Top 5 tips for Leveraging Online Marketing in Small and Medium Business.

Online marketing and social media can seem like a minefield for business owners, but it doesn't have to be overly complicated.

One of the most common problems that small and medium business owners face is knowing how to leverage their online presence and show what the ROI is for the business. So we've put together a list of our top 5 tips for leveraging your online presence to give some simple guideposts on how to get there.

1. Finetune your website

Your website is the online hub of your business, and should be kept up-to-date, modern, easy to navigate, and most of all responsive. A responsive website changes for viewing on mobile and tablet, and with 50% of consumers searching on mobile this is vitally important. In 2017 if your website isn't responsive then you need a new website.

Your website homepage should immediately tell your audience "What is in it for them", and preferably have a call to action as well. It's one thing getting people to view your website, but you also need to convert them once they are there. This is an example of a website that instantly shows "what's in it for me" and has a good call to action.

2. Create Great Content

In this day and age your audience gets to choose exactly what content they want to read, watch and consume. Long gone are the days when businesses could simply put ads out there and hope for the best.

So it's important that you create engaging and interesting content for your audience... share your knowledge and expertise, provide some entertaining news and advice, and make sure you show online all the fantastic work that you are doing for your clients! This could be through testimonials, or videos, or gallery's showing the final products.

Also remember that great content does more than just engage your audience... it positions you as a leader in your field, and it helps enormously with SEO. Google loves nothing better than lots of current and relevant content on your website and will reward your positioning on the page accordingly.

3. Use Social Media Marketing to spread the word

If you want to reach your audience you have to "be where they are", and in 2017 that means on social media. If your website is your hub of information then your social media channels are your megaphones.

There are a multitude of options to advertise through your social media channels, including boosting a facebook post if it's proving popular, to reach a far greater audience, or creating an ad on facebook or instagram to launch a new product. The benefits of paid ads on social platforms is they allow you to delve deep into the demographic of your audience, and they are also good value for money.

My main advice would be - set your objective before you start (are you trying to increase your brand presence, or get people to download an e-book?) and book ads or boost posts accordingly. And always, always have a CALL to ACTION.

4. Analyse and Optimise your Social Media ROI

The Key to working out your Social Media ROI is to know your objectives, use the right tools to analyse the results, calculate your ROI, and then optimise accordingly. So if your objective is to increase your lead generation through a new e-book on facebook, then you need to use your facebook analytics to see who viewed / liked, check your e-book downloads for your conversion rate, and then calculate your ROI based on your spend vs leads converted.

Keep in mind that your social media spend each month should include the cost of any platforms you use (such as hootsuite) the cost of employee time on Social Media, and of course the cost of the ads.

Measuring your Marketing ROI should justify past actions and guide future actions.

5. Axe / Adjust / Repeat

Finally, once you've worked out whether a campaign is succeeding or not, act quickly to adjust it or axe it. Social Media lifecycles are short so you need to be monitoring your campaigns regularly and acting on them accordingly.

In essence, create great content, get it out there, measure it, then axe / adjust / repeat. And you're off and running!

If you would like to hear more from Lisa O'Keeffe on easy steps you can take to improve your marketing, come along to our Marketing Made Simple seminar!

You’ll find having an Action Centre business coach is just like having a marketing manager, sales team leader, trainer and recruitment specialist - wrapped in one - all for one nominal investment. We are the business partner you need without sharing your profits - with over 60 years of collective coaching experience to keep you on track and accountable for your own success.