The Covid pandemic has hit the economy from so many angles, and the small business sector has taken the most hit. With numerous states and countries enforcing total lockdown, running a small business now is a hard task to run.
Luckily, digital stores and digital marketing strategies have enabled some businesses to continue thriving, nonetheless. Small business owners who hopped on the bandwagon of eCommerce, set up their stores, and notify their customers that they could place their orders online and have them dropped by their premises are still in business.
However, having a functional website and optimizing it for search isn’t enough, especially since SEO takes months, sometimes years, to start bringing subsequent traffic. If you set up your store during the pandemic, you don’t have a competitive advantage.
Solution?
Search marketing. Though it requires investment upfront, it results in immediate sales and revenues that you can keep re-investing into your business.
Why Search Marketing?
There are several ways that Search Marketing can help you grow your small business. Some of them include the following:
Attract Local Customers Right Away
Instead of waiting for that article or page to rank, you can get targeted traffic from SERPs immediately using digital advertising. Google ads enable you to select the keywords and region, thus as a small business owner, you can target searches from your local area. Ensure that you provide critical information on your landing pages on how customers are supposed to pick up their orders after processing. Do you offer drive-through services, or do you deliver the items in person?
Get High Return on Investment
Many marketers still think that PPC isn’t worth it, but the truth is, people who have been doing PPC ads for a while vouch for it. While search engine marketing only provides targeted traffic as long as you continue running the ads, this traffic can be quite profitable if well targeted and pointed to highly converting pages. If you want near-immediate results, then you have to run PPC ads. On average, PPC search engine ads bring in $2 for every $1 spent.
Target Specific Customers
Programs such as Google Ads and Bing Ads allow you to target search users based on numerous metrics, including specific keywords, time of day, day of the week, location, language, device type, and prior visits to your website. This, therefore, means that you can be as creative as possible when targeting your ads. Imagine being able to provide unique offers to people who have visited your website before or even run a campaign at a specific time only to increase CTR.
SEM is Accessible to Everyone
While other advertising channels such as search engine optimization, Influencer Marketing, and TikTok TakeOver Ads require heavy investment, Search Marketing can be done by anyone. In fact, you don’t need a minimum budget, to begin with. As a small business owner that is not backed up with huge marketing budgets, this sounds like music to your ears. You can get started with as little as $10 and even possibly make your first sale.
However, it’s important to note that the success that you have with Google Ads depends on various factors, including the keywords you choose and the goal of running your campaigns. If your service or product that you offer is at premium pricing, then using Ads to promote sales pages may not be so effective. Instead, run ads that generate leads and have those leads go through a highly optimized sales funnel email campaign.
Wrapping Up
Running a small business can be easier if we don’t have to worry about bringing in new customers every day. Search marketing makes certain of this. Once you have enough data to determine what keywords are profitable for you and what targeting best profiles your ideal audience, all you need to do is set up your ads and only review them periodically.
