Small businesses are always short on profit and do not have too much expertise in doing digital advertising or ecommerce. Also outsourcing is a task as there is a minimum investment of 10-20k per month on digital agencies to start digital marketing for their company. So it’s very important to understand some amazing ways to promote your brand online.
So if you know these small budget techniques exist to promote your product online, you don’t need to like spend a bomb in doing so.
- What should be your objective – If the product is new, increasing awareness should be the primary and sales should be secondary. If the product is old then wise versa. Increasing awareness means – Increasing likes, engagement, increasing visibility. Increasing sales means – increasing sales, profits, ROI.
- Do local advertising online – There is an option on Facebook which helps you target your locality so that people in and around your area discover you and you can hand-deliver the product to their house. Also if it’s a service this local advertising is much more helpful for you. So just ask your agency that you want to do 10 km radius advertising in a particular area and give your contact number. Ask them for Cost Per Lead (CPL), this will give you a tentative idea of how much is going to be the cost per lead, and accordingly, you can set your budget. (Invest 40% of your budget here)
- Retargeting – Once people start visiting you, it means there is some awareness that is being created for your brand/service. Do retargeting for your company, it means people who have already seen your ads will be shown the ads again. You would not like to show the same ad. Since they have already seen your ads. It means they are interested, go ahead and give those customers some discount or more deep knowledge about your product or service. It will help them converted or fall in your consideration set. So you will tell your agency to retarget the audience who have already seen your ads with sequential messaging. (Invest 30% of your ads)
- Choose not more than 2-3 channels – When you go digital your audience will not be present on just one channel, they will be present on multiple channels and there will be an overlap. The most ideal combination is YouTube, Facebook & Instagram. Create personas according to you for each channel, personas might overlap but it helps greatly in creating your target audience. Organic posting and increasing overall likes are very important for your channels. This will help build trust and you will be a touchpoint for them across touchpoints. Ideally, put 10-12 posts per month. If you are low on budget, my suggestion, go ahead use CANVA to create your posts, check how your competitors are doing, and start creating similar posts. How I did it, 1st I hired an agency and gave them a contract for 3 months, post understanding how to create a content calendar, images. Built a follow-on strategy and started creating posts on my own.
- YouTube is a mandate channel – Since video is picking up from a consumption perspective, this needs to be the focus. All sub-content should be created from this. As per research, 70% of the searches start with “How to??”, which means people are really interested in learning about something. People are not interested in just seeing your product, they are coming online to either entertain or learn something. So you need to create content with only these 2 spaces in mind. Few suggestions of content –
a. Unboxing your products
b. Tell about evolution about your product
c. DIY (Do it yourself) kind of videos
- Provide customer support + Testimonials – For increasing trust and transparency for your product, you should have 100% return if damaged. Provide customer support if the product or service requires it. Send mails to people who have purchased your product to ask for feedback, post the testimonials on your Facebook page. Tell your customers that the product is being loved by showing them customer love and testimonials.
- Creating Landing Page – The landing page and your website are 2 separate identities, the reason why the landing page needs to be created separately from your website because it enhances the user experience. When you show an ad to your customer and expecting him to click, he should land on a page which is talking more about the offer and lead capture is ready. There is no point in making him land on your website as he will get lost and leave eventually without adding any value to you. Look at the example below
- Create a freebie that resonates with your product or service – create a lead magnet that will increase brand awareness. You run a campaign and as a giveaway give a freebie that is either part of the product or resonates with your product. Freebie can be a webinar invite/e-books /free course/coupons etc. I have created one freebie link – check here
- What happens with the lead you captured – The customer will NOT buy your product in one go, you need to spend time with him through different touchpoints. Capturing his email id will give you an opportunity to increase engagement over mail with him. Start a conversation/campaign where he will revisit your product again and again and eventually buys your product. (Do email marketing calendar setup – Invest 20% of your budget here)
- Split 60:40 during the start of the project – 60 % on creating awareness organically and inorganically (it includes – the creation of creatives/videos, organic listing and not compromising on quality, promoting these posts to increase awareness) & 40% on paid media to drive sales. Calculate your ROI on an overall 100%.
- Do A/B Testing – Once you got your ROI, now the objective should be how to bring the cost down. You just need to make sure you can test only one element at a time keeping other elements constant. Below I am listing down elements to do A/B testing. (Invest 10% of your budget)
- Creative testing – Test your creatives, run you’re at max 2 creatives simultaneously to understand which creative is working better for you by measuring impressions and CTR.
- Landing Page Testing – Wherever you are landing your customer, test your page by changing your design, text, look and feel. Do it for a min. of 10 days to see some visible impact.
Do let me know in the comments below what other points you think will add value to small businesses in promoting their businesses.
