Today’s small businesses need to be proactive when it comes to creating an online presence if they want to remain relevant and easily found by new customers. Service businesses, like home service providers, health and wellness companies, legal providers, and pet services, are all resources consumers need. Yet, before they do anything else, most consumers head online to verify any and all information about a company before they contact them.
Being found online is one of the best ways to attract new customers in today’s dynamic online landscape. You need to work to improve the visibility of your company and brand online on a consistent basis. However, finding the balance to ensure a positive ROI for many small to medium-sized businesses is critical and not always achieved.
Where do you look, then? You need online marketing tools that allow you to collect and analyze information as well as provide insights and recommendations on which specific actions you should take to see improvement. Check out these top tools for online marketing and how they can help your small business grow.
#1: Web Analytics
Web analytics help to measure the performance of each of your marketing activities. This allows you to follow your marketing campaigns closely, pinpointing areas that are doing well and determining areas where changes may improve outcomes. This way, you can identify which blog articles, digital ads, and social posts are the most effective in sending traffic to your website, and at what percentage that traffic converted into leads.
Analytics like this help you to make data-focused changes and optimizations to your website and other marketing strategies. The end result is that you know what to change, make those changes, and see improved traffic to your website and more clicks on your ads.
It’s important to note that some web analytics tools are more complex and require a significant amount of skill to use and interpret results. Others are simpler but may not offer as robust of information to use. What’s most important is using analytics. They should be tools you use on a consistent basis to see how even small changes impact the bigger picture and, in the long term, your marketing outcome.
#2: Email Marketing
With email marketing, it is possible to offer your clients rewards, bonuses, and other promotions as a way to keep them engaged and your business top of mind. This is often a necessary tool for local businesses that want to target a very specific audience with those offers. These tools are rather easy to use, but they are critical if you plan to offer such promotions.
#3: Digital Advertising Search + Social
Knowing what is happening with your digital advertising campaigns is a must. For many business owners, you do not have time to track every ad campaign across Google, Facebook, Instagram, Microsoft, and any other platform your business advertises on. That is why you need to upgrade your search and social solutions.
These tools provide you with insight into what is going well and what may not be. They can help you compare the various types of ads you’re running so you can update and modernize them to get the best out of each campaign.
As a service business, it is also important to manage your digital advertising goals and methods. That means ensuring that you are using the right campaigns to maximize your ROI. You need to know what your clients expect, what your competition is doing, and what new trends could help you get even better results.
#4: Content Marketing
Content marketing technology can provide a range of resources to help organizations as well. This includes CMS tools to help with the creation and management of content on your website and social media platforms. It also includes email tools that allow you to monitor the flow and results of your email marketing campaigns.
There are also tech solutions to help with editorial calendars and project management. Another core component is editing tools. For many organizations, it is very important to work with a range of freelancers and in-house teams to create content. For those businesses doing it themselves, having tools that can ensure that each piece of content is accurate as well as optimized for SEO is always important.
Numerous tools exist that can help with these needs. Even if you are unsure of what your content marketing goals are or what type of content to create, these tools can help guide you and ensure you get the best out of the process.
#5: Reputation Management
For any service provider, reputation is a big factor. If a single unhappy customer creates a dozen negative reviews about your workmanship, that impacts you in many ways and for a long time. Managing your online reputation is complex, though, as you do not have time to go from one site to the next to check out reviews.
Reputation management tools help with this. They watch the web and report back any mentions of your company and display it all in one place. This can help you to see what people are saying. In some ways, this may help you to improve your business. In other ways, it creates an opportunity for you to respond to that negative review with a helpful explanation or a positive interaction to satisfy the customer.
These solutions help you to both manage and monitor your reputation online. This can help you ensure you are fully knowledgeable about what people say about your company, employees, and business overall.
#6: Digital Asset Management
Many times, digital asset management software, sometimes called DAM, helps to provide a way to manage all of your digital assets in one place. That includes managing all components of our workflow. That may include tools for organizing, searching for, and editing assets, not just one at a time but in batches to speed up their use of them.
You can use these tools to manage and share your digital assets with other people. Though there are various components, they tend to offer the same overall features. For example, they can help you with workflow management, file management, asset conversions, editing, digital rights, compliance requirements, and integrations.
With this type of tool, you are better able to manage your business’s digital assets, whether that is your graphics, photos, content, or any other range of resources you use on a routine basis. It simplifies the process and provides you with more control over those assets.
#7: Directory Listing Management
Most of the time, any local service businesses will need an effective way of keeping people up to date about who they are, what they do, how to get a quote, and how to leave a review. This is done across a range of directories online. Each of these directories may be important to you as it may help customers find you and provide them with information about what you can do for them.
The problem is that it can take a lot of work to keep directory listings up to date, especially when there is a change in what you offer. Directory listing management tools can help speed up the process by making it possible for you to easily stay informed about what is happening across the directories you are a member of on an ongoing basis. You need to know what is happening within these directories, too, which means you need alerts to changes or updates.
#8: Text Message Marketing
Text message marketing is a powerful tool for when you want to increase engagement with current and prospective customers. It enables you to send very specific texts to your clients or prospects that allow them to take action right away.
For example, you may have a client that you just wrapped up a project for, and you know they are thrilled with the results. Using a text message campaign, you can send them a specific link so they can leave you a review. That way, you can easily benefit from that client satisfaction.
You can also use these tools to build relationships with important clients and customers. Let them know what you are doing or about a special offer. These types of tech tools make it possible for you to manage your text marketing while also helping you to track how well those steps are working for you. In short, with these tools, you can ensure you are communicating to your clients through texts with success. Plus, have all communications streamlined into a centralized inbox that anyone within your company can access.
Know What Your Options Are for Simplifying the Process
You could find separate tools that address each of these areas, or you can use Surefire Local’s business intelligence marketing software to help you. We encourage you to check out how effortless it can be to have all of the top tools for online marketing in one place. Reach out for a demo today!
