Digital marketing hacks
The digital marketing landscape is rapidly evolving every day. Many businesses are now willing to spending fortunes just to stay competitive.
But the beauty of marketing is that success is not always determined by a company’s spending capability. It lies in the strategies applied.
This article will hopefully shed light on some creative digital marketing hacks to grow your small business even if you have a limited budget. Before jumping right in, take some time to work on your buyer persona – in case you haven’t already done so.
A buyer persona is a detailed description of your target customers. When you have a clear understanding of who they are, then you can shape your marketing approach in a way that resonates with them. This article will go over some effective hacks you can add to your digital marketing efforts.
14 Digital marketing tips and tricks
1. Actively collect ratings and reviews
The majority of consumers do substantial research before buying anything. They are keen to know what other people are saying about products they’re interested in because it helps them make accurate purchase decisions. Studies show that reviews are up to 12 times more trusted than a business’ self-promotional marketing messages.
There’s no better way to stand out than by having an abundance of positive ratings and reviews. A YouTuber did an experiment to see whether he could convert his house into a fake 5-star restaurant within 24 hours. He created a Google business page and then went out on the streets to ask strangers to write reviews.
Within a short while he managed to collect hundreds of reviews and his “restaurant” was suddenly number one on Google. His phone wouldn’t stop ringing with people trying to make reservations. That’s the power of reviews.
2. Give out free things
You can offer freebies to lure people to try your products or services. Such freebies could include gift vouchers, free trials, branded t-shirts, mugs, etc. This is a great digital marketing strategy for generating leads.
Uber offers free rides to new customers to help eliminate any hesitancy they might have in trying out the app. And since the majority of its first-time riders end up becoming repeat customers, the cost of the free ride gets recouped later down the line.
3. Start a referral program
Starting a referral program is an effective way of growing a business by leveraging other people’s social networks.
You can start a program whereby anyone who refers a customer to you gets paid a small commission from the sale. The more attractive your commission rates, the more people are likely to sign up and aggressively promote your products.
Referral programs have many other benefits besides helping drive sales. They can help businesses gain more credibility and social proof than through any other digital marketing strategy. Consumers generally trust the recommendations of their friends and family more than a business’ self-promotional messages.
Can you imagine having an army of affiliates who are putting in the work for you and spreading your word?
Another advantage of referral marketing campaigns is that they have very minimal costs and risks. You only pay affiliates a commission from the sales they are actually responsible for.
4. Cross-promotion
Cross-promotion involves partnering with other businesses that you’re not in direct competition with and then promoting each other through your established channels.
For example, if you have a digital marketing agency, you can look to partner with web developers. They’re not your competitors, but are likely to have clients who need digital marketing services. Likewise, you are also likely to have clients who need web development services. You can cross-promote each other on your socials, email, blog posts, and any other channels that you’re already using.
Just like with referral marketing, cross-promotion has minimal risks and costs. Your business will also benefit by gaining social proof from the endorsement of other established businesses.
5. FOMO marketing
FOMO, or “fear of missing out”, is the anxiety people feel whenever they think that they’re missing out on something great.
FOMO marketing entails deliberately inducing that feeling in consumers to make them drop their guard and become easier to influence into making impulsive purchases. It’s a very powerful way of driving action.
The underlying principle is simple: create an exclusive offer that has a fixed expiry date, or is only available to a set number of people, and then aggressively promote it through all your channels. For example, you can do a sales promo where only the first 100 people to buy your products get a gift hamper.
If you have a restaurant or a bar you can have a happy hour where cocktails can be purchased at a 50% discount. If you’re selling tickets to an event you can offer a free drink to the first X number of people to buy tickets. You can be creative with how you structure your deals while maintaining the FOMO principle.
6. Target decision-makers on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is one of the best platforms to find B2B leads, potential partners, investors, or even employees. The majority of its userbase consists of business decision-makers with 2 times the purchase capacity of the average internet user.
There are several ways to find clients on LinkedIn. For instance, you can do a specific search for the people you’re targeting – your buyer persona, and then do a cold approach. LinkedIn allows you to search for users based on their location, job titles, and even companies they work for.
For instance, if you’re targeting the HR director of “XYZ Corp.”, you can simply search for “HR director” and then filter the results by companies, and add “XYZ Corp.”.
If you’re a consultant targeting marketing managers based in London, search for “marketing manager” and then filter the results by location, and add “London”. In seconds you’ll have a list with dozens of potential leads. This article goes into more detail about how to do a cold approach on LinkedIn.
7. Social media contests
Doing Social media contests is a great digital marketing hack for building social proof and getting people to actively engage with your brand. You can run your contests on any social media platform of your choosing. The format is simple: anybody who shares your posts or uses your hashtags automatically enters the draw to win a prize.
The more attractive your prizes are, the more people are likely to participate. The value of the publicity and social proof you’ll get from people wildly sharing your content will be worth much more than the cost of the prizes. 71% of people are likely to purchase products based on social media recommendations.
8. Get featured on popular publications
This is such an effective content marketing hack. Getting your business featured on authority publications is a great way to build credibility and firmly stand out from competitors.
Imagine if a potential customer were to Google your name and the first thing they came across was an article about you on Business Insider or Forbes. Wouldn’t that have such a huge impact on their impression of you?
You can get your business featured on authority publications through sponsored posts and reviews, by becoming a contributor, or by responding to interview questions on HARO.
HARO is a website that’s frequently used by journalists to obtain feedback from people in different industries. Whenever your quotes get published, your business will get a mention in the story and sometimes even a backlink to your website or landing page – which is great for SEO.
9. Host free webinars
Did you know that 20 – 40% of webinar attendees end up becoming leads? Hosting webinars should be a priority for every growing business that’s looking to dominate its niche. You can host them every month (or quarter) on topics that would be of interest to your targets.
For example, if you’re a marketing consultant, you can host a webinar on “3 simple Facebook hacks to double your sales in 6 months or less”. Such a topic is likely to attract business owners and marketing managers – your leads.
Make sure to start promoting the event weeks in advance and emphasize the fact that it is completely free. The goal is to get as many attendees as possible.
10. Build an online omnipresence
Having a strong online presence is a fundamental digital marketing hack. As mentioned earlier, the majority of consumers will do some research before buying anything. Make it a goal to have a presence on every platform where your target audience could potentially go search for your products or services.
If they do a Google search, your website should come up in the results. If they go to Facebook or LinkedIn, your pages should also come up. Even if they go to directories, marketplaces, or review sites, your business should still have a presence.
Consumers are often biased towards brands that they recognize. Having an online omnipresence is sure to put you on their radar.
11. SEO is King
SEO, or search engine optimization, is as important today as it was a decade ago. The only difference is that it has become a bit more challenging due to changes in search engine algorithms, that’s why many small businesses neglect it.
By investing in your SEO strategy now, you can eventually eliminate the need to endlessly spend money on ads since you’ll be getting organic traffic from the search engines. There’s nothing sweeter than free search traffic.
Google is often the starting point for many people’s purchase journey. Make it your SEO goal to rank your website in the first result page for all search queries and keywords that are related to your products.
For example, if you have a sports equipment store, you can focus on ranking for all relevant keywords, including:
- “Sports equipment stores near me”
- “Where to buy sports equipment”
- “Tennis racquets for sale”
- “Golf clubs for sale”
If you don’t have the time or expertise to do your own SEO, you can outsource the work to freelancers on Upwork.
12. Partner with influencers
According to Forbes, influencer marketing is one of the fastest-growing digital marketing strategies. It not only helps brands get their name out there, but also to build social proof.
You can use networks such as GRIN and Upfluence to find influencers who would be a great fit for your brand, or by doing a manual search on your preferred social platforms.
Most influencers will require monetary compensation to promote your business, however some smaller ones might be happy to do it in exchange for free gifts such as vouchers and samples of your products.
If you have a physical business that specifically targets people in a certain location, you’ll get the best ROI by working with influencers whose followers are also from that location. For example, if you have a restaurant then only work with local influencers from the same city as your restaurant. That way their recommendation can have a direct impact on your visits.
13. Focus on building an email list
An email list is a fundamental digital asset every business could do with. Unlike other marketing channels such as social media, it gives you unrestricted access to your target audience.
Whenever you publish your messages on your social pages, only a small fraction of your total followers get to see them. For example, the organic reach for Facebook posts is just around 5.2%. So if you have a page with 1,000 followers, only 52 people actually see your posts. Social media companies want you to spend money on ads and that’s why they put a cap on your reach.
When you send an email blast to your list, you can be sure that it will be delivered to most of the contacts. The average open rate for email campaigns is 21.3%. If you have a list with 1,000 contacts, over 200 people will get to see your message, as opposed to the 52 on Facebook.
You can start building a list by adding an opt-in form on your website and then offering a free lead magnet such as an e-book or a discount coupon to get people to sign up.
14. Reach out to users of a competing product
A common challenge many small businesses face is convincing people to buy their products when they don’t yet have a recognizable name. Consumers generally buy only from brands that they’re familiar with.
You can overcome such a challenge by “stealing” your competitor’s unhappy customers. Just browse through their reviews on social media and on sites like Yelp. Whenever you come across a negative comment, reach out to the person who wrote it to introduce your product as a better solution.
Although it’s not a very scalable strategy, it can help get the ball rolling for a business that recently launched and is looking to acquire its first set of customers.
