6 ways small businesses can capitalise on the digital explosion of recent months
If nothing else, the previous three months of 2020 i.e. March-May has proven that content is king. And content that is useful, practical and available digitally is the king of them all!
Whether it’s watching and sharing videos, social media chatter, consumption of news and entertainment, upskilling or re-learning or simply just browsing, the internet bustled with activity in the past three months.
Consider the following digital media trends as reported by JP Morgan on May 1, 2020:
Twitter recently announced that for Q1 2020, the average total of monetisable daily active users reached approximately 164 million, which is up 23% from last year
Cable news channels have seen their ratings double over the past month
Facebook messaging is up 50%
Snapchat soared to 229 million daily active users
The New York Times has also experienced record levels of engagement that is boosting subscriber levels beyond expectations. “Overall, we have seen a 10-20% growth in ratings for a majority of broadcast shows, which is atypical this time of year,” says Alexia Quadrani, Head of U.S. Media Equity Research
Doug Anmuth, Head of JP Morgan, US notes that Pinterest is also seeing heightened engagement, particularly across categories involving home improvement and activities with children.
And then there are these trends reported by smallbiztrends.com:
As of June 2018, Instagram reached 1 billion monthly active users
In the first quarter of 2020, Facebook had over 2.6 billion monthly active users
As of the first quarter of 2019, Twitter averaged 330 million monthly active users
Linkedin has over 575 million users, with more than 260 million monthly active users (Apr. 2020)
At the end of 2019, Pinterest reported having 322 million monthly active users
So, what does this mean particularly for small business owners? The answer: it’s time to digitise and engage!
In light of the various factors arising from the onset of the coronavirus (COVID-19), it means that some small businesses in particular will struggle to find a stable financial footing in its conventional business operations. Small businesses are therefore encouraged to ‘think as if there is no box’.
Pivoting the business is important and so is pivoting the marketing process. Having identified additional income and content streams to engage your client group (and potential client groups) it is now time to capitalise on the new trends in digital marketing which are just astounding.
The following are six digital marketing tactics that small business can engage to capitalise on the digital boom.
Start and update your blog, consistently! - If your small business does not yet have a blog, you are a bit behind the eight ball but its not too late. Creating content such as ‘how-to’s’, highlighting how your small business is supporting community based and environmental causes or simply promoting the virtues of your next big product, is a great way to engage with your clients.
Utilise online reviews - Word-of-mouth is a great way to spread information about your new product offerings; and online reviews is the modern version of that. Ask your customers to write positive reviews about your product offerings online especially on popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Those reviews must be incorporated in your marketing programme to attract, engage and convert leads into customers and sales. Online reviews will also make it easier for your business to be found in local search engines.
Host a YouTube Tutorial or Webinar - Sharing your knowledge opens up an entirely new door for you as a small business owner. Not only are you the ‘General Manager’ of your own business, you are now a thought leader in your industry. Identify trending topics in your industry and go for it… and the information you share here can also be repurposed for your next blog post!
Revisit your ideal customer profile - If your small business has pivoted to provide new customer offerings, it means that your ideal customer profile has changed. Revisit your ideal customer profile to identify who is your new target audience. Using that information identify the best online platforms and engage there. Bear in mind that reach and attention is fragmented as persons will seesaw between devices and platforms but if you have a good product, you will attract the right attention.
Automate your marketing activities - Keeping your social media platforms updated can be an arduous daily task but if you set aside time to plan and schedule the posts, it will free you up to focus on other areas of the business. Use a scheduling tool such as Hootsuite to help. Other areas of your marketing that should be considered for automation includes the customer relationship management (CRM) system. Useful CRM systems help small businesses to organise and track customers with the main goal of improving business relationships.
Use SEO/SEM & Optimise - Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are a small businesses best digital friend. SEO increases the number of visitors to your website by getting the site to appear higher in search results on Google and Bing. SEM increases the website visibility through organic search results and advertising. Optimising your website allows you to see more conversions even if the traffic to the website is low.
