The complete digital marketing checklist for SMEs
Nowadays, every business needs a robust online presence. You can’t expect small and medium enterprises to make it without having a solid online. It’s not possible to compete and thrive in the marketplace if there’s nothing online about the business.
Digital marketing offers a myriad of opportunities to reach and engage target audiences, drive sales, and build brand awareness. SMEs need to be able to do all of these in order to survive! There are plenty of marketing tips online about digital marketing, but what should you follow to achieve sustainable growth? Well, with the massive amount of information out there, you’ll need a roadmap, especially in this ever-evolving digital marketing landscape.
But rather than spending hours online scratching your head and questioning what SMEs need to start doing, this checklist will actually help you streamline your efforts, achieve your business goals, and, of course, save you hours (and money) on research.
Define Your Goals and Objectives
While this might sound like generic advice, sometimes the best advice is generic. You’ll need to start off by clarifying your digital marketing goals and objectives. So, what are you looking for? For most SMEs, it’s usually these things:
- Generating leads
- Increasing website traffic
- Boosting sales
- Enhancing brand visibility
So make sure your goals are clear; on top of that, they must also be measurable. At the end of the day, you’ll want to equip yourself better and tailor your digital marketing strategy so it’s easier (and more effective) to track progress.
How Well Do You Know Your Audience?
Do you truly know your audience’s ins and outs? There’s a difference between just targeting your audience and really getting to know them. Understanding your target audience is fundamental to any successful digital marketing campaign. Suppose you genuinely want to make an impact with digital marketing (or any form of marketing). In that case, you need to conduct market research and identify your customer’s demographics, interests, online behaviour, and so on. Honestly, it’s going to be a lot of work, but you can use this insight to create targeted messaging and tailor your marketing efforts to resonate with your audience.
Build a Solid Website
You need to keep in mind that your website is going to serve as the cornerstone of your online presence, and this is often the first point of contact for potential customers, too! Seriously, nowadays, the last thing you want to do is outright skip having a website! So you’ll need to ensure that it’s not only visually appealing (people really care about this), but you’ll also have to make sure it’s mobile-friendly and has easy navigation.
It’s fairly straightforward, with good load times and clear CTAs. Of course, the user experience has to be kept in mind, too. If you want to maximise engagement and conversion, then make sure that the UX is at the forefront when building and tweaking your website!
Always Think About SEO
When it comes to your website, something else you’re going to want to think about is your website’s visibility in search engine results, and you can only get this by implementing SEO best practices. Now, when it comes to SEO, it’s simplistic yet complex. It’s straightforward, but there’s also a lot of debate about what works, what the algorithm wants, and so on. But when it comes to your website, you’ll want to think about incorporating:
- Your website content
- Keyword research
- Meta tags
- URLs
- The website structure, site speed
- Quality backlinks
When it comes to SEO, you need to be in it for the long term. This can have incredible effects on attracting organic traffic, but again, you have to be in it for the long term in order to truly make an impact.
Invest in Paid Advertising
While organic efforts are important, you can’t solely rely on this. Paid advertising can provide an additional boost to your digital marketing efforts. It might be handy to start looking into investing in PPC advertising platforms like Google Ads or social media ads, too.
Be Open to Adapting
It was already briefly mentioned earlier, but the digital landscape, especially in marketing, is constantly evolving; left and right, there are always going to be new changes. You can count on it being trends, technologies, algorithms emerging, search engine updates, and who knows what AI will keep bringing to the table!
With the constant changes, you’ll just have to keep informed about industry developments, keep an eye on the competition, and be willing to adapt your strategies accordingly. It’s best to embrace experimentation, learn from your successes and failures, and continuously refine your approach to stay ahead of the curve.
