Actionable Online Marketing Tips for SMEs in 2021

Congratulations! You’ve successfully launched your very own B2B  e-commerce platform and you’re now ready to take your business online.

There is however, one important question left to answer:

“How do I grow my business online and get more customers?”

The answer to this is online marketing. 

With so many tools at your disposal, getting started can seem like an overwhelming process. But let us assure you: now is the best time to experiment and find out which strategies work best for your B2B business.

We’ve put together a short guide of online marketing tips and tricks to help you optimise your website, attract new customers, and generate more sales. 

#1 Online Marketing Must-Haves: Social Media Features

Social media is one of the best ways to grow your online presence and communicate with customers. And it’s also free! Some of the benefits that come with using social media to promote your business include:

• Allows you to share new and upcoming promotions with your audience.

• Helps customers find you online and get information about your business such as location, opening hours and contact details.

• Lets you directly communicate with your customers and build relationships.

You can use it to experiment with different content formats to grow your social presence.

Here are some of the things you can do on both Facebook and Instagram:

Organically Increase Awareness of Your Business with Facebook Groups

Facebook groups are online communities within Facebook that allow people to discuss and exchange ideas on specific topics of interest. 

Joining them is free! This will not only give you direct access to potential customers, it’s an opportunity to engage with other members and share information about your business.

Some of the ways to do this include:

• Contributing to group discussions and providing advice and recommendations in areas of your expertise.

• Reposting relevant content from your own Facebook page or website that will help solve common problems.

• Creating posts on subjects that are relevant and of interest to group members.

Source: HubSpot Updates

Before you do this, we suggest first optimising your Facebook page for potential customers. Here are some handy tips for posting in Facebook:

• Create a Facebook business page instead of a personal profile to raise your credibility.

• Use your company logo as your profile photo and be sure to use a high-quality image.

• Optimise the “About” section in your Facebook page, making sure the information you provide is easy to understand.

• Be sure to respond to messages quickly to earn the “very responsive to messages” badge that will be displayed on your profile. 

• While there is no definite answer on when is the best time to post to Facebook in Malaysia, data gathered suggests that some of the best times include Wednesdays from 11am to 2pm, and from Tuesdays to Thursdays, between 8am to 3pm.

Connect with Your Audience through Instagram Reels

Another great online marketing tip is to leverage the Instagram Reels function. This lets you create short video stories as a fun way to connect with potential customers.

B2B Businesses can use it to get feedback, generate buzz surrounding limited time offers, tease new product launches and make important announcements.

Each IG Reel can last for a maximum of 60 seconds and you can use Instagram Insights to track your Reels performance metrics such as the number of Accounts Reached and Plays.

Accounts Reached refers to the number of unique accounts who viewed your story, while Plays refers to the total number of times your story was viewed.

Here are some ways you can maximise your Instagram Reels:

• Include hashtags to make them visible to a wider audience.

• Tag your instagram Reel with a location sticker so customers will know where to find you. This will also help you expand your reach beyond your followers list.

• Make your Reels more interactive by using Instagram Stickers. Polls and Question stickers are great for learning about your audience’s wants and needs.

• Test different audio options. You can choose to use the original audio from your video, use a voiceover or add a saved audio track, like in the example below from Oh Cha Matcha:

On top of having your own website, social media can be a highly effective platform for selling your items. Find out about the pros and cons of each channel in our FREE e-book!

#2 Focus on SEO 

Content marketing involves creating content in various formats (such as blog articles, videos, and social media posts) and distributing them online.

Creating great content around your product lets you talk about your product naturally and stimulate interest amongst your target audience. And one of the most important building blocks to good content marketing is SEO.

Here are five important SEO tips to incorporate into your strategy:

• Include keywords in your content. Start by performing keyword research using tools like AhRefs or SEMRush to identify the keywords and phrases your users are searching for online. Once you’ve done this, be sure to include these keywords into your content to help you rank higher on search engines.

• Optimise your images. Large images can slow down your site speed, be sure to compress your images (using softwares like TinyPNG) and reduce the file size before uploading.

• Optimise your page speed. A major pet peeve of online customers is slow loading speed. Take yourself out of this category with tools like Google’s free Page Speed Insights or HubSpot’s Website Grader that will analyse your website’s performance.

• Get backlinks from high-authority websites. Backlinks are a hyperlink from one web page to another website – and high authority websites are trusted by search engines and users. If your website has an ample number of high quality backlinks, it signals to Google that you are a trusted website and it will help to boost your rankings.

• Use internal links! A good SEO practice is to link your best-performing pages to the pages that need a boost. Internal links ultimately guide Google to better understand your content and can significantly improve your site ranking.

To get more ideas on how to improve your website SEO, download our FREE guide to learn more!

#3 Use Email Marketing

Also known as newsletters, email marketing is one of the most effective channels for driving your online marketing strategies. Not only is it cost-effective, but it allows you to communicate with your audience at any given time.

All you need to do is sign up with an email marketing service provider and you’ll have access to all the tools you’ll need to create, schedule and send out your content.

The three types of emails you’ll ge sending out most regularly are:

Welcome emails

Set the tone with a Welcome Email. This is a fantastic opportunity to introduce your brand to a new subscriber and tell them a little bit about yourself. Let them get to know you by providing bite-sized information about your brand and product. You can even include a discount code for new subscribers to further entice them.

Here’s an example of Dropee’s welcome email for our newsletters (which you can sign up for here!):

Product update email

Added a new feature to your website? Use this to let your customers know what and when to anticipate the upgrade. These are not as engaging or exciting as something like a promotion email so you’ll want to keep it simple and straightforward. 

New product or service announcement email

Have a new, exciting product or service that you’re planning to launch soon? This is the email you’ll use to describe and promote it to your users.

You’ll want to make your CTA link clearly visible and use actionable language, and your copy should clearly communicate the value of your new product. You can also include a promo code of special offer to accompany the product launch in your email.

Here are the essential steps to get you started:

• Build an email list and keep it organised. An email list refers to the number of people who subscribed to your newsletter.
  • Once your list has grown big enough, you can organise it to different categories such as demographics, purchase history, email update preferences and more. Doing this will help you create more personalised messages and improve open rates.

• Have a clear call-to-action (CTA) to garner more clicks. The goal is to convert subscribers into customers so you want to make sure that your CTA is clearly visible in your email message. The rest of your message should focus on guiding them towards making this call-to-action and visiting your website.

• Test your emails before sending them out. Each message you send should appear clearly across various devices.
  • If your email contains links that don’t work, images that won’t load and various spelling or grammatical errors, it might cost you potential customers. You can choose to send test emails to get an extra set of eyes on the email before distribution.

• Remember to link to your social media pages. Make it easy for your subscribers to further interact with you! 

#4 Implement Online Referral Programs

Customers are four times more likely to make a purchase when they are referred by a friend. This is why referral programs are often employed to generate positive word-of-mouth and brand awareness.

But first, what is a referral program? It is an initiative to incentivise existing customers to share their product or service. Incentives are often provided in the form of rewards, discounts and more, and are typically awarded to both parties. Here’s an example of Dropee’s referral program:

Here are some of the ways to get started:

• Use free customer referral templates to kickstart your referral program. If you’re new to setting one up, free templates can equip you with a clear guideline on how to get started. It provides you with ideas on how to create referral email requests, follow-up emails, and content describing your B2B business’ referral program to your customers.

• Determine the types of incentives you want to provide. Do you want to provide discounts, allocate points or credits, or give freebies? Find out the types of incentives that will drive the most performance from your customers and implement it to your referral program.

• Plan out how you want to promote your referral program. Do you want to do this through newsletters? A blog article on your website? Announcements on your social media pages? Prepare your promotion plan and share it out once your referral program goes live.

• Email your customers about the referral program.

Having these additional resources will also be useful to setting up and spreading word on your referral program:

• A landing page that explains the referral program and provides a place for your customers to key in the details of their referrals.

• Scripts for your customer support team to respond to queries and issues regarding your referral program

• A downloadable kit containing information for your customers to share with their contacts including resources such as testimonials, user guides, videos and further insight into how your business works and how new customers can reach you.

#5 Get More Customers with Google My Business

Customers are 70% more likely to engage with businesses that have a Google My Business listing and twice as likely to trust them.

One of the quickest ways to increase your online presence is Google My Business, a tool that allows your business to show up on Google’s search results page when people search for you online. It’s also completely free! All you need to do is register and follow the guided steps on the page to create a listing for your business. 

Not only will your Google My Business listing provide your customers with your contact information and business hours, you can expand it to post updates on offers and events and inform how customers can find your business.

Increase Your Sales Potential with Dropee

Online marketing will continue to grow in importance as more businesses go digital. While the process of getting started may be intimidating, getting the basics right is an important start.

Dropee’s free e-book is filled with insights designed to guide you through each aspect of your digitisation journey! From tips to reducing operational costs to online marketing best practices, download the e-book now to get started.