5 Tips to Grow Your Business with Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing repertoire. Digitisation is impossible to avoid; it’s present in every level of our lives, and enables us to target specific demographics like never before. We’re bringing you 5 top tips on how to grow your business with the help of digital marketing.

In-App Advertising

Ultimately, advertising ties into your visibility, and right now you’re probably invisible to most of your target market. Increasing your visibility and tapping into your desired market can be difficult, making in-app advertising a boon for appearing to your audiences. Unlike traditional advertising avenues, in-app advertising is pretty affordable – you make it as expensive or inexpensive as you like, and you have control over who is targeted by your ads.

Studies today show that users engage with apps more than websites, and mobile devices were used for more than 50% of web traffic in 2018. Consider what platforms are best to connect with your customers, and for placing yourself in the minds of your buyers. For example, if you run a wedding cake business, using visual platforms that brides frequent such as Instagram and Pinterest would be best for capturing your target audience’s attention.

Understanding SEO

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is getting your digital presence to appear highly in search results. It can be a difficult game to play, but it’s a powerful tool when you know how to use it. You could take all the time and energy in the world to make sure you have a functional, well-presented website, but without proper SEO, there’s a chance no one will ever see it.

Start by researching the most highly-searched keywords in your industry, and write some blog posts that add value to these topics. Again, though, SEO is difficult to master, so you may want to outsource your needs to someone who is SEO-savvy to get the most out of your strategy.

Establish a Strong Social Media Presence

It’s not impossible to grow your customer base solely through social media networks, so establishing a strong social media presence is key. It opens up a line of communication between yourself and your customers like never before, giving you access to valuable customer feedback and the chance to make a lasting good impression.

Building your brand on social media does require frequent posting and engagement, but you don’t need to spend half your time scrolling through Instagram and tweeting incessantly. Scheduling tools such as Hootsuite and Buffer allow you to plan your content in advance, but it is a good idea to do some live engagement with your followers every once in a while, too.

Build and nurture a mailing list

Having a solid email list offers you direct access to your customers and audience. In the age of ever-changing algorithms, when you post on social media, there is no guarantee that your posts will be seen by your followers.

Gathering information from your customers allows you to directly contact them with any upcoming events, promotions, or news, and cut through the noise of social media. There are plenty of tools out there, such as MailChimp, that allow you to send out blanket emails to your customers and split them into groups according to their interests. It also allows you to see the proportion of emails opened and links followed through – be careful you don’t send too many emails, though, or you’ll risk being consigned to the spam folder!

Create Shareable Content

The content you create can make or break your marketing strategy. High quality content can help build your brand and improve your relationship with your target audience, whereas low quality content can damage your image. Additionally, you don’t want your good content to go to waste by not being seen, so it needs to be shared by the right people to reach as widely as possible.

Make your content useful and practical to your audience, and make sure it’s engaging and relatable so that people are more likely to share it. Dry content isn’t going to evoke a reaction from your followers!

If you are a woman running a business in the Greater Manchester area that is working through these dilemmas and other business growth pains, our Excelerate Labs team may be able to help.

Part funded by European Regional Development Fund, Excelerate Labs can link you with a local adviser to explore growth strategy and help you to get all your ducks in a row.

Contact excleratelabs@thewo.org.uk for more information.

Building Your Social Media Influence

Being on Social Media is now more critical than ever if you're looking to build a following for your business. Social media is now one of the main forms of communication used to reach an audience and it's becoming more and more important to establish yourself online with a strong brand presence.

Here at The Women’s Organisation we are holding an event to help you build up your own social media presence. We have 3 social media experts who have worked over the years to build a successful following and establish strong relationships with their online audience. You will take home tips and tricks to build your following and be inspired to be the next social media influencer for your business!

Join us Tuesday 18th June, 6pm-8:30pm at 54 St James Street, L1 0AB

Our Panelists 

Ben Osu - Content Producer and Presenter

Ben set up his own community forum, giving young people of the city a voice and soon became a youth leader working with multiple agencies across the city on youth policy and service design and provision. After a social media campaign in 2009, Ben was successful at bringing the MOBO (Music of Black Origin Awards) to the city and back again in 2012.

Karen Beddow - Founder of multi-award winning travel blog 'Mini Travellers'

Karen left her full-time role as a commercial litigation solicitor when she had her children to concentrate on her Family Travel blog Mini Travellers. Karen has used her skills to create and then turn Mini Travellers into an established creative business, that has meant she can work from home and spend more time with her three children. Karen also has a social media consultancy Aster & Fern. 

Nicky Speed - Head of Communications Sefton Council

Influential communications leader Nicky Speed has over 18 years' experience in the industry, working in a variety of sectors from local government and higher education to housing, transport and health, with a proven track record in building organisational profile, reputation and brand.

Building Your Social Media Influence will be held at 54 St James Street on Tuesday, June 18, from 6pm to 8.30pm. Tickets are available over on eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/business-club-building-your-social-media-influence-tickets-59574071652

Business Club

The Women's Organisations Business Club is an exclusive women's only networking group which is open to female business owners.

Membership is open to female business owners only and is per individual not per business. Additional staff members can be booked onto individual events as you go. Our events will mostly be held at our flagship building, 54 St James Street in Liverpool but members are welcome to join from anywhere.

Why LinkedIn Should be Part of Your Growth Strategy

The majority of people mainly associate LinkedIn with job searching and increasing their own personal professional network, LinkedIn also as the same significance in relation to forming business relationships and helps to direct your business to valuable sales leads.  

A company page on LinkedIn will offer your organisation with the chance to express your brand story, which will encourage followers to interact and engage by sharing your content for other LinkedIn viewers to see. Furthermore, LinkedIn also displays your public image on an international level as a reliable company.

The following tips can help your organisation be viewed on a much wider scale and therefore should be apart of your overall business growth strategy.

1. LinkedIn allows for your company to differentiate from their competitors.

On LinkedIn, you can provide a description about your organisation to highlight the unique attributes about your organisation and how you differ from your competitors. It should comprise the latest organisation news and share information about the culture, values, mission and vision to increase the views of your business.

Another way to differentiate from your competitors is by providing visual aspects to your brand storytelling. Visual content in the form of videos, photos and artwork will provide your followers with a sense of trustworthiness and an optimistic feeling about your organisation and provides users with a clear idea of how your business thinks and acts.

2. Increase your ranking in search engines 

Search engines favour LinkedIn company pages and posts. Therefore, by providing regular updates to your company page and enhancing posts for SEO will increase your search engine ranking in the results page. This will develop your business, with more viewers interacting and engaging with your organisation and the offerings, with the rise of online traffic you could receive through LinkedIn.

3. Search states that LinkedIn may be most effective platform for product launches. 

LinkedIn as now become the main channel to introduce products. This is because LinkedIn has a bigger influence on how to spread the latest product news with a much bigger reach to the media, bloggers, and customers. According to polling done by Regalix, LinkedIn is now the #1 platform used for product launches among B2B businesses. A whopping 81% of B2B businesses say they use LinkedIn for launches, compared to 71% who use Twitter and just 54% who use Facebook.

4. Checking on what your competition is doing. 

By viewing your competitors LinkedIn pages, it is a simpler way to observe any changes which could be taking places within your industry which could have some impact within your business. You can also take notice to what your competitors are currently doing and have achieved in which you could use to your own advantage by obtaining ideas which could be implemented for your own business.

This will ensure that your business will be staying relevant by keeping up to date with the latest trends and ensuring that you will not fall behind with your competitors. Therefore, this is an important factor in developing growth within your business. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content, making it the social media platform used most often.

5. Create awareness and improve reputation. 

LinkedIn is a social media for professionals. Research suggests that more than two professionals every second are now creating a profile and signing up to LinkedIn, and organisations currently have the chance to interact with a growing number of different contacts. By using different features LinkedIn offers, organisations can increase their visibility and credibility.

If you'd like to find out more about services we offer around digital marketing and growth strategies, contact our team on 0151 706 8111 or hello@thewo.org.uk.