The marketplace has become more digital as technology continues to improve and more people are populating the web. For companies, the shift toward adopting internet marketing has become a necessary part of existence. For growing businesses, it evens out the playing field, allowing competition with businesses of all sizes without exhausting resources.
But the digital sphere is constantly evolving. Trends come and go as well. The big corporations are allocating more money, creating more sophisticated internet marketing strategies. How can small businesses dominate the market and outdo their competitors?
The answers may come from recurring issues you’re encountering.
We list four common digital marketing problems and how to fix them.
1. Internet Marketing Budget
One of the most common misconceptions is that you need a huge budget to run a digital marketing campaign.
On the contrary, internet marketing is cost-efficient when you compare it to traditional marketing. Also, you can implement a lot of tactics for free or with minimum investment in tools and applications.
Below are some examples of free and affordable tools that help elevate your internet marketing efforts:
-
Google Products and Tools
Google, the number one search engine in the world, offers a range of tools that collect data and analyze your website performance. Popular data gathering tools, such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Page Speed Insights give you information about where your users are coming from, what pages work and don’t work for your site, and your overall site performance.
-
Social Media Platforms
Sites like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter are free to use. They are also very effective in getting your products and services seen by your target audience. Use them the right way and you can develop your brand and maximize audience engagement.
-
Paid Ads
Paid ads or Google ads help you boost your promotions, allowing you to see results quickly compared to SEO’s organic method. However, when it comes to paid ads, the campaign will only run as long as you’re willing to pay for it, unlike SEO where you won’t have to pay Google to rank your website.
2. High Impression but No Clicks
Do people see your post but don’t take any action? Do they click but quickly exit the page? If this is the case, you may be attracting the wrong people.
This is why you need to define your buyer personas.
Buyer personas are your model customers. They are the embodiment of your ideal client. You create a persona by studying data gathered from market research and information from existing customers.
Determining your ideal customer helps you create more ads that are more specific and targeted. Ultimately, this will improve how you engage with your customers.
Buyer persona creation isn’t costly, but it takes time to get it right. You create a survey and email it to current customers to know what they think about your products and services. Make it worthwhile for your participants by offering incentives.
Here are some details that you want to include when creating a buyer persona:
-
Demographics
Age, gender, location, marital status, nationality, educational and employment background.
-
Psychographics
These are goals, motivations, and habits that your ideal buyer has. Include pain points and challenges to address what your customers need.
-
Preferences
This determines the behavior of a user on each stage of a buyer’s journey
3. Poor SEO
If you have a beautifully designed website but it’s not getting any traffic, it may be suffering from poor SEO.
Search engine optimization is crucial for any internet marketing strategy. Your website must rank high on search engines because ranking high means visibility. Increased visibility means more clicks and more clicks maximizes conversion.
Having the right SEO strategy means you have the right keywords, content and activities in place. These elements make it easier for your target audience to find the products or services you’re offering when they conduct a search online.
Google makes it a point to upgrade and update its algorithms continually, so staying updated with the latest changes is crucial. Most small to medium businesses are not ready or trained to handle these changes. When any form of change or update happens that causes a page’s ranking to drop, companies often wonder why such a thing happened.
Low rankings will lower traffic, conversion and sales.
Assess the following factors on your website and make sure to optimize them:
-
Avoid Long URLs
Keep your URLs short and simple. Make sure to include the main keyword that’s used on the page.
-
Include the Right Keywords
Ensure that the root keyword is included in the title, meta descriptions, headers, and the first paragraph of your content. Also, avoid keyword stuffing or dropping keywords at random. Add keywords naturally for enhanced readability.
-
Include Links
Make sure to add sources to your data or information. Linking to posts within your website is also helpful in promoting new posts so they could easily rank on Google.
-
Page Speed
Enhance page speed to enhance user experience. Users tend to exit a page that loads more than 3 seconds. Make sure to compress images to smaller file sizes and upgrade your server’s response time for quicker loading speed.
-
Publish High-Quality Content
Your website content must address the needs of your customers and should always be fresh or updated. Add relevant data to make your content more authoritative, but make sure they are accurate. Always put catchy calls to action at the end of the content to compel the user to do your desired action.
4. Lack of Social Media Skills
Social media platforms are effective in helping your brand get the most exposure. Social media activities done right can lead to greater authority and greater engagement with your target audience.
Here’s how you can maximize your internet marketing strategy through social media:
-
Determine which social media tool works best for your brand
Facebook may be the most popular social media platform, but it may not be effective for your brand. For example, if you’re targeting businesses or professionals, LinkedIn would deliver better results. Meanwhile, TikTok may be an excellent option if you’re targeting younger or more youthful clients.
-
Pick the type of content your target audience interacts with the most
Find out what kind of content your target users want. Blogs are helpful for users who want to read more before purchasing a product or service. Meanwhile, images and videos are more shareable than text content. But they must be relevant and entertaining, so people would be compelled to share the post.
-
Create a content calendar
A content calendar allows you to organize your schedule and keep track of your posts. You need to be consistent when it comes to posting so that your audience won’t forget about you. Consistency also makes it easier for people to connect and engage with your brand. It can also trigger the algorithm so that your content will regularly show up on their feeds.
-
Communicate with your audience
Social media has become such an effective internet marketing tool because of its power to engage. But to benefit from that kind of pull, you need to develop the right plan and put in the effort to communicate with your followers.
Like and follow relevant posts. Respond to online queries on your page. And maintain an authentic connection with your followers to develop a relationship that creates loyal customers and brand ambassadors.
As with any form of marketing, challenges will always be part of the internet marketing cycle. You must be prepared for changes because problems can also present opportunities. Internet marketing is now a vital asset to small businesses, so having the ability to pivot quickly and address issues effectively will allow you to seize opportunities to better connect with your customer and serve them well.
