During our small group Virtual Cuppas from April to June 2020, a lot was shared - stories of hardship and triumph, questions on how to survive, the possibility of thriving and, of course, much mention of that "p" word... pivoting!
Over coming weeks, we'll distil and share the reflections, tips and advice shared through our Cuppas and gleaned from other sources. We hope you find something to help or bring a knowing nod or smile to your face.
Getting business back on track - digital marketing tips
Alex Bray, Marketing Operations Manager at RACT, joined our Cuppa on the 28th May and provided some great tips and advice. Alex kindly distilled this so we could share widely with others in our industry. She writes:
If you are re-opening and feeling a little overwhelmed as to how to get your business up and running, it might be worth putting pen to paper to create a simple ‘plan of attack’. Sometimes just getting things on paper can relieve a lot of stress and make the path to success much clearer. It need only be one page. Simple is best!
- Determine who your market is. What sort of Tasmanians might want to visit you? Will they want the product that you currently offer or do you need to make some adjustments to better appeal to them?
- How can you get your product in front of them? Focusing on return on investment (ROI), what channels are going to work best for you? Commit to just a few and do those well.
- Do you need to put some ‘package deals’ in place to cater to your market?
- What partnerships could you leverage/create to enhance your product and increase your visibility?
Top 5 digital marketing activities to consider right now:
- Bring people into your business digitally. Don’t shy away from the elephant in the room. Be transparent and authentic. Tell people what you are up to, what your plans are and what your people are doing etc. More than ever during a crisis, people seek ‘real’ content that helps them connect with you on an emotional level. Social media is an incredibly powerful tool. And it can be completely free. Whilst it may not bring people to your door today or tomorrow, if you keep engaging with them and creating a need/desire for them to visit you, they will come.
- Engage people with your digital content. Help people consume your product in a virtual way. eg. virtual tour, interviews, 360 tours, short videos etc. You don’t need to be a videographer either. Phone content can work really well!
- Invite people who are ‘liking’ your content on Facebook to ‘like’ your page. To do this, simply click on the ‘like’ icon on the bottom left of your post, this will bring up a list of the people who have liked your post. From there you will see an ‘invite’ button next to their name. Just hit that and an invite will be sent to them. A great, free and easy way to boost likes on your page!
- Does the concept of analytics make you break out in a minor sweat? Well it shouldn’t. Yes, it can be a complex world. But you only need to know the basics to make a big difference to how Google ranks your website. Now is the time to get your head around it. Start off with something simple like a Hub Spot video or this one from Digital Ready >
- Once you have got your head around the basics, perhaps make a start on optimising your website. Do a little research on Google search terms and start putting some of these words in your website. A great way to do this is through blog posts or landing pages. Word of warning, your content still needs to be of quality and grammatically correct. Google knows when we are just throwing in search terms into our websites for the sake of it.
[Ed: there are a heap more topics available on the Digital Ready site here > ]