The 3 Best (and Free!) Digital Marketing Strategies for your New Small Business

You’ve done it! The years of planning and prep work have paid off and you opened your business, ready to show the world who is boss! But now that you are open, you’re faced with a whole new set of challenges. How do you spread the word to everyone, bring in new customers, and keep those customers coming through the door for the months and years to come?

Your friends and family can only keep you afloat for so long but rest assured that only a couple of hours a week can solve your woes, and help spread the word about how awesome you are!

Welcome to the wilds of digital marketing!

Digital marketing is a fairly broad term we use to refer to any sort of marketing or advertising that is done through a digital medium, (think social media or emails). The best part of digital marketing is that you don’t have to spend loads of money to get started. In fact, you don’t have to spend any money at all! Which brings us to the topic of this article, what are the three best, and free, strategies to get your digital marketing efforts kick-started? Let’s dive in.

Strategy 1 - Everyone’s Favorite…Social Media!

Social media is probably the obvious one that you thought of when reading the headline. It is completely free to start a business account on top social media platforms. Here is where you need to do a bit of research because not every social platform is built the same. Let’s start with an example. Let’s say you’ve opened an online candle company and want to start advertising on social media, but you don’t know where to start. Based on who shops in your store, you do know that your primary customers are women, ages 25+. Let’s analyze a few of the top platforms so we can make the best choice to cater to our demographics.

Which Social Media Platform is Best

Facebook

Facebook has an average monthly viewership of 2.91 billion people according to Sprout Social. From their analytics, Facebook is used by an audience age 25-34 which is 43% female and 57% male with an average daily usage of 33 minutes.

Instagram

Instagram is the popular image-sharing app bringing in 2 billion monthly users made up primarily of individuals ages 25-34. The audience is 48% female and the app has introduced several eCommerce-focused features in the last six months.

TikTok

The darling of the COVID-lockdown era, TikTok is the fastest growing social media application in the world with 1 billion active monthly users, 61% female audience, and an average daily usage rate of 89 minutes per user. Unfortunately, the largest demographic on the app are kids ages 10-19, which make up 25% of the audience.

YouTube

The video hosting giant has been around for a long time and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t heard of it. It has reached such a behemoth-level status that it has become a verb for many people, who proudly state that you should “YouTube” it if you don’t know something. An average monthly user base of 2+ billion users who are 46% female is nothing to look past. The average age demographic is 15-35 which fits our strategy well. A little more research will tell us that 72% of consumers would rather learn about a product or service through a video according to Social Week. As the most popular video hosting platform, we can mark down Youtube as a must for our social media strategy.

Pinterest

We’ve all been on Pinterest before to inspire ideas or DIY projects. The average monthly user base of 431 million people, with an age group of 50-64, and an overwhelming female-centric audience of 78% makes this a checkmark on our list. We can mark Pinterest down as another area of focus.

There are a few other major social networks worth mentioning, i.e. Linkedin, Snapchat, and Twitter but we are going to look at the ones above because they are more central to the strategy we are looking to create.

Based on the information we have researched, it’s safe for us to pick the platforms we should focus on heavily. Youtube, Instagram, and Pinterest. Because video will play such a large factor in our marketing strategy we will have plenty of opportunities on the three platforms we chose.

Content Strategy

We’ve picked our platforms, but now we arrive at the question that trips up 90% of people who want to advertise their business on social media…what the heck do I post? That’s an easy answer, anything you want! Since we are a candle company, we can make videos of our candle-making process, or how we pick scents. In sharing content, we want to illustrate what makes our company unique and why people should shop with us. It’s nothing to get tripped up on, focus on 30-60 second videos and let people see who you are!

Optimally, we want to post 3-5 times per week and we can mix in text/graphic/video content for each post. At Long Story Digital Marketing, we always suggest you start at a manageable pace for posting. If 3-5 times a week sounds like too much, reduce it to 1-2 a week until you get comfortable with your routine. If you are really stuck, reach out to us here and we would be happy to suggest some ideas.

For graphic content, we would recommend exploring Canva, Photoshop’s little sister. Canva has a free and Pro plan where you can create stunning designs and graphics sized perfectly for sharing on social media. Explore hundreds of templates, plug your content in and you have a professional-looking graphic, ready to be shared in under 5 minutes.

Part 2 is coming soon! Explore our site in the meantime or send us a message here!