Digital marketing for small and medium-size companies is like speed dating. You need to stand out in a crowded field and make a captivating first impression almost immediately.
As marketing educator Shana Bull points out, “You aren’t just competing with other businesses in your industry on social media. You are competing with the news cycle, TV show theories, celebrity gossip, your friends’ and family’s pictures of their kids, and, of course, adorable cat videos. This is where algorithms come in.”
She explains that algorithms work like filters to deliver relevant, engaging content to the right viewer. “If your content isn’t optimized for algorithms,” she cautions, “then you could be missing out on connecting with your target audience.”
Digital marketing specialist Shaded Ali agrees. “An effective digital marketing strategy will help a small business to identify its target market, and then determine the best way to reach them,“ he says. “A well-executed digital marketing plan can level the playing field and help small businesses to compete with larger companies.”
As you develop your marketing strategy, keep in mind that website and social media visitors, just like all of us when meeting new people, tend to make snap judgments. And in this heavily digitized decade, however long you think you have to grab their attention, you’re probably overestimating.
In a 2015 survey, Microsoft found that since the turn of the century, the human attention span had dropped from 12 seconds to a mere 8. (Goldfish, which spend much less time on their computers and cellphones than we do, can maintain their focus for 9 seconds.)
These days, some marketing experts estimate that e-commerce website content and social media posts have only 3 to 7 seconds to grab a potential customer’s attention. When calculating the engagement rate for a website, Google Analytics doesn’t count any visit lasting less than 10 seconds unless it prompts the visitor to take action or at least view another page.
Algorithms rule what people see, when, and how often. So, to make sure your marketing content reaches the right people through your website and social media, you need to understand how algorithms work and how to use them to your best advantage.
Researcher and content specialist Graham Charlton has written several best practice guides on e-commerce and digital marketing. He says algorithms can help you with marketing in several ways:
- Gaining a better understanding of your target customer
- Learning from website visitors’ behavior and on-site data
- Predicting customers’ preferences with recommendation engines, which show visitors relevant products at the right time
- Predicting customers’ intent based on their previous browsing patterns and add-to-cart behavior
When posting on social media, it’s important to show new content to the algorithm on a regular basis. Customers react badly to exclusively hard-sell tactics, so a mix of business and personal content works best.
The Sprout Social Index revealed what consumers don’t see enough on companies’ social media:
- Authentic, non-promotional content
- Transparency about business practices and values
- Information about how products are made or sourced
- Educational content related to the brand’s industry
- User-generated content or customer testimonials
In your weekly mix, along with promoting your products or services, include some informative and entertaining content, industry news, and glimpses into your life on the job and off. Show what goes on behind the scenes in your business. Introduce your team, host an event, run a contest. Showcase your company’s involvement with the charities, schools, sports teams, or movers and shakers where you live. Give your company a distinctive voice and tell its story. Include some of your customers’ reviews and provide space for their comments, questions, and concerns.
At the end of the day, all the different platforms want to keep visitors on their platform as long as possible. The more posts they interact with by liking or commenting on them, the more similar content the algorithms will show them. In a similar fashion, when it comes to digital marketing, your goal should be to create content that your audience will value consistently so the right content reaches them in the best way.
Knowledge is power. Learn about monitoring tools and techniques you can use to evaluate your social media efforts and brainstorm ways to get even better results in the future.
Remember: It’s all about engagement. You’re out to build a community of customers who know you, like you, and trust you.
If you need help with your marketing, book a FREE CALL with us and let’s discuss it together. We can provide the help you need to embrace your marketing strategy.
