If you are a small business and want to scale fast, this post is just for you
First things first, do you have a marketing strategy? If No, then it’s time to create one.
Many small businesses need to understand the basics of online marketing. If you’re starting with your business, you should know that the opportunities in this space are tremendous.
For instance, in Kenya, the high internet penetration rate of 40.8 percent gives businesses and marketers the upper hand in thriving online, as many consumers and prospects are reached online through email, social media platforms, and phones.
All you need is creativity and applying the right strategy!
Thus, this post provides two digital marketing strategies that, if delivered the right way, your business will gradually gain visibility and attract more loyal customers depending on your overall marketing strategy.
Remember! You can have a lot of strategies, but applying one will give good returns.
Email Marketing:
According to the Kenya Bureau of Standards, email usage remains the most common activity carried out by a business to communicate with clients in Kenya; this fact remains true as it is only via email one can connect personally and professionally.
So, what’s email marketing? Email marketing is sending commercial and non-commercial emails to a group of people.
Email marketing remains the best way to talk to your immediate prospects about your services and products, and remember, with email marketing, you are at liberty to personalize your message to suit your target audience, depending on what you want to communicate and to whom.
Below are the steps one can apply when starting out with email marketing.
- Decide on What you want to achieve. Depending on your overall business objectives, you should be able to develop a clear email marketing goal that ties to your business overall goal. By doing this, measuring the outcome of all the activities you are carrying out via email will be fruitful
- Who are you trying to target? Having a specific group of people to whom you want to channel your communication will save you time when it comes to planning and execution of email marketing.
- Build your Email List. Not only should you collect your email list, but it is also essential to make sure that part of your list is your already existing customers, prospects, and close friends who will help you amplify your business idea further.
- Deciding on best email marketing platforms. Use your search engine to search for the best email marketing platforms for beginners, and then you can go for what suits you the best. Nevertheless, we have good platforms like Constant Contact, Mailchimp, to start with e.t.c.
So, what is stopping you from integrating email marketing into your overall marketing strategy? Start building relevant emails from customers and partners and personalize your communication to connect and drive sales for your startup business.
:Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a form of marketing that involves sharing targeted content on different platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Instagram, and Snapchat, i.e.
With evidence, social media marketing has proven to enhance brand visibility and proper positioning.
In recent times, SMM has taken over the traditional way of marketing, and marketers are now more dependent on SMM to drive sales and visibility.
For example, Safaricom, a Kenyan company, has built solid online visibility over the years by being fast in customer support on Twitter. This has built consistency and trust among its consumers.
As a startup, SMM is vital and will give you a long-term benefit for your business and the products or services you are trying to put out there.
Here are a few steps you can employ when starting Social media marketing for your business.
- Setting goals is one thing, but identifying and implementing specific goals for your business is everything. It is always good to identify social media goals that align with your overall business goals, meaning whatever you do online should reflect your business growth.
- Choose the best platform(s) for your audience. Not all platforms will work with your business so choose correctly.
- Create and schedule relevant content. Of course, you are just starting, so most probably, you don’t have enough revenue to hire a specific person to be in charge of your social media channels, but all is not lost; sacrificing 2 hours a week to create content about your business and schedule them online would help.
- Engage with your audience. Engaging with your audience should be easy. You can do it anywhere and anytime, and this would be through replying to comments and responding to message prompts. Part of the content that you would be creating should also be content that would amplify engagements, like questions and quizzes.
- Track the right metrics. Benchmark, analyze and measure your business’s growth through tracking specific vital results areas.
Lastly, I will always advise you to learn, adapt, grow, and do it repeatedly through strategy.
Apart from email marketing and social media marketing, other digital marketing strategies that can be applied by small businesses in Kenya are search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, content marketing, influencer marketing, and mobile marketing.
Each of these strategies has unique benefits and can be used to reach different target audiences and achieve specific business goals.
