Most businesses embark on creating a strong marketing strategy in a bid to raise brand awareness of their business and secure those all-important sales. Over the last few years, digital marketing has allowed businesses to reach the masses with ease and at a lower cost, compared to the more traditional marketing strategies we saw in the past such as TV and print advertising. With digital marketing being accessible to all businesses, we breakdown some of the core activities your business should be considering as part of the marketing strategies your business needs to boost sales in 2022.
Website
If you’re running an online business, or any business for that matter, having a website is fundamental in 2022. Your website is your shop window into what your business is all about. Typically, here are some of the key pages your website should contain:
Home Page – an overview of your business
Any key information is normally presented on your your home page. If you have a special offer or something that needs attention to, this is a greta place to display it.
About Us Page
Some visitors find out more about the business they are considering spending their money with. The about page might contain information like:
- your company mission and values
- background into how long your business has been active
- why it was started
Top Tip – people really like to know who they are dealing with. They don’t like to think they are talking to a computer bot! If you feel comfortable, include images of you and your team, so customers know who they can expect to be dealing with.
Services/ Products Page
Arguably the most fundamental page on the website. People need to know what you’re selling! Whether this is a product or a service your website should include detailed information that provides a website visitor with enough information to know if the product or service is right for them.
Top Tip – if you have an ecommerce website, make sure you have an SSL certificate in place for safe payment processing.
Contact Page
If people are going to buy from you, they’re going to want to know that they can get in contact with you. Whether it’s to ask some details before a purchase is made or after a purchase has been made… you need to make yourself contactable!
Top Tip – Include links to your social profiles, so customers can connect with you on a longer term basis. It is a great way of nurturing those not quite ready to buy or encouraging return sales.
SEO
Now with your website in place you want to be getting traffic to it. A popular digital marketing strategy involves SEO (search engine optimisation).
SEO involves a set of processes that are designed to improve the visibility of your website when someone carries out a search on for example, Google.
A user will have a keyword or phrase in mind that they enter into Google when they want to find out more information or are ready to make a purchase. Therefore, it is important that your website is optimised for the keywords and phrases that your customers would typically be searching for.
At Carrick Creative, we research exactly what your audience is searching for. Once this keyword/phrase list has been determined this is then inserted within your existing content and often inspires new content that can be added to your website.
As well as optimising for content there is also technical optimisation that can take place to help tell the search engines exactly what your website is about.
SEO is not a quick fix strategy! However, the benefits of listing on the first page when someone enters a search is second to none. A huge proportion of traffic is clicked on here!
PPC
Unlike SEO, Pay Per Click (PPC) is a paid version of marketing. Like how your website appears organically (providing it has been optimised) PPC, allows your website to appear as Ads for certain keywords and searches, but the difference is it charges you to do so.
Organic SEO could take months to improve your ranking, however, PPC can provide instantaneous results. It’s just important to be mindful that this can come at a cost. You’ll need a healthy budget to be able to keep advertising and get listed in the top ad spots.
What’s great about a PPC campaign, is that is allows you target certain locations, interests and even retarget those people that have already visited your website with a specific offer to try an incentivise them to make a purchase.
Social Media
With so many different social media channels now available, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, Pinterest to name a few, it comes as no surprise that some businesses don’t know which way to turn when it comes to social media marketing.
Social media marketing can however be an incredibly value practice as part of your digital marketing strategy. People spend a lot of time each day scrolling their social media channels. This presents you with a great opportunity to get eyes on your business.
Social media is also commonly used for social proof, i.e. someone will come to your channels to make sure:
- Your business is legitimate and that you are who you say you are
- That you offer what you say you offer
It is important to have a strong content strategy on whichever platform you feel is best for your business. It will aid your brand awareness and nurture prospective customers and warm leads. (Not sure which channel is right for you? Get in touch and our team can help).
Social Media Ads
Social media Ads present a powerful opportunity for your business. You can expand your reach even further to a carefully selected targeted audience. Yes, you can set up campaigns to target people in a specific location with specific demographics. Like PPC ads you can set campaigns to reengage those users that have visited your website or previously engaged with your social content.
Top Tip – it can be really easy to spend a lot of money fast with social media ads. Make sure you have a carefully planned campaign in place before you hit the publish button!
So how do I know which Marketing strategies my business needs to boost sales?
There are plenty of opportunities for your business to get digital and target your audience. However, each business is entirely different with entirely different goals to the one next door. It is crucial that your digital strategy is bespoke to your business. If you need support crafting your digital strategy to help, make Q2, 3 & 4 your best in business yet, give the team at Carrick a call today. We’ll be happy to create the marketing strategies your business needs to boost sales!