7 Steps To Determine The Best Online Marketing Solutions For Your Small Business
There is a plethora of options when it comes to online marketing – social media, blogging, ads, videos, influencer marketing, webinars, etc. They all work, but they don’t all work for everyone.n
Determining the right online marketing solutions for any business requires a process. However too many businesses, especially small businesses, approach online marketing from a throwing-spaghetti-at-a-wall-and-seeing-what-sticks approach. And this is a huge waste of money, effort and time.
To save yourself the aggravation of a scatter-shot approach to deciding on the best online marketing solutions for your business, you’ll want to keep these 7 tips in mind:
1. Have the right mindset
When it comes to figuring out which online marketing option(s) will work best for your business, you need to think about the process as an experiment. When you’re running experiments, you’re curious. You’re not feeling pressured. You’re not worried about passing or failing. You’re not worried about making a bad decision. You’re simply curious about what you’ll discover.
When you approach the process of exploring online marketing from this perspective, it’s much easier to remain objective and make the best decisions.
2. Know your market
Each type of online marketing attracts a different type of person or at least people with different intents. The demographic of people on Facebook differs from that on TikTok. The intent of people who read blog posts is different from those who click on banner ads.
When you know where your ideal customers are most likely to be online, you can start prioritizing the online marketing options with which you’ll experiment.
3. Know your goals for online marketing
You will also need to get clear about why you’re exploring online marketing. Are you looking for more foot traffic into your store? Are you interested in building brand awareness? Do you want more people to join your mailing list?
When you know the outcome you want from your online marketing, you’ll be better able to design your experiments and you’ll know what to measure.
4. Know your budgets (time & money)
Online marketing requires an investment of time, money or both. Understanding your budgets will also help you design better experiments, so you’ll be able to determine the best online marketing solutions for your business.
5. Pick 1-3 options
Sometimes knowing your goals and your budgets will decrease the online marketing options you want to experiment with down to 3 or less. Other times it won’t.
Typically, you’ll want to limit the options to 3 or less so you can have the bandwidth to perform the ROI analyses.
6. Collect data
To perform the ROI calculations, you’ll need to collect data from your experiments. The data you’ll want to collect will depend on your goals. You’ll also need to keep track of the time and money spent so you’ll know the total investment you’ve made in each experiment.
7. Evaluate the results
Finally, at the end of your experimentation, you’ll be able to look at the ROI. Once you understand which of the options gives you the best ROI, you’ll have determined the best online marketing solutions for your small business.
For most, this experimentation process isn’t a one-time effort. You can use it to tweak and refine your online marketing solutions at any time.
Remember is the best online marketing solutions aren’t the same for every business.
However, the approach to finding the best ones for any business are identical. We use it with each of our clients. And, if you follow the steps, you’ll be able to systematically determine the best online marketing solutions for your small business too.
Have questions about online marketing for your small business? Let us help. Schedule a free consultation with one of our content marketing experts today.
