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(this list is going to expand in the coming weeks, if you like what you read please check back for more useful references)
Here are 10 useful small businesses references for digital marketing:
1. BUDGETS – how much to spend:
“Marketers tend to love talking about the big, high budget campaigns. People writing up case studies are naturally drawn to big brands with big budgets, as they have the capacity to produce the ‘flashiest’ campaigns and assets. But investment in marketing for startups and smaller businesses is more important by volume, even though in each the budget is limited and every dollar, euro or pound of investment count”
Author: Robert Allen
Date: 9th January 2017
Note: Useful RACE planning framework for small businesses
Comment: Investment is always a necessity if you want to build your business, the real challenge is figuring out where to put it. For small businesses this is particularly tough, as budgets are so limited. Always remember, spend some time and money on figuring out which direction you want to run in before putting most of your budget into picking up speed.
2. TEAMS – how to structure your talent:
“Without an in-house marketing team or trained marketing professional, the depth and breadth of digital marketing opportunities can make maximising your budget difficult, as so much can be lost through trial and error. This is why many businesses opt to outsource the management of their marketing campaigns to agencies. Their return on investment is consistently greater as their campaigns are managed to optimise conversions and maximise sales.”
Author: The Startups Team
Date: Updated Feb 5, 2018
https://startups.co.uk/four-digital-marketing-channels-need-grow-small-businesses/
Comment: Even large companies with significantly sized teams are struggling to meet their skill demands to take on digital marketing. Not only this, many large companies are investing in marketing budget as if they are operating in 2008 and not 2018. Just the way they describe the job roles they are putting out tell you this, let alone how they spend their budgets.
3. SOCIAL MEDIA – what matters in social media:
“Consistency [in social media] is vital to make social work for you, so don’t assume you have to create a profile across all platforms. Adding more than necessary will result in sporadic, inconsistent activity, so focus on the one or two most relevant platforms for your audience.”
Author: Dawn McGruer
Date: 7 September 2017
http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/social-media-marketing/social-media-essentials-for-small-businesses/4600
Comment: Social media is crucial these days, it’s no coincidence that Facebook has become so powerful. Not only this, it’s what’s under the hood of the Facebook advertising machine that is impressive, and partially explains how they have performed so well. Other platforms also have their strengths, but the worst thing you can do is pump out social media marketing effort and budget across a plethora of platforms and handle them as if they are all the same and will work in the same way. Treat Twitter, Linked In, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. all differently, and don’t necessarily be on all these platforms hoping that simply having a presence will make a difference.
4. SOCIAL MEDIA – how important is social media:
“Most small business owners expect to use social media content to acquire new customers in 2018, according to recent research from Infusionsoft.
The report was based on data from a survey conducted in October 2017 among 1,000 small business owners in the United States.
Some 71% of respondents say they plan use social media content to acquire new customers in 2018. Three-quarters of respondents plan to include Facebook as part of their social media strategy next year.”
Author: Ayaz Nanji
Date: December 21, 2017
Comment: Social media may seem like the holy grail for inexpensive marketing, but don’t underestimate the amount of effort you will need to expend to make a difference, and don’t assume that just being there means anything. Without a strong content proposition, your social media is less likely to have any impact.
5. SEO & CONTENT – the importance of SEO and Content:
“Your SEO and local search will hinge on your website content. Good content will attract traffic and place you higher on search engine results. Dated, badly written, or sparse online content—or content that isn’t tailored to your target keywords—can hurt you.
A general rule with content marketing is to emphasize quality over quantity.”
Author: Ryan Alleman
Date: January 5th, 2018
https://jive.com/resources/blog/5-resolutions-small-business-digital-marketing-strategy/
Comment: SEO is still essential, and you need to be sensitive to what kind of content you have, and whether it can engage and effectively communicate your brand values.
6. SKILLS – ensuring the right skill sets:
“The growth in digital tools available to small businesses has outpaced the ability to hire people to take advantage of those tools. 61% of small businesses reported trouble hiring workers with the skills to manage their social media pages. This lack of skilled work presents a drag on their ability to expand their businesses. Training skilled workers for small businesses may be an important business opportunity for digital marketers today.
When you think of small businesses online, one usually thinks of it in terms of a website. Facebook has dramatically changed how consumers interact with small businesses and make purchasing decisions. Facebook has emerged as a dynamic source of financial growth for small businesses. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Report titled, Examining the Impact of Technology On Small Business is available here.”
Author: Roger Montti
Date: January 18th, 2018
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/small-businesses-digital-marketing/232653/
Comment: The skills shortage is still a major stumbling block when it comes to digital marketing. This is not likely to go down, given that today’s skilled marketers are struggling to adopt the next generation of skills already facing them.
7. MOBILE AND EMAIL – A channel that is becoming the primary engagement device and the Cinderella channel that’s still essential:
“According to GetResponse, social, mobile and email are at the forefront of digital marketing spending this year. More specifically, 59% of SMBs said marketing on social networks, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter will be the primary spending focus. The next channel projected to drive digital marketing spend in 2017 is mobile marketing (50%) — either app or web-based — followed by email marketing (42%). The other important digital channels include, video production, search marketing, content creation, data analysis and website maintenance. A report from Forrester Research, on the other hand, estimates that search engine marketing will capture the largest share of online spend.”
Author: Kimberly de Silva
Date: 2016
https://www.biznessapps.com/blog/small-businesses-digital-marketing-budget/
Comment: Email is still a powerful channel and will be as long as people conduct a lot of their business via email. Mobile is these days less of a channel, rather than the de facto standard for communicating to your customers. That’s why you hear the expression mobile first being touted about a lot these days. If you are not looking at mobile as a primary device for reaching and engaging with your customers, you need to look carefully at mobile usage figures in your market and see what is happening.
8. EMAIL – Email is still vital:
“The email renaissance will continue in 2018. Get ready to watch videos embedded directly in email campaigns. Technological enhancements in email clients will continue to lead to more and more email apps that support embedded video.”
Author: Mhairi Petrovic
Date: December 15, 2017
https://smallbusinessbc.ca/blog/digital-marketing-trends-2018/
Comment: Please see previous comment.
9. VOICE & AI – new technologies that are going to change how things work on internet:
“For business owners the huge rise in voice search will impact consumer businesses more than B2B. However, both should be implementing plans to benefit from, rather than be left behind by this technology.”
“Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a significant force in marketing now. AI works by learning and responding and this power is being used in several marketing areas. Machine learning – the ability for AI to learn and improve itself without explicitly being programmed, has seen the functional scope of what is possible to expand rapidly in recent years. Marketing is at the forefront of AI use, with Google’s AdWords and Facebook both using AI to refine who is shown what adverts. AI goes even further beyond this in marketing.”
Author: Company Bug
Date: February 7, 2018
http://www.companybug.com/the-changing-digital-marketing-landscape-and-what-you-need-to-know/
Comment: Voice is going to be a seismic shift in the way search is conducted, and AI is already being used by large companies, and likely to be an area of growing interest for small businesses as the technologies become more accessible.
10. VR/AR/MR – new exciting ways to experience the internet:
“Consumers have always been very visual, and now digital technology helps businesses make this visualization more powerful. For example, today we have visual tools, such as 3-D renderings, that construction companies and other businesses offer homebuyers to help them visualize what their dream home will look like when fully built.
There are exciting technologies on the horizon to take visualization to levels of stimulation, interaction and immersion. Technologies like virtual reality were once thought to be useful only for gaming, but they are going to be entering the realm of consumers and small businesses very soon.”
Author: Chris Marentis
Date: February 15, 2016
https://marketingland.com/virtual-reality-for-small-business-163821
Comment: There are inexpensive ways of getting involved with this new technology, and practical applications. The market is still settling for these new technologies, but don’t for a moment imagine they are going to go away. If anything, they are likely to make profound changes to the way we use the internet in the coming years.