Investing in marketing efforts for your small business is essential to improving your brand awareness, targeting a specific audience, and continuously increasing your sales revenue. But it’s 2020 and there are a lot of marketing tactics out there that people have probably told you really work and other tactics that are dead and not to waste your money investing in them.
You want to spend your marketing budget wisely and obviously get the biggest bang for your buck and in a world where digital marketing strategies are dominating, that may be the best place to start.
Choose The Right Digital Marketing Company For You
You’re busy running your business. Sure, you may know a bit about digital marketing, but when it comes to actually knowing the type of content to create, when to post it, how to create engaging advertisements, using professional photography or videography, etc., do you have the means or the time to do this by yourself?
Probably not.
As you’re determining your digital marketing budget, take into account what it’d cost to work with a professional marketing company who knows precisely how to work with your type of industry. Make sure they’re honest with you. Based on your industry, business goals and budget, they should tailor their marketing strategy for you and know the best tactics to spend your valuable marketing dollars on.
Determine Your Goals
Every marketing budget will vary depending on the size of your business and your overall goals. But every business owner’s goals will vary too. Do you want to establish your brand by creating a voice and image? Do you need to increase your conversion rates or sales? Do you need to get ahead of your competition? Whichever digital marketing company you choose to work with, they can tailor your campaign so it’s designed to meet your goals.
When it comes to determining your marketing budget, the U.S. Small Business Administration suggests spending approximately 7-8% of your gross revenue on a marketing strategy if you’re bringing in less than $5 million a year but have a 10-12% margin after covering necessary expenses (including marketing and advertising).
Think of Facebook as the king of social media. When it comes to advertising on Facebook, you have the power to reach a wider audience that is specifically targeted based on their age, gender, previous shopping habits, posts they like, job description, and more. Plus, one of the best things people love about advertising on Facebook is that they can completely customize their Facebook marketing budgets and increase or decrease it at any given time. When you’re not spending your marketing dollars on advertising, there are many benefits to having a social media manager to manage your account.
It’s suggested that in 2020, you should post on Facebook at least three times a day. This way, you can remain engaged with your followers, keep them anticipating your content, and leave it to the experts to know the best time to post.
Better yet, a professional marketing company should have a photographer to produce high-quality and visually appealing photos and videos for you so you don’t have to worry about having stock photos on your timeline. You’ll have actual photos of your products, services and employees to impress your audience even further. Instagram (owned by Facebook) is another social media app that can deliver exceptional results, and it holds a different demographic too.
Content Marketing & SEO
Strong content can make your business succeed, but combine that with SEO and there’s no stopping them. There are many factors to consider with SEO such as on-page optimization, backlinks, meta descriptions, Google My Business profiles, image optimization, regular blog posts, etc. While SEO efforts can help improve your ranking on Google, there are many other benefits to having a professional write and maintain your content.
Content marketing can drastically improve customer loyalty, the overall customer experience, improving your brand awareness, and boost your conversion rates by increasing your website traffic. Just remember that in order to see the results you desire through SEO, it’s a long-term investment that could take up to six months before you notice a difference. Content marketing and SEO should be ongoing as keywords and trending topics related to your industry will change regularly.
Chatbots
Chatbots are very easy to set up and can provide businesses with a wide range of benefits, including staying on top of customer support. It doesn’t matter the industry, chatbots are the new craze – from online retailers to hospitality services, financial institutions, and more.
According to IBM, chatbots can thoroughly answer up to 80% of inquiries (outside of your regular business hours too) and can address thousands of customer requests, therefore, they’re more efficient than humans who can only address a few customers at a time.
But by investing in chatbots, you can increase your employees’ productivity, gain your customers’ trust by improving your customer service department, and even see an increase in quality leads. By nurturing the lead right off the bat, the chatbot can clearly guide the consumer through their journey just as efficiently as a human would be able too.
Invest In The Right Marketing Strategy Today
If you’re wondering how to spend your marketing budget on your new small business, these top categories can be a great place to start once you determine which professional marketing company you want to work with. Every business, especially depending on your specific goals, will have a different marketing budget and strategy, but these three categories are the most popular investments in 2020. Facebook is the king of social media, so if you’re not on it, you should be!
It’s a great way to be discovered by a new audience and increase your brand awareness. In order to increase it even more, you should consider spending your marketing budget on ongoing content marketing. This can boost your ranking on Google organically too.
Lastly, customer service should always be your top priority and, therefore, you should consider investing in having chatbots incorporated on your website or social media profile to continuously improve your customers’ overall experience.
Before diving right into a marketing strategy, your goals should always be determined first. This will ultimately influence your marketing budget, and help the marketers you hired to determine the best course of action to take. Where you invest your marketing dollars is entirely up to you, but now that it’s 2020, you’re going to want to do your research on why digital marketing is the way to go.
