How to Set Your Small Business Up For Online Success

In the digital era, it has become essential for all businesses, big or small, to establish an active presence online. It’s true that this is much easier to achieve for large corporations with greater financial resources, more expertise and more personnel at their disposal, but this doesn’t mean small businesses have to lay down their arms and accept a fate of not succeeding in the online space. There are scores of tools available for small businesses to employ that help them save time and money, and don’t even require expertise.

Small business success tips

But is the unlimited choice of tools really a good thing or does it leave a small business owner even more confused about what’s right for their business? Hit or trial method with these tools is out of the question – you can’t take repeated risks with your business. Nothing to worry about though – we’ve got you covered! We’re going to recommend to you the best tool that can make your life easier and still remain easy on your budget.

Of course, to be able to choose the right tools, you first need to establish what you want to achieve with your online marketing efforts and what methods you want to employ to achieve it. In this article, we will discuss strategies for small businesses to leave their mark in the online space.

Digital Marketing Content Strategy for Success

1. Create Stunning Social Media Content

When it comes to social media marketing, your ability to deliver the right content to the right audience is your KPI. You need to be very regularly active on all your social media profiles to ensure you don’t miss any opportunity to sell your brand to your audience.That is not an easy task because social media posts should ideally be accompanied by eye-catching graphics and creating visual content is resource-consuming – you usually need a lot of time, money and some expertise to create professional-looking designs. We say usually because we actually have a solution to this problem: PosterMyWall, an online graphic design tool that is quick, easy and affordable! PosterMyWall offers thousands of stunning designs in all social media sizes so all you have to do is pick a template, customize it to your need in the easy-to-use editor and start sharing – no design expertise needed!

Social media design templates

Now that you have created amazing content you can be proud of, you should ensure that it reaches its maximum potential. This means the maximum number of people should see it, ideally more than once, so they can understand and engage with the message and have a higher chance of retaining it. This doesn’t mean reposting the same content again on the same platform (although that’s not against the rules if a piece of content is performing well), it means posting the same content on all your social media and other relevant platforms you can think of.

The issue with this is that you have to create the same image in different social media sizes which can be a hassle. But not with PosterMyWall! You can easily resize designs you have created on PosterMyWall with one single click. Use the free Resize feature to convert your design to any of 60+ different sizes – or make a custom design!

Resize design for free

Your marketing materials should best-fit the platforms you’re going to publish on for maximum impact and PosterMyWall makes customizing graphics for any platform a breeze! Not only that, but you can also schedule and auto-publish your content. All of those strategies and features are aimed at helping you get out as much content as possible for your target audience, so you can keep them engaged without breaking your bank.

2. Engage Your Audience

An engaged audience is your brand evangelist. Therefore, you need to make it a priority in your digital marketing campaign to churn out content that generates interest in your audience and compels them to make the added effort to interact with your brand. Fortunately for you, there are many ways to pique their interest. One easy method is to create opinion polls or simply ask questions that are likely to encourage your audience to engage not only with you but also with each other. You can also create opinion posts like ‘This or That’ posts on Instagram and Facebook stories. You can find templates for such posts easily on PosterMyWall. Make sure to add your brand username and logo to your imagery so that the more the images are shared, the more exposure your brand gets.

Opinion post templates

If you think you can afford to put in more effort, the right hashtag campaign can do wonders for your brand awareness because it encourages people to use your hashtag in their posts which means automatic exposure for your business. Take the example of Coca Cola’s #ShareACoke campaign. Millions of people all over the world shared images of their Coke bottles on social media with the hashtag #ShareACoke to share their experience with their friends and followers. Every hashtag came with a mention of Coke and created a lot of hype for the brand.

ShareACoke campaign

You must formulate a well-thought-out plan for the campaign and stick to it. Tools like PosterMyWall can support your endeavor by not only helping you create the right imagery for promoting your campaign but also helping you share this content extensively. The Premium subscriptions offer scheduling features that can help you ensure that all your posts go out on time on your chosen platforms and you remain consistently active on your social media, regardless of what time zones you are catering to.

3. Add Video

In a world where content is king, video reigns supreme. Video is consumers’ favorite type of content. According to HubSpot, 54% of consumers want to see more video content from a brand or business they support. Consider the success of YouTube and consider your own content consumption. Would you rather watch a video or read an article? While some people would prefer to read, statistics show that many more would rather watch a video. Since you’ll want to create a content strategy that integrates various kinds of content to reach your audience better, the video should be included. Videos can work in areas where static content often fails, offering a dynamic and eye-catching allure.

Video creation can be an expensive and time-consuming process, which is one reason most marketers stay away from it. But given the compelling evidence of the effectiveness of video, it is worth trying out – with lower costs and less time consumption of course. PosterMyWall offers thousands of video templates designed to help you easily create video content in a matter of minutes without the hassle of hiring professionals and going through many iterations.

Just choose from the professionally designed video templates, and customize them according to your needs. You can even convert an image design to video with a single click by simply replacing the image with a relevant video from the stock video library in the editor. You can then purchase your design a-la-carte, or sign up for the Premium subscription that lets you download videos for 3 credits each or the Premium Plus subscription that gives unlimited video downloads.

4. Consistent Branding

Consistent branding serves to strengthen your brand identity and reinforce your brand in the mind of your audience by carrying your company’s message across all channels and platforms. This is especially important online on social media and other platforms where lots of other brands are competing with you for maximum eyeballs on their respective pages and posts.

Consistent branding means consistently using your brand color schemes, logo, brand fonts and other design elements that help your target audience identify your brand so that your brand image is constantly reinforced in the audience’s minds and ensures top of the mind awareness for your brand. All your marketing graphics need to be consistently branded with your logos and color schemes regardless of the campaign, event, or activity being catered to.

Building brand identity

Tools like PosterMyWall let you achieve a consistent branding with considerable ease. You can customize all your designs exactly according to your needs – whether it is colors, fonts styles, text content, imagery; all of it is customizable. You can even upload your own custom fonts to the PosterMyWall editor with the highly affordable Premium subscriptions if you can’t find your brand’s fonts in the options. To add your logo to your designs, you simply have to upload the transparent image and position it however you want!.PosterMyWall allows you to create professionally designed and branded marketing materials that convey your overall brand image easily.

5. Consider the Future

It’s easy to get stuck in the mindset that marketing is just for today. In content marketing and digital marketing, however, you always want to have an eye on the future.

In setting up your small business for online success, you should carefully consider your marketing strategy and the goals you want to reach in the long-term, not just the short-term. For instance, building relationships with audiences is essential for long-term success. Not only should you focus on building relationships with your customers, but also work to build relationships with online influencers who can help make a lasting impact on the online success of your business.

You can reach out to influencers and offer to collaborate with them. They can share reviews of your product or service with their audience in exchange for some agreed upon benefit and promote your business with a branded hashtag to bring more traffic to your business.

Using gift certificates, vouchers, and discount coupons is another great way to start a customer loyalty program online and encourage new customers to give your business a try while encouraging your existing customers to remain loyal to your brand. You can create amazing gift certificates and vouchers with PosterMyWall’s range of templates.

Gift certificate templates

Takeaway

Digital and content marketing is imperative for small businesses wanting to be successful online. While this can all seem a bit overwhelming for a small business, the good news is that there are plenty of powerful tools out there designed to help small businesses succeed in the online space. With tools such as PosterMyWall, you get an all in one platform designed to help you create new content and publish it with ease. Setting up your small business for success online starts with getting the right plan and tools in place!