With thanks to Prince’s Trust Australia

Hands up who prioritises working in their business over working on their business? We know that there are many ADF partners now running their own businesses.

We get it, we totally get it. With only so many hours in the day it can be hard enough to carve out time to get through the income-generating tasks that come with your business (along with everything else on your to-do-list) without adding extra stuff that doesn’t have an immediate return.

However in the longer term working on your overall business strategy is just as vital, and in this day and age this includes digital marketing, be it the most appropriate social media platform, Electronic Direct Mail, webpage/ online shop, Pay-Per-Click etc.

As part of their Partnership with DUAL Australia, Princes Trust Australia recently hosted an online webinar, Digital Marketing for Small Business. The main takeaway? You need a plan, even if that plan can be scrawled on a post-it note you need a plan.

Quite simply you cannot over-communicate to your customer base; but the how of it will depend on your business and your market. It’s important to remember when utilising social media as a communication/ marketing tool the algorithms preference active accounts, they make them more visible, if you hardly ever share content what you do share will only appear lower down on your followers feed, if at all.

You don’t need to use all methods but you should use the ones that reach your customer, which brings us to point two, know your customer. Your product or service won’t appeal to everyone (in fact the experts say it shouldn’t, that’s what creates your point of difference) but you need to know what resonates with your customer.

For this you need analytics, most business versions of your digital marketing tools will have inbuilt analytics, take some time to understand how they work on the tools you currently use and then monitor them over time, are they working for you, or do you need to try something else?

This is where your plan comes into place, create a framework for your marketing, your Why? What? and How? Record your expectations and then measure them. Experiment with the timing and frequency of your marketing to see if that makes a difference to your audience engagement. Scheduling tools can be very helpful for this, create the content at a time that suits you and have it shared at a later date/time; most of them should post to multiple social media channels.

It was also refreshing to note that not all content you share needs to be perfectly polished.

Audiences generally respond well to “behind the scenes” content as well. Showing a little of your personality or your workspace and sharing your why, why are you in the business you are in, can go towards creating an emotional connection to your brand/business. It is this emotional connection that leads to customer loyalty and increased revenue.

Find out more how Prince’s Trust might be able to help you in business.