If you're trying to grow your small business, you're no doubt trying to determine the best digital marketing services to help you get there. But there are a lot of things to choose from!
Do you invest in a new website? Leads? Social media? Blogging?... how can you take advantage of being online, and how can you turn your online presence into a profit center?
I spent the last 6 years of my life in pursuit of answers to this question, and have put together a list of the 6 best digital marketing services for small business owners looking to grow and scale their operation on their way to a successful exit.
Do you qualify, and do you have the right mindset?
"Best" is a relative term, so before we get into it, let me frame a few things so you have realistic expectations. After all, there is no silver bullet, one-size-fits-all solution out there for ANY business, and some of these things only apply to a certain type of small business.
Here's what's necessary to make these the best digital marketing services for your business:
- These ideas apply to B2B businesses
- You must generate at least $1,000,000/year in revenue
- Ideally, you're generating between $5,000,000 and $50,000,000 in annual revenue
- Based in the US, and targeting US companies
- You somebody/people dedicated to sales
Here is where your head needs to be:
- You are willing to invest in sales and marketing - Expect to put 10 - 20% of your desired sales outcomes into it... we don't invest $5,000/year and expect a $1,000,000 return. That's not reasonable
- You embrace advancements in technology, not run from them
- You are willing to listen to objective data
- You can't PLAN for virality
- You're willing to rethink the relationship between sales & marketing
- You're open to updating some of your sales processes
These ideas are for those who want controlled sales outcomes, and who understand the value of making investments in marketing and technology.
The 6 Best Digital Marketing Services for Small Business
1. Sales & Marketing Alignment
This is likely the least attractive concept, and possibly something you're thinking of putting off until you've done everything else on this list... but it truly is the most important first step you can take.
It aligns priorities and processes between your two most important profit-generating departments, and prevents you from expensive and frustrating changes in direction down the line.
Our alignment program (also called "diagnostics and alignment") includes:
- Buyer persona development
- Buyer profile development
- Goal setting
- MQL & SQL definitions
- Sales process formalization
- Deal stage development
- Inbound sales architecture
Once we have collaborated our way to acceptable standards, we roll them up in a Service Level Agreement (SLA), and get all major stakeholders to sign. They typically don't push back, because they were part of the collaboration, and now we have accountability standards that are objective and totally aligned.
There will be NO fingerpointing here!
2. Functional Website Development
By now, most of you understand the importance of having a website. But do you understand what it means to have a functional website? ... or a website that generates your best business opportunities?
Unless you're a SaaS, your website probably wasn't built to participate in your growth. It was probably designed to be a brochure, which means that it doesn't do a great job of attracting visitors or converting them into leads and customers.
The best methodology for development that generates functional websites that I've come across is "Growth Driven Design" (GDD). It is strategy-heavy, and involves the following steps before you ever break ground on the new site:
- Quantitative research (the hard data)
- Observational research (heatmaps, polls, etc)
- Qualitative research (interviews, personas, etc)
- User experience mapping
- Goal setting & metric focus (what do we improve, and why?)
By approaching it this way, you put yourself in your customer's shoes, and build out a website that attracts relevant users, and helps them find the answers to their questions.
3. Ongoing Website Development
Step 2 in any GDD website is to improve it over time by leveraging hard data.
Read the reports, find the weak spots, make hypothesis', set up tests, experiment, analyze, update... wash, rinse, and repeat.
By doing it this way, you put data in the driver's seat, not gut instincts of website developers or people who don't touch websites more than once or twice every 10 years.
4. Inbound Lead Generation
This is where you're going to find a lot of other services that may already have your attention, including:
- SEO
- Blogging
- Social media
- PPC
- Content
The not-so-secret formula puts all of those concepts together in a manner that helps you turn your website into a lead generation machine.
ATTRACT VISITORS TO YOUR WEBSITE THROUGH SEO blogging, social media, and PPC
CONVERT VISITORS INTO LEADS THROUGH calls-to-action, landing pages, forms, and content offers
NURTURE LEADS through email, more content, more blogging, and more social media
5. Sales Automation
I know what you're thinking... Sales automation is about sales... not the best "digital marketing services." Right?
But here's the thing... without success in sales, the term "best" becomes just another word. And we can do a TON to improve sales outcomes from the digital marketing level, since we're working with online technology, and most of you are using online sales technology.
At the b2b level, sales automation refers to the implementation and configuration of a modern CRM... or a sales tool that puts SALES first, management SECOND.
And a lot of what you're automating and how you're automating it technically falls under the "digital marketing" umbrella.
For example, a modern CRM will:
- Store email templates (created by marketing)
- Store automated email sequences (created by marketing)
- Automate the scheduling process (a lot of which is dictated by marketing)
- Provide tools for creating low production videos (standards to be created by... well, you get it)
- Store sales collateral
6. Sales Enablement (growth hacking)
I know, I know... ANOTHER "sales" feature in a marketing blog!
Sales enablement is about how marketing can improve sales outcomes.
For example, with a modern sales tool in place, marketing can improve email templates over time by looking at user statistics. Hubspot Sales lets us see the following data for the templates we use:
- Open rates (which helps us improve subject lines)
- Click rates
- Reply rates (both of which help us improve the body based on our intended outcomes)
We can also see how prospects interact with sales collateral that we create, meeting links, automated email sequences, and snippets.
CONCLUSION
If your small business could use more customers, digital marketing services that turn your online presence into business opportunities could be a good way to go. In addition to putting fuel in the marketing tank, don't forget to tie your energy to sales through alignment and technology.
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