What Promotional Activity and Digital Marketing Should a Successful Small Business Undertake

Running a small business is not an easy task. It requires great amounts of effort and dedication. You need to put in a good many hours before you reap the benefits of your small business.

In the case where your small business is a doggy day care

For that, you have to undertake certain promotional activities with the help of digital marketing. Here are some tips to help you go about the marketing of your business in an effective manner.

You need to give your customers a reason to choose your doggy day care and not your competitors. You do that with the help of your USP. You need to identify and define what makes your doggy day care business stand apart from the crowd. 

Once you have identified your USP, now you need to advertise it to your target market.

Here are some questions to help you in determining your USP

1. What is it that you love about your services?
2. What special knowledge or skills do you have?
3. What do you offer that makes your clients come to you rather than your competitors?
4. In what way will your clients benefit if they opt your doggy day care services?

There is no denying to the fact that in today’s world, social media has come to be one of the most effectual means of promotion and marketing. Social Media Marketing for businesses is a prolific way to create recognition and visibility and to build brand loyalty.

You need to choose your marketing avenues based on your target audience. Understand their demographics and then decide on your marketing avenues.

Here are some mentioned below:

Million of small and medium sized businesses use Facebook as their advertising medium. Not only is effective in reaching your target market, but it is also an inexpensive medium.

Facebook ads outclass at advanced targeting. You are able to target your specific audience according to location, age, interests, online behaviour, sex, and many other such factors.

You can create Facebook ads very easily. All you need is a descriptive copy, a solid headline, link, and one image.

However, if your business is such that entails a visual component, a better option may be to try out Instagram Ads as an alternative. You will be able to use this visual platform for your business much fruitfully.

Every second, more than 50,000 search queries are searched on Google. No other advertising medium comes close than any other online marketing channel. Google AdWords has been around for quite some time now. It’s costly. It’s competitive. But if you are aware of what you are doing, you can make it work well for you.
AdWords’ aim is to deliver the users relevant search results. Compared to on-page SEO, you will find it to be less expensive. Google will allocate your ad a quality score, which will be dependent on relevance, Click through Rate (CTR), and those landing pages your advertisement sends traffic to.

Majority of the visitors who visit your website will not immediately buy from you. This is where you seize your opportunity. You need to gain the contact info of your visitors. Email marketing begins with “lead magnet”. You have to offer your site visitors something compelling in return for their email ids. You can offer a coupon, site membership, free service trial, free download, etc.

Despite the fact that most of the people have moved online, does not mean that print media has completely died. In some niches, print media still thrives. As a doggy care business, you need to cater to all your target audience. A niche still pays attention to the traditional advertising mediums. You can place an ad in the newspaper for that niche who reads the newspaper every day, or you can have an ad run on the radio for that niche who listen to the radio.

This is the age of digital marketing. In order to survive and thrive in the business world, you need to market your product wisely. Being an entrepreneur, you have to keep up with the times. For a business, its important to have a high ranking on Google’s SERP. Along with good content, link profile, use keywords; add Meta descriptions, and so on as ways to optimize your doggy day care site.

When setting your goals, remember the acronym SMART. Your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. Your marketing goals should revolve around this acronym. You will need to allocate a budget to your marketing activities. Your marketing budget will need to include elements such as:

1. website development and its maintenance
2. search engine optimisation strategies
3. design of branding
4. Printing of promotional material (signage, business cards, brochures, etc.)
5. advertising
6. sponsorships and donations 
7. Staff to help you with the marketing activities.

The road to your success is by your customers, so it is imperative to provide quality services. Providing excellent customer service will not only convince them to keep coming back to your doggy day care, but it will stand your business apart from the competitors.

Here are some strategies to help you build loyalty to your customers:

1. Keeping regular communication with customers via blogs, social media, or e-news
2. giving after-sale follow up
3. Keeping your promises
4. going an extra mile and giving benefits that surpass initial expectations
5. using complaints and feedback as a way to improve services
6. paying attention to what your customers have to say
7. Training staff regarding basic sales procedures and customer service.