Small Scale Business: 7 Mistakes To Avoid With Digital Marketing

Imagine you could make the most out of digital marketing for your small-scale business!

If you never have to worry about avoiding mistakes in digital marketing as a tool to grow and promote your small-scale business.

How amazing that will be as a small-scale business owner?

You practice the right digital marketing skills avoiding all the mistakes, and then your small-scale business grows and everybody is happy!

But right now, it feels unachievable, right?

• You want to make the best use of digital marketing to grow your small-scale business.
• You don’t want your conversion rate to not convincing.

We understand that you already have or you plan to, and you are scared of the steps and actions that can make it a failure.

Just like a fellow who in a bid to avoid making mistakes ended up making the mistakes he was avoiding in the first place because he never got substantial details to guide him from not making the mistake.

To avoid making this mistake, we have well-detailed knowledge for you in this article.

Meanwhile, see what one of our students has to say after she implemented what she was taught in our 90% practical digital marketing course.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V419VQTCGNA[/embedyt]

As I stated earlier, let move a step further by getting the gist about digital marketing.

Digital Marketing is the promotion of businesses using digital channels. It also serves as a tool used to generate traffic and leads for businesses and small-scale businesses as well.

[bctt tweet=”Digital Marketing is the promotion of businesses using digital channels. It also serves as a tool used to generate traffic and leads for businesses and small-scale businesses as well.” username=”dmsinstitute”]

It is also a way through which you get to connect with your potential customers and interact with them and further convert them to patronize your small-scale business.

Another advantage of using digital marketing to grow a small-scale audience is that it widens your sphere of influence. Quite several people who come across your small-scale business in the digital marketplace don’t have previous knowledge of you.

With the help of digital marketing, they cannot only see you, they know you and can patronize you. This has made business transactions to be less stressful and time-consuming.

Digital marketing is cost-effective. As a small-scale business with little resources and capital, you don’t spend too much to get growth results.

It delivers conversion, in the forms of leads, subscribers, and sales and also makes provision for mobile customers.

You know, everyone from the comfort of their homes has access to the internet, scour and locate a particular business on the internet that is willing and capable of satisfying their need at the moment.

So, you see that digital marketing is a vital and necessary tool to grow and promote a small-scale business.

To get practical knowledge on how to grow your small scale business with digital marketing, register for our 90% practical digital marketing skills

Steps to grow a small-scale business with Digital Marketing

Still, on the topic of discussion, we will have a glimpse at some of the ways through which you can grow a small-scale business. You should check the list to be sure you’ve engaged with the strategies.

• Create a website for your small-scale business.
• Establish your presence on social media.
• Engage your audience.
• Optimize your small-scale business for search engine optimization.
• Have a mailing list for email marketing.
• Leverage networking.
• Content Marketing
• Get customer referrals.

Remember we said, it will be a glimpse but we decided to stretch the glimpsing to show you details of some of the ways.

Meanwhile, our 90% practical digital marketing course has a detailed process of how to grow a small-scale business with a digital market.

The first one is, create a website for your small-scale business. A website enhances the visibility of a small-scale business. It can also be used as a virtual store/shop where visitors can catch a glimpse of what you do(services) or what you sell(products).

Your website should be a visual representation of your small-scale business, as it would be the platform on which existing and potential clients and customers can see what you do.

You can read more about why you should have a website for your small-scale business here 7 reasons you need a small business website

The next one is to establish your presence on social media. Social media was created for interaction purposes and you should take advantage of that.

It serves as an avenue to engage with your existing customers and potential customers as well. You can establish a relationship with them through your social media accounts.

The third one is, engage your audience. When you engage your audience, you create a connection for them to be more open to receiving and accepting information and updates from your small-scale business.

It also helps them to get to know your business better. One of the ways you can do this is by sharing vital information and updates with them. Treat them like your family, although this time around they are your business family.

Your small-scale business shouldn’t be profit-oriented alone, it should also be people-centered.

The fourth step is, optimize your small-scale business website for search engine optimization. Search engine optimization has to do with creating content on your website to represent your small-scale business and to also improve the quality of traffic to your webpage from search engine users.

Google is a search engine, and people who use Google to search for solutions and answers to their questions can easily locate your small-scale business if it is fully optimized.

Search engines operate on four dimensions namely, tracking, indexing, calculating, relevance and ranking. To fully understand how search engine optimization works, you can read this article. On-page SEO: The anatomy of an optimized website

In our 90% practical digital marketing course, our students learn and get hands-on knowledge on search engine optimization for websites.

The fifth step is, have a mailing list for email marketing. Email marketing is another strategic step to take to grow your small-scale business. It serves as a medium of communication between your business and your customers/website visitors.

A section of your website should have a CTA(call-to-action) button/feature that allows visitors on your website to join your mailing list with their email addresses. This is how to get started with a mailing list.

You might want to ask, what of the customers/visitors you get offline? Perfect! Ask for their email address when you connect with them.

The world is getting technologically advanced and your small-scale business should not be left out in the advancement process.

Using email marketing, you send out welcome emails to new subscribers, proceed with newsletters from your small-scale business, sponsorship, discount, and your brand story as well.

You can learn more about email marketing in this article, How To Start Email Marketing | Free Email Marketing Guide For Beginners

To get well-detailed and practical knowledge of how to promote your small-scale business, register for our 90% practical digital marketing course. This is one skill that will come in handy for you as a small-scale business owner.

This article was meant to be about the mistakes that small-scale business owners do while using digital marketing to grow their business.

We took you through some of the steps to take if you want to grow your business, we had to do that, so you can checkmate yourself and see what you might not be doing.

Having established that we can now move on to the mistakes you should avoid as small-scale business owners while using digital marketing to grow your business.

7 Mistakes to avoid using digital marketing to grow your small-scale business

1. No clearly defined audience

As a small-scale business owner, one of the things you should be specific about is your audience while starting. To start a small, medium, or large-scale business, one of the things you should have is a target audience.

The truth is that everybody cannot be your target audience, because you can’t get everyone to buy from you or patronize you. In fact, some people will never hear of your business till its demise.

This is why you should have a clearly defined audience. It is this clearly defined audience that your digital marketing will be targeted to.

For instance, your small-scale business might be intended for undergraduates and fresh graduates, but because you don’t have a clearly defined audience, your digital marketing is structured and directed to baby-bloomers.

Obviously, they might likely help you to promote your business by sharing with their children/grandchildren, but you will not get the same result if you had a clearly defined audience which your digital marketing skill will be aimed at.

Source: Digital  Marketing Skill Institute

From the image above, you can see that our company as a digital marketing skills institute is on Instagram. Our services are for internet users and basically, Instagram is one of the many platforms where our clearly defined audience can see us and register for our courses.

Another reason why you should have a clearly defined audience is that you might be promoting your small-scale business on the wrong platforms. A clearly defined audience guides you in selecting digital marketing platforms to use to grow your business.

A clearly defined audience also helps you tailor your content to meeting the needs of your audience.

Here is an example of a small-scale business that has a clearly defined audience and leverages that to grow its business with digital marketing.

Source: Bellafricana

One way through which you can get a clearly defined audience is to create a buyer’s persona. A buyer’s persona helps you get an assumed description of your potential customers and how your small-scale business can meet their needs.

You can get a more detailed explanation of a buyer’s persona in this article Buyer Personas: The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Understanding Your Customers

Our 90% practical digital marketing course also provides hands-on training on identifying and having a clearly defined audience using buyer’s persona

2. Ignoring the competition

This one thing you must avoid with passion and zeal. Your competition does not have any other name to describe it, it is competition.

For every business idea, you have and you are implementing, it is either someone else somewhere is currently implementing it or has been implementing it before you started or will implement it after you.

And so, to survive in the game, do not ignore your competitors. Instead, strive to be better than them.

Seek means to grow and provide a well-detailed experience for your customers/clients/ visitors on the digital market. This does not mean that you have to exchange words, virtual fights, name-calling, and the likes or even attempt to paint your competitors in a bad light.

You can co-exist with your competitors but don’t ignore them. Ignoring them means you are also ignoring their capabilities as well and that might not be advisable for a small-scale business that wants to grow with digital marketing.

When you accept this mindset of “my customers/clients will not pass me by, so I will just relax and let them find me”, you just inducted yourself into the mediocre society.

You shouldn’t own a small-scale business neither should you desire to grow the business with digital marketing, if you do, it’s gonna end as a wasted effort because you won’t get your desired result.

Accept the existence of your competitors and strive to be better than them.

3. Tracking results

Be result-oriented. With digital marketing, your small-scale business can either grow or remain stagnant. It is very easy to fall into the temptation of pushing and pushing without tracking the results from the activities.

When you track your results, you see what is working and what is not working, and then you know what next you have to do to get the desired result.

You also get to know where the leads and c customers are coming from. This way you know where to put in more effort and where not to.

Starting a small-scale business, you should have specific goals and when they should be accomplished. Tracking your results will help you checkmate your goals to know how much progress your small-scale business has made while using digital marketing to grow.

N.B: Our 90% practical digital marketing course, we give our students comprehensive knowledge on digital marketing.

4. Not engaging SEO

The search engine is like a seed that you plant, if you don’t supply it with what it needs, it doesn’t germinate and of course, it won’t bear fruits as you want.

You need to be on your toes to make sure that your content appears in the search results and ranks better. If you remember, in some previous paragraphs in this article, we talked about search engine optimization and how to leverage it to grow your small-scale business.

Your SEO strategy should include quality content, your website should be mobile-friendly, and also carry the right keywords that represent what your business is all about.

Keyword research is another aspect of SEO you should not ignore. It helps you to increase organic traffic and the number of qualified leads. It also helps you to be in the position of your customer and how best to meet their needs.

Every day, new rules are being set for search engines and you have to be in the loop of such new rules to implement them on your website.

5. Avoiding paid ads

Paid ads are also another tool in digital marketing that you must not ignore. Yes, you shouldn’t. Just like its name, it is an advertisement you pay for to promote your small-scale business using digital marketing.

If you have ever tried seeing a video on youtube, at a point a video pops up advertising coca-cola or any other brand, and sometimes, you have to see the video to the end before you can continue the video. This is an example of a paid ad.

Another instance is while you are going through your newsfeed on Facebook, you may come across an image or a video advertising digital marketing skills, which is an example of a paid ad.

If your social media as an organic source of traffic is not working, paid ads give you faster results.

With paid ads, you can target people who have never heard about your small-scale business and get them to patronize you. and also broadcast the message of your brand across different platforms.

• Facebook
• Instagram
• twitter
• LinkedIn
• youtube

The digital platforms listed above have provisions for using paid ads to grow your small-scale business. You can choose the best campaign that suits your business and can also reach your target audience.

An example of a paid ad of Digital Marketing Skills institute

6. Spreading yourself everywhere

As much as it is needful and as a matter of fact, necessary for you as a small-scale business owner who wants to grow with digital marketing, to exist in the digital space, there is also a thin line between generating results and spreading everywhere with zero or no result.

The first mistake we ask you to avoid is not having a clearly defined audience, so at this point, when you have a clearly defined audience you will know where to focus on the more instead of being visible everywhere.

You become more focused on where your target audience can be found, create contents that will meet their needs as well as propel them to take action, which is to patronize your small-scale business.

One good thing about social media platforms is that you can easily feel overwhelmed from having to exist everywhere, create content for every space you are in, measure results, and the rest.

But you can avoid this by identifying your audience and sticking to where they may be found.

Don’t be on every platform because other people are there, you are not other people, you are a small-scale business and you should focus more on ways through which you can grow your business.

7. Ignoring critics

Criticism is an important part of small-scale business, so ignoring them won’t do. The criticisms you get should spur you and motivate you to become better at what you do.

As long as you need humans and not machines to patronize your small-scale business, criticism can never be avoided as human wants are insatiable. As much as you keep trying to make sure they are satisfied, they will keep wanting more and it is your responsibility to provide them with more as long as they are paying you.

As a small-scale business in the digital market, your criticism may come in the form of a comment, a call-out, or other means, the best thing to do is to respond appropriately.

Ignoring them is bad publicity for your business and a poor response is worse.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should you not do in digital marketing?

Don’t be less focused on results, results are proofs of your efforts. The results you get from the efforts are what will be celebrated. Focus your attention and energy on getting results in digital marketing.

It’s very easy to want to settle for efforts instead of results,  but it is the results that would be converted to leads and then profit for a small-scale business.

• Don’t ignore your competitors.
• Don’t avoid paid ads.
• Don’t be reluctant to track your results.
• Don’t ignore the need for a clearly defined audience.
• Do not be satisfied with likes and followers on social media, take a step further to convert them to leads.

How do you avoid marketing mistakes?

You avoid them by carefully drafting a plan that would guide you in covering every aspect of digital marketing. Do research and testing. Verify that your plans can work out as you desire.

Ensure that you are focused on the needs of your customers. Don’t just seek to get paid, seek to satisfy them because the more you can satisfy them the more they will be willing to pay you more.

You don’t necessarily have to try every digital marketing tactic in the book, identify your target audience and how ith what works for them.

Conclusion

Mistakes can be avoided if the laid-out guide is followed to the end.

Digital marketing as a tool for business growth has laid down rules that must be followed to get the desired result. You should be willing and ready to put in the required work and energy to make this workout.

If you want different results, you have to learn to do things differently, this is why in our 90% practical digital marketing course, we teach you how to grow your small-scale business with digital marketing.

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