Digital marketing can be something seemingly out of reach for small businesses. Especially in Hawaii where reputation and word of mouth seem to reign king in our local economy. Only those with large corporate mainland budgets have the ability to constantly pump out content and get it in front of large audiences online.

SHORT TERM:

Social Media

These myths are all readily debunked thanks to the wonderful world of social media. Whether you keep an active presence on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or other well-known platforms, the important thing to remember is ‘being social’ is crucial to generating new business.

When you keep an active social media and continuously post content, you stay top of mind to your current and potential customers. With creativity and drive there is no limit to the amount of content you can push out to maintain your value with those people. Salons, post pictures of hair and nails that represent the quality of your work. Restaurants, make people salivate at your delectable dishes. Real Estate agents, entrance buyers with beautiful homes, the visual equivalent of fresh baked cookies at an open house.

Pay-Per-Click

Directly retargeting using pay per click advertising and boosted social media posts are also crucial. With this strategy potential and current customers, literally, cannot get away from you. A Google Ads account is the modern equivalent of having a constant ad in the local paper. You are getting in front of the best audience for your business, constantly. 

With boosted posts on social media, you can cater to an audience that is ready to buy. With the ever-evolving tools that websites like Facebook and Instagram have developed for small businesses, you have the ability to target an extremely specific group of people and set a budget that works best for you.

Short term strategies are instrumental when it comes to bringing in customers right now. Whether it is to your ecommerce site, brick and mortar, or business website. They quickly find those people ready to buy and market directly to them bringing them out from under any competition who may not have been maintaining that top of mind strategy.

LONG TERM:

SEO:

When it comes to long-term digital marketing sure to bring you the greatest ROI, Search Engine Optimization is king. This strategy, summed up as targeting specific keywords and working to promote your business’ website to be the top ranking for related search terms, is instrumental in bringing in organic traffic.

How many times do you find yourself on the second page of Google when looking for a specific product or service? Probably not often or never.

SEO, while not something that would drive in customers overnight, builds credibility and value. You quite literally become the top of mind business when anyone looks for your service. 

When Google sees you climbing up the ranks they will further you reward you with corresponding top placement on Google Maps rankings and pushing your good reviews.

Have A Killer Website:

While this may seem like a quick and painless process, so many companies offer pretty templates or user friendly building, they are not optimized for SEO and because of the bad backend code, search engines like Google tend to rank you lower.

Having a killer, lean, beautiful, and SEO optimized website will not only help you with other short and long term strategies, but be a digital asset that you can update and upgrade as you bring in more customers.

How many times have you questioned whether or not the quality is there or even if that company is still in business, when they have an outdated website?

The easiest way to separate one business’ value from another when it comes to customers is how easy their marketing, website, social media, and customer service is for them to access. Making sure you have a comprehensive social media strategy will allow you to stand out against both local competition and mainland corporate entities in any competitive, oversaturated market.