Digital marketing takes work, but it’s not rocket science. Many small business owners actively do their own marketing—after all, who knows your customers better than you?
Thankfully, you don’t have to go back to uni or even take a face-to-face course. If you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and get hands-on, there are plenty of online courses and articles to help familiarise yourself with the basics. Yellow’s Business Hub is a good example. Optimising your social media, CRM (customer relationship management) and SEO (search engine optimisation) are valuable skills to learn, and can make a huge difference in helping you reach your customers at the right time.
Small businesses in bigger cities benefit from foot traffic, and can take advantage of affordable offline marketing tactics in their local neighbourhoods.
As a regional business you’re often covering more ground than your city counterparts. Using email marketing platforms like Pocket Office, can help you stay in touch with customers.
When you’re building an email marketing plan, make sure to include relational emails (emails that don’t have a direct offer or promotion) to build your connection with customers, as well as promotional emails about your latest products and services.
Customers in capital cities often search using location-based keywords, such as “florist in Sydney” or “construction workers in Perth”. The volume of searches for these keywords per month is significant, which means it makes sense for companies to optimise their website for these keywords to boost their traffic numbers.
While customers often search for keywords with a geographic location, such as ‘Plumber Lorne’, a large amount of searches also use generic terms, such as ‘Florist Perth’. To own generic and obvious keywords in a metro location is super expensive. However, regional businesses can bid for these keywords within their location for far less money. This allows you to instantly tap into local customers who are using a generic search term in their search.
Everyone surfs the internet on their phone, but even more do it in regional areas. A study by the ACMA found that 15% of Aussies in regional areas exclusively use a mobile device for telecommunication, compared to 10% in capital cities. When you’re catering to customers in regional areas, it’s important to optimise everything for mobile, from your website to your email newsletter templates.
Freelancers or contractors are an effective way to bring extra hands on deck without breaking the bank.
Freelancers are great for regional businesses because they can work remotely, which means your access to marketing expertise isn’t limited to your local area. You can also pick and choose the freelancers based on the skills you need. For example, maybe you need help running your search engine marketing campaigns but are happy to take charge of social media and email marketing. Or maybe you know what you want on your blog, and just need a wordsmith to craft it.
Today’s uni students are digital natives and well-versed in the latest digital platforms such as Photoshop and Instagram. Plus, they understand how customers use and consume content on social media. Interns can be a great asset, giving your business a fresh perspective that can take your marketing to the next level.
Most students are keen to get hands-on experience, and often it’s as simple as getting in touch with local universities or TAFE institutions to post up an ad for an internship. While you’ll still need to reimburse interns for their time, it won’t cost nearly as much as a seasoned pro. If you need more marketing help down the line, you could potentially bring on your intern part or full-time after they’ve finished studying.
Contractors and freelancers offer speicalised solutions to ramp up your digital marketing efforts. However, they’re generally not a full service shop. If you need something more comprehensive, it’s time to work with an expert across all areas of digital marketing. .
Outsourcing parts of your digital marketing to a company like Yellow means you get to work with a full service agency who understands every aspect of digital marketing. So even if you’re only interested in outsourcing your SEO, if you eventually want help with other digital marketing areas, it’s easy to integrate into your existing strategy as it’s all coming from the one expert service.
You can also benefit from economies of scale when you use an external agency to buy ads, as these companies have greater purchasing power.
If you need help with your digital marketing plan, Yellow has you covered. Yellow offers a full suite of products and services to take your digital marketing to the next level, from search engine marketing to SEO packages. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help you grow your business.
This post was written by Kelly Teng for Kochie’s Business Builders and is republished here with permission.
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