.

Advertise for Traffic

Sticking with ads, one of the most common mistakes home business owners still make is advertising products and expecting direct sales in return. This approach may seem like a good idea at first, but there is a better way to win those sales while also building a better relationship with the audience.

Instead of advertising for direct sales, try to adjust your campaign objectives to focus more on interest and genuine users. Interested users coming to your website or online portfolio for the content you advertised are more likely to return for more content in the future.

With the users already engaged, converting them into customers is easier. At the very least, you are growing your audience base, improving your reach, and building genuine relationships with the viewers. The rest is easy from there.

Share!

There is another big advantage of growing your audience base and that is that you have more people sharing your content and bringing traffic to your site. Social sharing is one of the most valuable user engagements you can get, and you can only get users to share when they are genuinely interested in the content.

One thing you can do to boost social sharing is to improve the way users can share articles, portfolio entries, and other pages on your website. Floating buttons or a set of social sharing buttons at the top and bottom of the article is one of the ways to immediately boost social sharing.

Digital marketing is about reaching the right audience using relevant strategies. The landscape is changing, but the tips and tricks we covered in this article will help you stay ahead with your digital marketing campaigns. Be sure to implement them to give your home business a boost it needs to reach new heights.