5 Tips For Winning The Online Marketing Scramble in 2020
Talk about a lolly scramble! Ever since the first lockdown ended, we have been inundated with small and medium businesses desperate to take advantage of the digital world. Some have realised that an online marketing is a must, while others have been forced to close their real-life shopfronts in favour of purely virtual ones.
Given this new migration to online, I have distilled here some of the best strategies to ensure your online marketing is a success:
Smart Shopping Campaigns
Smart Shopping is a solution offered by Google that allows you to show your products, in the right place, at the right time, to customers across all of Google’s properties. We have found that it returns an impressive conversion rate with low costs. If you are not utilising Smart Shopping and you have a product with a reasonable margin, you are missing out on a simple trick that could massively increase your exposure.
Leverage Social
If you have a product that suits the social audience, there is a plethora of opportunities over social platforms to sell, educate, engage and entertain. Think Facebook and Instagram for building communities and local connections, and leverage these audiences for direct response and retargeting. Use LinkedIn for the more serious business-to-business stuff and content dissemination, and consider TikTok for having fun with your messaging, and reaching the younger generation through non-salesy and engaging short-form video.
Measure, Measure, Measure
If you can’t measure it, how will you know if it’s working or not? Make sure your Google Analytics is set up correctly, with goals, conversions, and tracking properly installed and tested. Make sure you have Google Tag Manager installed, and get someone to set you up a reporting dashboard on Data Studio. Know how much it is costing you for a conversion, find out what is working, and increase your budgets as far as you can in the areas that are making the best ROI.
Make it Easy
What happens when someone gets to your website? Is it clear (read – idiot proof!) and easy for someone to take a desired action on your website? If not, fix it today, and stop leaving cash and sales on the table. Be sure to check this on desktops, mobiles and tablets; ensure that no matter what device your customer uses, the experience is seamless.
Search
Google Ads, search engine optimisation (SEO), programmatic display advertising, and retargeting are all important. If your budgets are minimal, buy my book—How to get to the Top of Google Search—or borrow it from the library! It can tell you in layman’s terms how to achieve online rankings. Invest in some paid media, and try and leverage some PR. A combination of these techniques will give you both short term (Google Ads, programmatic) and long term (SEO) value.
If you are new to the world of digital marketing, there is no time like the present to get going. As I always say, the best time to get started was about a month ago. The second-best time is now.
Richard Conway is the founder & CEO of Pure SEO, a finalist in the EY 2019 Entrepreneur of the Year and author of How To Get To The Top of Google Search, a Practical Guide.
