Most small business owners know on a conceptual level what they should be doing when it comes to marketing. Have a website. Post to social media. Try to blog. Budget a portion of your small business marketing spend for pay per click ads and digital advertising. What most small businesses struggle with is how to match their digital marketing efforts with consumer behavior. It’s both an art and a science to figuring out how to get visitors to your site, engage them on social media and turn leads into sales.
Is Your Small Business Marketing Working?
Determining if your marketing efforts are working can be tricky. It’s not instant gratification like putting a dollar into the jukebox and playing your favorite song. Even if it doesn’t play next, you know it’s in rotation and will play at some point during the evening. This isn’t quite the case with small business marketing dollars. Just because you create a fancy new website doesn’t mean Google will instantly send qualified traffic your way.
A new survey of 1,000 small businesses, from InfusionSoft and LeadPages, shows the gap between intention and ability to execute. It’s a fundamental challenge for small businesses to understand what’s working when it comes to their marketing spend.
- The biggest object of small business marketing spend is to drive sales
- Most small businesses recognize the importance of digital marketing and social media and intend on using these channels throughout the year
- Roughly half of respondents said they do their own marketing
- Only 6% pay a contractor, digital marketing agency or third party
- The biggest challenge they face is recognizing which efforts are working and few believe their marketing is effective
Small Business Marketing Support Services
At Savy Agency, we build engaging and enduring brands and work with established companies to help them get the most value from their digital marketing efforts. We help our clients create positive customer experiences that lead to engagement and increased ROI. By helping clients tell their story well, we can measure small business marketing efforts and show measurable results. Through our support services, which include blogging, social media, email marketing, reporting and analytics, we’re able to help clients connect with consumer behaviors.
Blogging
You’ve heard it before and you’ll continue to hear it long into the future – content is king. Google rewards websites that feature new, relevant, quality content and the best way to increase your page rank is with regular blogging. Most small business owners have a hard time finding the time to write blogs, which is why hiring an agency helps support your blogging and marketing efforts. Our copywriters do research, get to know your industry, come up with ideas and write SEO optimized blogs designed to engage users. Posting blogs on social media is also part of an integrated marketing campaign that drive engagement and results.
Social Media
Everyone knows that to be competitive you have to be actively engaging with your clients, both past, present and potential, on social media. Social media can provide both opportunity and risk. Having a digital marketing agency in your corner when it comes to social posting can help you maximize your investment and provide consistent brand messaging. Depending on your company, a digital marketing agency can recommend the right social networks and measure results.
Email Marketing
SavyConnect, our proprietary email marketing service platform allows our clients to fully manage, engage, send and track their campaigns and is much more affordable than traditional mediums. If you would prefer a little extra help, we can create and manage your campaigns with our small business marketing expertise. Reports and tracking within SavyConnect allow you to measure ROI with ease.
Google AdWords
As a Google AdWords certified agency, we can help increase your ROI for pay per click advertising and remarketing campaigns. Watch as your marketing spend leads to more qualified traffic, better conversions and increased sales. Google AdWords and Analytics can be a tricky sea to navigate, but with the help of a certified agency you can really see your small business marketing budget working for you.
Bridging the Gap
By hiring a digital marketing agency to manage your small business marketing efforts, you’ll soon be able to see the results and how it’s working for you. The thought of hiring a professional agency can be intimidating for small businesses worried about costs, but could pay off royally. With nearly 50% of small businesses doing their own marketing efforts and 50% not knowing if their marketing is effective, something needs to be done to bridge the gap between execution and results. A trustworthy digital marketing agency has the experience and professional knowledge to do just that.
Contact Savy Agency for more information about making your small business marketing efforts work for you. When it comes to the question, “Do you know if your small business marketing is working?” Savy can change the “I don’t know,” to a firm and passionate, “Yes!”
Tracking your marketing efforts is so important for analyzing what is successful, what isn’t, and adjusting your marketing strategies over time. One way to achieve this with traditional marketing efforts such as direct mail, is to add a custom URL, a QR code, or a vanity phone number. This way if a customer gets in touch from one of these contact channels – you can track to see who is coming from the direct mail piece specifically.
Thanks for your comment, Jeanne. Yes. From direct mail to digital marketing, there are so many way to track and optimize efforts now.
Cheers, Savy
Our website currently has most of the tips you mentioned in your article. We have received some leads, but we feel the existing leads are nowhere near we’d like to be. Your post was helpful, and I thank you for that. I have recently been researching guest posting, however, most of them require a lot of work. It is difficult to manage my time to include extensive guest posting. I need valuable, easy ways to accomplish this. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thank you,
Mary Ann Sromoski
Hi Mary Ann, thanks for getting in touch. Guest posting can be hit or miss. If you work with professional copywriters, or industry experts who have the time and writing abilities necessary to blog for you, that makes it easier on your end. When working with guest writers, you may have to spend extra time editing their posts to get it to where it needs to be and juggling their schedules can be difficult. Our advice would be to carve out a chunk of time in your team’s schedule to write regular blog content. Make sure it’s engaging and relevant for potential leads. Promote blog posts on Facebook to target the audiences and leads you’re hoping to get. Sharing relevant and engaging content on social media can help drive qualified traffic to your website. We hope that helps! Thanks!