3C Digital

Digital Marketing for Small Business

social media marketing

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Digital marketing tips for small business in a pandemic

All businesses are taking a big hit right now and we’re all struggling to figure out what to do next. You may think that the first thing you need to cut back on is your online presence, but this is so not the case. When customers can’t reach out to you IRL (in real life), you need to be reachable virtually. Now more than ever, you need to boost your online presence. Here are some digital marketing tips for small business in a pandemic.

Check all your online channels

Is your website running smoothly? Are there broken links? Is it mobile-friendly? Does it load quickly? Is it secure (does it use https instead of just http)? Are you social media channels up and running? Make sure that you have a statement on your online channels about what your business is doing through this whole Covid-19 crisis. How are you affected? What are you going to do from now? How are your customers going to reach you? Make it front and centre and publish it on all your channels.

Digital marketing ebook

Post more

In the past, you may have been able to get away with posting once or twice a week. But now that customers can’t reach you IRL, you need to boost your social media postings. Three times a week is a good start but seriously think about posting more. Start to experiment in more than just text and photo posts. Try video for your digital marketing ads. Use the Live function on Facebook and Instagram. Do you have a tutorial you want to do? Go for it! The free editing apps are a dime a dozen now so you can edit your own videos. Think about what you want to convey to your customers and then create the content.

Offer packages

Your customers want to help you if they are able to. People are loyal to the businesses they love, so reach out to them. Be honest about how this pandemic is affecting your business and you personally. Make it easy for them to help you. Maybe create a ‘help my business’ package that your customers can easily purchase on your website. Make sure that the links are also there on your social media channels. Promise them a freebie once everything is up and running again as a ‘thank you’ for their continued support.

Now is the time to focus your efforts online because there’s very little you can do IRL. If you need a free consult on where or how to start, contact us.

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3 Simple digital marketing ideas for your small business

Simple digital marketing ideas for your small business

  1. Build your email list
  2. Give your audience something of value
  3. Use hyperlocal marketing
  4. Know what’s happening in your local area and participate
  5. Know where your audience is online
  6. Get social

There are many things you can do for your small business’ digital marketing and social media efforts. But where do you begin? Words like SEO, analytics and lead generation can be overwhelming, so our suggestion is to have a starting point. In this post, we will discuss three things you can look into right now to get your online marketing campaigns started.

Build your email list

Your email list is still one of the best ways you can reach your customers so it is definitely worth building this. How do you get them to sign up exactly? By giving them something of value such as discounts, a giveaway or information that they can use. Don’t underestimate the appeal of an eBook filled with useful information to your customers. Just make sure it looks professional (you can do this easily with the various free tools online now like Canva). You can start building your list with tools like Mailchimp, which is free if your subscribers’ number is under 2000. Once you’ve automated the whole system, it will be easier for you to manage it as well. Schedule the eDM every month with the occasional email when you have a promo running. Just make sure it’s not too often so as not to annoy your customers.

Hyperlocal marketing

Having an avatar for your ideal target audience is helpful to your small business marketing campaign, but focusing locally will help you even more. Know the areas you want to focus on and create ads honing on those communities. Up your local SEO so you show up when people search businesses in your area. You can do this by listing your small business in online directories catering to your target areas, adding keywords for your suburb and putting up regular updates on what’s happening around the area. If you don’t know how to do this yourself consider hiring an agency that focuses on small businesses. Look at their client list and testimonials to ensure you are hiring the right one for you. Remember that it takes a while before your SEO efforts bear fruit so it’s best to start now and do it right the first time.

Get social

If you are going to do social media and create accounts for your business, you need to make sure you regularly update it. The minimum update you should do is once a week, don’t leave it for months and months without updating. Also, you don’t need to be on every single social media platform out there. Know where your audience hangs out and focus on that one. A good content strategy is your friend so it is best to have one lined up before you start your online platform. Make sure you know the best way to deal with customers on social media so you don’t make any big mistakes that can affect your business. If you’re not sure what to do, have a sit down with an agency that can train your staff and yourself on how to do it.

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3 Reasons why Facebook rejected your ad

You created an ad, set the audience, placed your budget limit and confirmed it. Minutes later, you get a reply from Facebook that your ad was rejected. You are shocked, don’t know what to do and have no idea why Facebook didn’t like it. You are not alone. We’ve all been there. With everything that Facebook went through this year, don’t be surprised if even more changes are coming. In this post, we will tell you three of the most common reasons why your Facebook ad was rejected.

The obvious ones

Let’s start with the obvious ones. If you look at the list of prohibited products and services on Facebook’s list, you’ll see the usual suspects. Things like drugs, guns, tobacco, supplements, weapons, gambling and more. There are restricted contents that have specific rules too. Alcohol can sometimes be advertised depending on the laws in your area and the target audience you create as well as the message on your ad. Others on the restricted content list include dating sites, real money gambling, regional lotteries, online pharmacies, supplements, financial services, student loan services and more. You will need to provide specific things to make Facebook feel better about your ad. Things like prior written permissions and sufficient disclosures. Read up on each specific rules for your content if it falls in one of those categories.

3C Digital Facebook ebook

Racy materials and language

Adult content is not allowed on Facebook. These include stuff like nudity, sexual positions or even suggestive sexual positions as well as overly sexually provocative ads. That goes hand in hand with racy and foul language as well. Profanity is not allowed in your ads (and it shouldn’t really be there anyway) so double check that your ad doesn’t have it — even ones you think are ‘acceptable’. Replacing profanity with symbols will still have the same effect. Also check your grammar and punctuations because those affect the review process of your ads too. Things like misused capitalisation and too many symbols (even not related to profanity) will affect the result of the review process too.

facebook ad
Examples on Facebook.

Sensational claims and shock tactics

Although you’d like people to pay attention to your ad and click, Facebook is against shock tactics and sensational claims. You can’t use images that shock or scare users as well as pictures that show any sort of violence. Aside from that, you can’t also claim to achieve something if they use your products/services. Things like curing a disease, or losing belly fat by applying your lotion or even raising your profits by a certain percentage when using your method. This is where someone with digital marketing experience comes in. Wording your ad in such a way that it passes Facebook’s policies is important to run a successful campaign on the social media platform.

facebook ad
Example on Facebook.

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The realities of social media marketing

One of the first things we do for small-business owners during our free initial consultation, even if they don’t end up as our client, is to manage their expectations about social media marketing. Why? Because based on experience, small-business owners think it’s the messiah of marketing.

Social media marketing helps your small business join the digital age but it’s not the answer to all your needs. So when we sit with small-business owners, we make sure they know these three top things before we move forward.

Read the full post over at Inside Small Business.