Maximising Your ROI: A Guide to Small Business Digital Marketing

As a small business owner in Australia, you know how important it is to stay competitive if you want to retain or grow your market share. One of the best ways to do this is by leveraging digital marketing strategies to reach your target audience and increase your return on investment (ROI).

If you are wondering if you should invest in Digital Marketing in Australia, consider what the AusPost eCommerce Report has to say:

‘More Aussies are shopping online, with four-in-five households (81%) buying something online at some point during the year.  Aussie shoppers spent an incredible $62.3 billion on online physical goods in 2021.   This represents a 19.3% share of total retail sales, with that figure continuing to grow steadily year-on-year.  Growth in spending on online physical goods was strong, at 23.4% YOY”

In this guide, we will provide a comprehensive overview of digital marketing in Australia for small businesses, including understanding your target audience, creating a digital marketing plan, website optimisation, search engine optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media marketing, email marketing, measuring and analysing your digital marketing efforts, and hiring a digital marketing agency.

Introduction to Digital Marketing for Small Businesses

Digital marketing is the promotion of products, services, or brands through electronic media channels. This includes search engines, social media, email, and mobile apps. Digital marketing is crucial for small businesses. It enables reaching a wider audience. It also levels the playing field, allowing them to compete with larger companies.

Small businesses in Australia can benefit from digital marketing in a variety of ways, such as increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, generating leads, and increasing sales. Digital marketing is also cost-effective compared to old-skool marketing methods such as print and television advertising.

Importance of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses in Australia

Small businesses in Australia face stiff competition from larger local and international competitors. Digital marketing can help level the playing field by allowing small businesses to reach a larger audience at similar cost per targeted customer. Digital marketing also provides small businesses with valuable data that can be used to optimise their marketing campaigns and improve their ROI they get from every marketing dollar invested.

In addition, digital marketing allows small businesses to target their ideal customers more effectively. By understanding your target audience, tweaking your audience scoping as you go, you can create finely targeted marketing campaigns that are more likely to resonate with your customers and lead to conversions, that then lead to sales.

Understanding Your Target Audience

Understanding your target audience is essential for creating a cost-effective digital marketing campaign. You need to know who your customers are, what they want, and where they spend their time online.

To understand your target audience, you can conduct market research, analyse the sources of your website traffic and social media analytics. We always recommend that your business or NGO create Avatars, not those kind of avatars ? create customer personas. Customer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers, including their demographics, interests, and pain points.

By understanding your target audience, you can create targeted messaging and content that resonates with your customers and drives conversions.

Your client Avatars are likely to change over time, as the people in that demographic change their behaviours, values and priorities.

Creating a Digital Marketing Plan

A digital marketing plan is a great way for small businesses to start organising their priorities when they are looking to maximise their ROI. Your digital marketing plan should include your goals, target audience, messaging, content strategy, and tactics.

Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). For example, your goal may be to increase website traffic by 50% in the next six months.

Your messaging and content strategy should be tailored to your target audience and focused on your unique selling proposition (USP). Your USP is what sets you apart from your competitors and is the reason why customers should choose your business when they could buy from any one of your competitors.

Your tactics should include a mix of channels such as SEO, PPC, social media marketing, and email marketing. While every business could achieve their marketing and promotional goals if they had an unlimited budget, how fast your plan can come together will often be shaped by what your budget is, budget for expenses and budget for time … sometimes you just have to do the work required to run your business.

When you are setting realistic goals, you may need to accept that you are only one person and may not have the time needed to do all of the marketing activities required to achieve your digital marketing goals.  You may need to delegate to other employees, contractors or a Digital Agency if you are pursuing rapid growth while dealing with the increased workload that comes from success.

Website Optimisation for Small Businesses

Website optimisation is the process of improving your website’s performance, user experience, and search engine rankings. Website optimisation includes elements such as website design, navigation, page speed, mobile responsiveness, and content.

Your website should be designed with your target audience in mind and should be easy to navigate. Your website should also be optimised for mobile devices as more and more users are accessing websites on their smartphones.

The most important thing for small business owners in Australia to know about websites is … speed, speed, speed!  According to Google, a one-second website speed improvement can increase conversions for mobile users by up to 27%. And with 70% of shoppers buying on mobile devices, site speed clearly has a huge impact on your revenue potential.  A one-second site speed improvement can increase mobile conversions by up to 27%.

Your website content should be high-quality, relevant, and optimised for search engines ranking on the keywords that your clients use when they search for goods and services that you sell. Parts of your website that should be keyword optimised include web site meta tags, and alt tags.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for Australian Small Businesses

SEO is the process of optimising your website and social media posts to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). SEO includes elements such as keyword research, on-page optimisation, off-page optimisation, and technical optimisation.

Keyword research involves identifying the keywords and phrases that your target audience is searching for. On-page optimisation includes optimising your website content for these keywords and phrases.

Off-page optimisation includes building backlinks to your website from other high-quality websites. Technical optimisation includes improving your website’s technical performance, such as page speed, site structure, and mobile responsiveness.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising for Small Businesses

PPC advertising is a form of digital advertising where advertisers pay each time a user clicks on their ad. PPC advertising can be an effective way to drive targeted traffic to your website and generate leads.

PPC advertising platforms such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads allow you to target your ideal customers based on factors such as demographics, interests, and search history. You can also set a budget and bid on keywords to ensure that you are getting the most out of your advertising spend.

PPC Advertising is one way that small businesses can level the playing field with larger businesses, if you can fine tune your audience, you can achieve higher conversion rates than the larger organisations that need to cast a wide advertising net.

Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses

Social media marketing involves using social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to promote your business and engage with your target audience. Social media marketing can be an effective way to increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, and generate leads.

To succeed in social media marketing, understand your target audience and create tailored content for them. Avoid sharing content on platforms where your clients aren’t active to prevent wasting resources and achieving low ROI. Instead, conduct thorough audience research and choose suitable social media platforms strategically. This approach optimizes efforts, boosts engagement, and delivers a higher ROI for your social media marketing campaigns.

By conducting thorough audience research and strategically selecting the appropriate social media platforms, you can optimize your efforts, maximize engagement, and attain a higher ROI for your social media marketing endeavors. You can get an idea of how many of your clients and customers are on a social platform by monitoring how easy it is to connect with existing customers and how often you can engage with your followers.  It is important to be quick and professional when you respond to prospective and existing customers comments and messages.

Email Marketing for Small Businesses

Email marketing involves using email to promote your business and engage with your target audience. Email marketing may seem a little old-skool but Hubspot calculate the email marketing ROI (as at the end of 2022) as

email marketing ROI is an impressive $36 for every $1 spent.

Email marketing can prove highly effective in nurturing leads and driving conversions for small businesses, freelancers, and NGOs. By implementing strategic email campaigns, businesses can establish meaningful connections with their target audience. Moreover, this marketing approach allows for personalized communication and the opportunity to provide valuable content directly to subscribers’ inboxes. As a result, email marketing serves as a valuable tool for cultivating relationships, promoting offerings, and ultimately achieving desired conversions.

To achieve success in email marketing, it is crucial to follow a few key steps. Firstly, you must focus on building a high-quality email list, ensuring that your recipients have willingly subscribed. Next, it’s essential to avoid spamming your audience, as it can harm your reputation and engagement. Additionally, create targeted and relevant email campaigns that resonate with your subscribers’ interests. Tailoring your campaigns to your specific target audience increases the likelihood of engagement and conversions. Lastly, always include a clear call-to-action (CTA) in your emails, prompting recipients to take the desired action, whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for an event, or subscribing to a service.

Measuring and Analysing Your Digital Marketing Efforts

As evident from all the information provided above, successful digital marketing requires both time and consistent effort. It is essential to monitor and measure the results to ensure a return on investment (ROI) from your marketing efforts. Measuring and analysing your digital marketing efforts is essential for small business to maximise their ROI. The small business competitive advantage often lies in truly understanding your target audience and directing your resources exclusively towards them. In this regard, it is crucial to track metrics such as website traffic, leads, conversions, and revenue.

You can use tools such as Google Analytics and Facebook Insights to track these metrics and gain insights into your digital marketing performance. You can then use these insights to optimise your marketing campaigns and improve your ROI.

Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency for Small Businesses

Hiring a digital marketing agency or consultant can be a good option for small businesses looking to maximise their ROI. A digital marketing agency can provide expertise and resources that may be lacking in-house. You can get access to a highly skilled person for just a fraction of the time you would need to pay someone who you employed full time.  In addition, Digital Marketing Agencies often have packages that allow small business to get started with a commitment to just one part of their Digital Marketing strategy.

It is often the case that small business and NGOs do not have the time to dedicate to consistently building brand focused content and regularly posting it, many small businesses start their relationship with a Digital Agency when they engage them for social media content building and posting. Building brand-focused content and posting it takes a considerable amount of time. Moreover, if you rush the process or use low-quality images and videos, it can actually have a detrimental effect on your brand. In fact, it can be more damaging than not having any content posted at all. Therefore, it is crucial to prioritize quality and ensure that your content reflects the image you want to convey.

When hiring a digital marketing agency, it is advisable for small businesses to start small. By doing so, they can gradually build a trust-based relationship with the agency. This approach allows for a history of consistent delivery, leading to a stronger partnership over time. Over time, digital agencies will accumulate a knowledge base on what works best with your target audience. They will then fine-tune and tweak their work to precisely target your desired audience.

Conclusion

Engaging in digital marketing is vital for most Australian small businesses. Moreover, if your competitors are going online, you should begin establishing your online presence to maintain competitiveness. To gain an advantage over larger organizations, small businesses and NGOs need to comprehend their target audience. Clearly define your target audience and develop a digital marketing plan accordingly.

Your Digital Marketing Plan should, over time, leverage strategies such as SEO, PPC, social media marketing, and email marketing. As you fine tune your campaigns, you can increase your ROI and grow your business. Remember to measure and analyse your digital marketing efforts and consider hiring a digital marketing agency for the time-consuming elements as they can help you achieve your goals in a sustainable way.

If you are ready to grow your business in a sustainable way using digital marketing, please check out #thePOSITIVE Digital Business Agency Packages in our STORE or book a free consultation to gain clarity on if #thePOSITIVE Digital Business Agency is the right Agency to help you grow your business online.  #BeOnline

y not book your free initial consultation with our Founder, Kimmaree Thompson to gain clarity on if working with #thePOSITIVE Digital Business and Digital Marketing Agency could help sustainably grow your business or NGO.

| First Published 19 April 2023