Chatbots. A/B split tests. Complicated marketing funnels. Forget them all.
If you’re running a small business, none of these things should be your focus.
The digital marketing strategies that deserve your attention are the unsexy ones.
This post will cover seven of those strategies and how to make them work for you based on experience rather than just theory.
1. Blogging with SEO in mind
Blogging isn’t writing what you did today. That’s a diary.
If you take that approach to blogging, and you don’t already have an existing and loyal audience that hangs on your every word, then your business blog is going to be a ghost town.
How do you fix this?
Write about the problems your target customers are actually searching for.
This concept works in almost every industry.
For example, if you’re a realtor, then instead of blogging about the latest industry award that nobody cares about, write about real-world problems potential customers are searching for like:
- How to invest in real estate
- How to buy a house
- What credit score is needed to buy a house
If we plug those keywords into Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, we see that there are thousands of searches for each of them every single month.
All of these topics have the potential to attract a vast audience:
Not just any audience, either: these are people in the market for what you offer, who likely have deep pockets and a burning desire to own their own home.
If you can do this and rank, you’ll get free, consistent, and passive traffic from Google month after month.
2. Video marketing on YouTube
YouTube is the world’s 3rd biggest search engine, and it’s yet another place where people are searching for solutions to their problems.
To find relevant topics that people are searching for on YouTube, go to Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, switch the search engine to YouTube, and search for a broad keyword in your industry.
If you sell iPhone cases, then this would be something like “iPhone” or “iPhone X”:
From here, check the “Questions” report to see what questions people are asking about this topic. Right away, you’ll see some great topic ideas like “how to unlock iPhone 6” and “how to replace iPhone 6 screen”:
The latter is a particularly good keyword to target as an iPhone case seller because viewers will likely want to take more care of their phone once fixed—in which case, they may want to buy a case.
For best results with this strategy, make your videos are genuinely helpful and valuable, keep the fluff to a minimum and refrain from being overly promotional.
3. Social media marketing
Most businesses’ social media marketing strategy can be summed up in one sentence:
“Posting boring updates and promotions to followers across every channel.”
If that’s what you’re doing, stop now. That’s not a social media marketing strategy; it’s merely a way to waste time and alienate your followers.
So what should you be doing?
Focus on one social network
Building a following takes time and effort. If you spread yourself too thin, then it’s not going to work out.
For that reason, it’s better to focus on just one social network, at least initially.
But which one should you choose?
Contrary to popular belief, it’s not necessarily the one with the most users. It’s about finding the network where your target audience hangs out and understanding whether you can serve their reason for being there.
For example, most SEO professionals hang out on Twitter or Facebook. Few of them are on Snapchat or Instagram—at least not in a professional capacity.
However, if you’re a food blogger, Pinterest would likely be a better option.
But what about that second part of the equation?
Cater to the platform
Regardless of the platform you choose, you need to make an effort to understand why your audience is there and how you can serve them.
For example, people tend to go to YouTube for entertainment or to learn something.
Facebook, on the other hand, is different. People don’t want to see 30-minute tutorials or promotions popping up in their newsfeed. They want to see interesting, funny, or shocking content which they can share with friends.
To get peoples’ attention here, you need to tell a story, create a short video, or do something else that’ll stand out in an endless sea of promotions and vanity shots.
On Twitter, it’s more about communicating quickly, efficiently, and not overwhelming people.
4. Podcasting
There are two ways to market your business with podcasts:
- Create your own podcast
- Get interviewed on someone else’s podcast
Creating a podcast is great for brand and audience building, but it can take a while to build traction. Also, most of us don’t have the equipment or industry connections to create a popular podcast.
Getting interviewed on podcasts is a different story.
Podcasters are always on the lookout for interesting people to interview. You don’t have to be a celebrity for this. As long as you have some industry experience (online or offline) and are willing to share some serious value, you’ve got what it takes.
You can do this even for niche products or services:
But how do you find podcasters that might want to interview you?
Look through your favorite podcasts for interviews of others in your industry.
5. Email marketing
Each time you publish a new blog post, send out a newsletter.
But if you haven’t yet pulled the trigger when it comes to email marketing, the best time to start is right now.
How? The first step is to generate traffic to your site.
There are plenty of ways to do that, but blogging with SEO in mind (see #1) is the best long-term strategy.
The next step is to convince those people to sign up to your newsletter.
There are lots of tips and tricks for doing this: Lead magnets, content upgrades, etc.
But the thing that unites all of these tactics is providing something of value. It might be a PDF version of the post (content upgrade), a free 7‑day email course (lead magnet), or something else.
At Ahrefs, it’s a simple slide-in that triggers at the end of a post…
… and a subscribe box at the bottom of each page:
This works well, but you may want to be a little more aggressive with your opt-ins if building your list is a priority.
Just remember that list building is not something with a beginning and an end. It’s an ongoing process, so don’t put off emailing your list because you’re scared it’s not big enough.
Make an effort to keep subscribers engaged and send them valuable information—even if you don’t have many.
Do that consistently over time, and you’ll have an engaged, responsive list of people that actually enjoy hearing from you.
6. Forums and community boards
Communities and forums like Reddit, Quora, and Facebook pages can be great marketing channels.
Just remember a few critical rules:
- Never try to promote products and services directly. People often browse these platforms for entertainment or education. If you can’t do either of those things, don’t bother.
- Link to your content sparingly, and only where appropriate. Most of the links on these platforms are nofollowed, meaning they have no SEO value. For that reason, there’s no need to spam—link to your content where it has value and supports a point.
Think of these networks as a place to share expertise, experiences, build relationships, and help others.
7. Paid ads
Most small businesses never even consider paid ads because they aren’t “free.”
But remember, nothing is truly free because everything takes time. And time is money.
For that reason, there’s no need to shy away from paid advertising. What you do want to avoid, however, is throwing money blindly into an ad network because somebody somewhere said it was good.
Remember, what works for one person may not work for the next.
So before you start pumping money into paid ads, consider the ABCs of paid advertising success:
- A is for Audience,
- B is for Budget,
- C is for Commerciality.
Let’s start at the top.
Audience
Say that you’re selling men’s caffeine shampoo, would you advertise on Pinterest?
Probably not. 81% of Pinterest users are female, and it’s a platform used primarily by the younger generation.
So the first step is to figure out which platform your target audience uses.
Advertising anywhere else will be money down the drain.
Budget
Most PPC ads work on an auction basis, meaning that the more advertisers there are, the more expensive it gets for you and me.
Say you’re in the competitive industry of conference calls. If you search for that keyword in Ahrefs Keywords Explorer with Google set as the search engine, the cost per click (CPC) is $20 in the US.
CPC estimate for “conference call” via Ahrefs Keywords Explorer.
If you have a paid advertising budget of $1,000 per month, then you’d only be able to get 50 clicks before your budget is depleted.
How can you solve this? Look for keywords with a lower cost per click.
To do this, enter a seed keyword (e.g., conference call) in Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, then go to the “Phrase match” report to see all keywords from our database containing that keyword.
From there, filter for the maximum CPC you’re willing to spend, and look down the list for lucrative opportunities.
Some good ones here might be “video conference call app” and “conference call app.”
Not only are these cheaper keywords, but they also have clearer search intent. Someone searching for “conference call app” is obviously looking for an app that does conference calls, whereas someone searching for “conference call” could be looking for many different things.
But don’t forget, PPC is bigger than just Google. You can also advertise on other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.—which are often cheaper.
Just make sure your target audience actually hangs out there.
Commerciality
If you’re bidding on a keyword like “conference call app” in Google, then it may make perfect sense to send visitors to an informative landing page.
But that won’t work on platforms like Facebook or Pinterest.
Nobody there is in buying mode.
So you need to bridge the gap between the intent of the platform and how you monetize your products. And the way you do that is with content.
Say that you sell furniture and want to advertise on Pinterest. You wouldn’t want to send people to sales pages for tables and chairs because people on Pinterest aren’t looking for that. They’re looking for inspiration.
So it would make more sense to send them to a relevant blog post like “11 Interior Design Tips For Your Living Room That Won’t Break the Bank.”
You can then show relevant products naturally throughout the content, much like IKEA does.
IKEA linking to the product from the image in their list of 6 easy deco tips for the holiday.
Conclusion
The key to digital marketing success in today’s climate is to adopt the mindset of the consumer.
In other words, stop giving people the hard sell, and instead aim to solve their problems through free and valuable content that is relevant to your business.
It’s also important not to try the strategies above all at once.
Pick one of them, then experiment with and master it before moving on to the next.
7 Digital Marketing Strategies That Actually Work
PS. Podcasting is bigger than you think. And not as saturated as the other channels. Look into it for good results, while it lasts.
