4 Ways a Digital Marketing Agency Can Help a Small Business

Small businesses are often reluctant to dive into digital marketing because they believe that they will be swamped by larger companies with larger budgets. However, there are many ways that a digital marketing agency can assist a small business in promoting its goods and services. Here are four suggestions of ways a small business can benefit from the services of a digital marketing agency:

Custom Website

The mainstay for many small businesses' digital marketing strategies is a website. Websites provide much of the essential information for a potential customer, such as product and service offerings, location, phone number, and hours of operation.

Although many small businesses rely on general templates you can find for free anywhere on the internet, there are distinct advantages to having a digital marketing agency develop custom website designs:

• Custom websites allow you to tailor the look and feel of your website. You can use custom visuals rather than stock visuals, thus avoiding the embarrassment of having the same photo, logo, or layout as one of your competitors.
• Custom websites provide greater flexibility to use content marketing, discussed in greater detail below.
• Custom websites can be better optimized for search engines, as discussed below.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a technical process in which an SEO agency embeds keywords into the visible and invisible text associated with your website. As search engines crawl your website to figure out how to index it for searches, they encounter these keywords. This influences the search engines to index the website for those keywords.

This is important because there are millions of websites on the World Wide Web. Consequently, most online experiences begin with a search engine. Occasionally, potential customers already know your name. Perhaps you are a caterer who was referred to a bride by a friend or wedding planner who had previously used your services. In this case, the potential customer would simply type your business's name into a search engine.

However, in other situations, you need to compete with many other businesses for a customer's attention. If your catering business does not appear in search results for "wedding catering near me" or "wedding catering Houston TX," then potential customers will simply never reach your website.

SEO serves to connect the keywords that describe your business with your business's website in the eyes of the search engines. Thus, rather than needing to know your catering business's name, a potential customer need only search for "wedding caterers near me" to find your website.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a broad term that covers the development of content to generate leads and draw them to your online presence, whether that be a website, social media page, social media feed, or the like. Certain elements of content marketing are typically pillars of SEO strategies. Examples of content marketing include:

• Articles and blog posts
• Music samples
• Infographics
• Videos
• Interactive charts
• Trial versions of software

Most content marketing is only an indirect sales pitch. Rather than pitching users, the leading purpose of content marketing is to educate or entertain users of that content. For example, our caterer could post a recipe for a pasta dish or a demonstration video making that dish. This type of content marketing serves many purposes:

• You demonstrate expertise in your field. Most business is generated through customer referrals, but content marketing acts as a virtual "referral" for your business.
• You expand the ways search engine users are led to your website. For example, if potential customers can find your website by searching for "pasta recipes" or "pasta recipe videos" in addition to "caterer," you have vastly increased your online leads.
• Another perk of well-developed content is that it may be shared or even go viral.

Social Media

Social media is used to communicate directly to online customers and leads. For example, if your target demographic is young adults, 45% of people between the ages of 18 and 24 use Twitter. Choosing the right social media platforms for your business could make or break your digital marketing efforts.

Business social media is not personal social media. Business social media posts exist for a business purpose. These business purposes include:

• Providing information such as new products, new locations, and business hours.
• Promoting content used for content marketing.
• Engaging with customers.

Social media marketing is used by a digital marketing agency in conjunction with other strategies. For example, content is more likely to go viral if it is posted on social media.

Digital marketing can provide substantial benefits to all businesses, including small businesses, through websites, search engines, content, and social media.