You’ve created a product or service you are really proud of and now it’s time to start telling the world all about it.
But before you can begin there are a hefty number of marketing options to wade through before you can work out the right course of action.
If marketing isn’t your field, then it can feel a little overwhelming, especially with all of the acronyms and jargon you need to decode first.
So, we have come up with a quick guide to some of terms that we are often asked about to help give you a head start.
PPC marketing
PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click, and can be a really economical way to advertise your product online if you are prepared to put in the legwork at the start.
Both Facebook and Google Ads work this way. In essence you pay a fee each time someone clicks on your advert, leading them to your website.
As this useful article from Wordstream explains: When PPC is working correctly, the fee is trivial, because the visit is worth more than what you pay for it. In other words, if we pay $3 for a click, but the click results in a $300 sale, then we’ve made a hefty profit.
Before you place your advert, it is vital you spend time working out the keywords your potential customers are likely to use in a search. Get these right and you are heading for a winning outcome. Get the keywords wrong and it could be a costly waste of time.
Small Business Geek’s Liz Smith explained: For example, one of our customers had created a pay per click advert and they were confident they had researched their keywords well. Once the advert was placed, they received lots of clicks but no follow through business. They couldn’t understand why, but we soon found the problem they had used the American spelling of a number of keywords so the people searching and clicking through were thousands of miles away and not in the market to use their service.
On the plus side you can set your budget so you are clear how much you are prepared to spend with your Pay-Per-Click advert, but you do need to be aware that they can eat money if you get your keywords wrong.
Remarketing
Also known as retargeting, this is a form of online advertising used to engage people who have already shown an interest in your product or service.
It’s something you have no doubt experienced as a customer, but may not have been aware of. This Remarketing Guide for Dummies from Outbrain explains: Have you ever visited a website, and then the next day, while browsing online, you saw an ad for the very same website? Or have you ever visited a webstore, added items to your cart, but didn’t check out? Then the next day, while browsing online, you saw an ad featuring the products you left in the cart? Congratulations, you were retargeted.
In essence it gives you a second chance to catch the interest of a potential customer. It can be used on different platforms such as Google and Facebook and again it’s charged on a Pay-Per-Click basis.
Liz added: Remarketing adverts are quite easy to set up and they can be really effective as they are targeted at people who have already shown an interest in what you have to offer.
Call to action
Whatever form of marketing approach you take it won’t be complete without a call to action or in other words something which communicates what you want the potential customer to do next. So, it might mean including your phone number and email address in your social media post, adding a buy now button to a product page or simply including an invitation to get in touch to find out more as part of your blog.
Customer experience or CX
This was a real buzz phrase for 2021. Everyone seemed to be talking about customer experience as if it was something new. In reality, it simply means taking stock of how the customer interacts with your business at every part of their journey with you, ensuring they have the kind of experience which will keep them coming back for more.
To find out more about how to make your Customer Experience top notch check out our recent blog.
On-Page SEO
If your small business has a website and in this day and age it’s pretty much a must have then you will almost certainly have come across the term on-page SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation.
Although it sounds techie, really it just means creating web pages that communicate to search engines such as Google, what your site is all about. Well-honed SEO will help you appear higher up in searches relating to your business, in turn increasing traffic to your website.
There are a number of other behind-the-scenes tasks such as alt text and HTML tags that contribute to your SEO. Check out our recent blog to find out more about these.
ROI
ROI, or Return on Investment, is an essential consideration for every marketing campaign you carry out. Put simply it means taking the time to look at sales figures and feedback and ask yourself was it worth it? Has it worked?
Liz added: For small businesses pushed for time this step can so easily get overlooked, but checking the stats to see if what you have done has actually brought in business is vital to success, and could save you money in the long run. So, if you have paid £50 on a Google Ad you want to be able to see that it has at the very least brought £50 of business back in.
If it wasn’t a success you need to work out why so you can take a different approach in the future.
Need help creating or delivering a marketing strategy for your small business?
Get in touch with Small Business Geek today.
