While it’s true that every business and every project has specific needs that shape its goals, a good digital marketing plan for SMEs needs solid strategies that help increase traffic and respond to users’ search intent. In this article we’ll walk you through some of the most important digital marketing strategies for SMEs in 2021.
1. SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a strategy based on improving your website’s organic ranking. In other words, it optimises your website so it can appear at the top of search engines like Google and give your project more visibility.
You need to understand that anything that makes search engines’ job easier will go a long way towards giving your project or SME more visibility and potential customers. Something else to bear in mind, and too often forgotten, is a local SEO strategy so your company ranks for its location.
However, although SEO has always focused on optimising websites through certain techniques, such as using keywords (the search terms users type in), today the process is more complex. You need to consider all users’ search trends and the changes and updates search engines introduce. These factors push us to improve the quality of the content on every web page, every day.
The whole process depends on knowing your buyer persona or target audience properly: knowing what they need and how, and creating content that responds to their search intent. Remember you’re writing for people, not robots.
2. Content marketing
With the huge amount of information at users’ fingertips, it’s getting harder every day to stand out from the competition, so it’s vital to have an SEO strategy that drives traffic to content worth consuming and that acts as the cornerstone for all the other strategies you need to put in place.
One of the most important aspects when creating content is its value. A good way to find out if your content is high quality is to ask yourself a few questions:
- Who does this content benefit?
- Does it respond to search intent?
- Is this the best format?
- Which network does my target audience mainly use?
With these points firmly in mind when creating content, you also need to think about format (image, video, text or even audio). In 2021, your business or SME shouldn’t stop at its website: you need to work on your blog, social media, emails and more. You need to ‘weave’ a whole network across different areas to make sure you have a strong digital presence.
3. CRO: conversion rate optimisation
CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) is the process of analysing and continuously improving the percentage of users who take the actions we want on a given website. Although it’s usually associated with users who make a purchase, that’s not always the case. A conversion can also be a sign-up on a website, a blog subscription or simply downloading a document.
To achieve a good conversion rate on a website, you need to look after the content, the design and the usability, which Google is giving more and more weight to. Professionals who use CRO aim to keep improving a website’s ability to meet its goals.
4. CRM: customer relationship management
A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a tool that gives you a central database of all the interactions between customers and a company. By definition, a CRM lets you get to know a potential customer better by gathering information, so you can understand their needs and anticipate them by keeping a detailed history.
CRM solutions let SMEs manage customer acquisition and loyalty campaigns more easily, keeping track of every action aimed at potential customers and generating a whole set of sales actions. SMEs and businesses that use a CRM create more sales opportunities and achieve better segmentation because they have more information about their users.
5. Online reputation
Whenever we talk about online reputation, we mean the standing or esteem of a brand or person online. However, despite what people tend to think, online reputation doesn’t depend entirely on the person or company, as any user with an online presence can help shape it with comments or opinions of any kind. Two complementary factors make up what we understand as online reputation:
- Internal factors: All the information the company or person shares about themselves and the actions that follow from it over a given period.
- External factors: The information other external users or visitors contribute.
Ready to work with a digital marketing agency? Find out how Conecta Digital can improve your digital presence and help your business. Get in touch with us and we’ll advise you.
