Digital Marketing

for Small Businesses

THE COMPLETE GUIDE FOR

SMALL BUSINESSES GETTING STARTED
WITH DIGITAL STRATEGY
Welcome
Getting into digital marketing can feel like taking a “Nobody starts at the deep
dive into the unknown for a lot of small business owners,
especially if you don’t spend all your time online yourself. end, nobody has all the answers
But relax. Nobody starts at the deep end, nobody has
all the answers before they begin and, even better,
before they begin and, even
getting going is probably cheaper and quicker than better, getting going is probably
you might think.
cheaper and quicker than you
Speaking of budget, there’s plenty you can do in the might think”
realms of digital marketing without spending a penny –
but when it comes to reaching new audiences, that’s when
a little budget can go a long way. Every part of your digital
marketing is a great opportunity to learn something – so
it’s all about starting small, testing, learning, and growing
over time.

In this guide, we’re going to take you through the easy

-access ways to get started – from making the most
of search engines to buying your first online ads. All
the channels will be familiar to you – Facebook, Twitter,
Google, email, and your own website – but we’ll give you
the steps you need to feel confident you’re testing and
investing in the way that’s right for you and the growth
of your business.
What’s inside?
What you’ll find in this guide has a lot to do with what
we call inbound marketing – the tactics you can use to
attract, convert, close and delight visitors to your website,
social and blog.

Digital platforms are great for this because we now have

more ways, places, and routes to attract people to visit
our website where, we hope, they’ll become our customers.
We can also be much more creative with this kind of
marketing because it’s not just about what we think of as
traditional outbound marketing activity. With all of these
opportunities at your disposal, you need to consider what’s
the impact on your target customer. This is because your
audience expects a great experience with your brand
at each digital touchpoint. If you can provide a great
experience at every touchpoint, you’ll turn more visitors into
leads, and more leads into customers. Though we have to
admit, it’s easier said than done!

It’s your website, blog and social media channels that are
at the heart of any digital marketing plan—so always keep
in mind that you’re optimizing for these destinations when
planning digital marketing tactics.

We hope this guide gives you what you need to get going,
but if you’d like a little more of an in-depth introduction,
check out Hubspot Academy’s Inbound Certification
(completely free).
What’s inside?
LET’S BEGIN WITH THE BIG IDEAS Content marketing
AND CLARIFY A FEW DEFINITIONS: This is a marketing program that centers on creating,
publishing and distributing content for your target
Digital marketing audience – usually online – the goal of which is to attract
This is an umbrella term for all of your online marketing new customers. While inbound marketing can be looked
efforts. Businesses leverage digital channels such as at as a methodology, content marketing is a more
Google search, social media, email and their websites specific inbound strategy of writing content that your
to connect with their current and prospective customers. audience will find valuable.
From your website to your online assets like digital
advertising, email marketing, online brochures and beyond, Buyer’s journey
there’s a huge spectrum of tactics to consider. The best This is the process buyers go through to become aware
digital marketers know which channels their audience of, evaluate and purchase a new product or service. The
uses and they have a clear picture of how each asset journey is a 3-step process:
supports their overarching goals. 1. Awareness stage: the buyer realizes they have
a problem
Inbound marketing 2. Consideration stage: the buyer defines their problem
This is about using marketing to bring potential customers and researches options to solve it
to you, rather than having your marketing efforts fight for 3. Decision stage: the buyer chooses a solution
their attention. Sharing is caring and inbound marketing
is about creating and sharing content with the world. By
creating content specifically designed to appeal to your
dream customers, inbound attracts qualified prospects
to your business and keeps them coming back for more.
Plan your strategy
Strategy, in spite of being a word favored by the shiny
RESULTS—REASONS WHY YOU’LL WANT TO
suits of the world, really means thinking about why you’re
CREATE A DIGITAL MARKETING EFFORT:
doing something before you do it. So, starting your digital
marketing strategy is as simple as starting with why you Brand awareness
want to do it, deciding what you want to do, how you’re Do you want more people to know about your brand
going to do it, what you expect to happen, and when and (or your products and services)?
how you’ll measure your success.
Acquisition or lead generation
Do you want to reach people who’ve never bought from
you before and bring them into your buyer’s journey?

Growth from existing customers

Do you want people who’ve already bought from you
before to buy more frequently or buy a different kind
of product?

If possible, set a specific goal

Your metrics should be tied to your goal and include
a time limit. These might include:
• X Number of leads from a piece of downloadable
content in 1 month
• % of old customers buying a secondary product
within the year
• % of follower growth on social media within 2 weeks
5 steps for setting your strategy
1 SET A MEASURABLE GOAL

Looking at the types of goals we’ve set out, pick one to “Really understanding the goal
concentrate on. Really understanding the goal you’re
trying to hit is the first step to reaching it. you’re trying to hit is the first
GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE!
step to reaching it.”

Misha is a photographer and recently, she’s started

producing video for clients too. She wants to let all of her
regular customers know that she offers this extra service
so that her photography customers can purchase video
production work. She writes the following strategy for
this campaign:

“I want to make sure 100% of my current customers know

I offer video services. I will run email and social promotions
to share this message for 2 months. After 3 months from
the start of the promotion, I want to have at least 1 video
commission from 15% of my current customers.”

Learn more about digital marketing analytics.

5 steps for setting your strategy
2 KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

Get to know your audience. If you don’t understand

enough about who you’re trying to reach, you’ll struggle
to deliver a message that’s relevant enough that resonates
with them. The good news is that you don’t need to hire
a customer research agency to do this for you. The
easiest way to make sure you don’t come up with a
watery ‘general’ campaign is to make your own buyer
personas — fictionalized, general descriptions of your
key customer groups.

• Think about who your customers are and group

them into 3 or 4 buckets.
• Take each of those and create a character from each.
• Give him or her a name, a photo, a personality, and
a few favorite hobbies.
5 steps for setting your strategy
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE CONT.
USER PERSONAS: A TEMPLATE
Our biggest tip: rank your buyer personas! Before you
start, be totally clear which of them is the most important. Name and bio – job,
family, age and location
GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE!
Goals at work
Misha will always be called on for weddings – that’s her
bread and butter. While she’ll frequently deal with anyone How you can help them
from the groom to the bride’s sister on the actual day, it’s reach their goals
usually the bride-to-be she knows she needs to win over
first to land the customer. So Misha’s first buyer persona Challenges
is a nervous bride.
How you can help
them overcome
Next up for her is photography for small, local businesses their challenges
— usually people who want some nice images for their
What they like about
website, catalogs or brochures. So her second persona your service
is Jake, who’s run a coffee shop for 3 years and is about
to redecorate his café and launch a new website.
Their objections

Misha knows that her opportunity to grow her business

Your elevator pitch
will only come from reaching bigger clients with a regular to them
requirement. She doesn’t have any customers like this yet,
but it’s where she wants her business to go next. So her 3rd Check out the full buyer persona template or use this
persona is the marketing manager for a big retail brand free tool to create your persona.
headquartered in her city. They launch new products every
month, and every time they do, they need photography.
5 steps for setting your strategy
3 KNOW YOUR BRAND

Your brand is how and why your customers choose you Brand Health Check — Do you really know what your
over your competitors. You can think of it as your brand stands for?
company’s personality. So it’s something that’s worth
defining clearly —what do you stand for? What are your Who is your customer? Get your personas lined up,
strongest character traits? And how does that translate visualized and ranked—use them to help you answer
into your presence—from the images you use on your the following questions.
website to the language you use in your emails? The
best way to answer these questions is by getting out and • What problem do you solve? From your customer’s
speaking directly with your customers. You could assume perspective, what challenges are you solving for them?
what your brand stands for, but the best way to check is Visualize your perceived value.
by understanding how your ideal customers talk about • What are your distinctive benefits? List three to five
your brand. Talk to your customers! benefits your customer gets from choosing your
product/service that customers don’t get from
going somewhere else. These are called your value
propositions (or value props for short). What’s your
brand promise? This is like a pledge.
• What will you always do for your customers? This is
the other key part of your proposition that separates
you from the competition.
• How does it fit together? Take your answers so far and
try to craft a single paragraph that covers them. It’s ok
if things merge and overlap—the aim is to end up with
a unique message.
• Can you make it shorter? Now, refine. Take your time,
review again and again until you’ve distilled your value
propositions to one clear line that captures everything
you want to say.
5 steps for setting your strategy
4 WATCH YOUR COMPETITION NOT SURE WHERE TO GATHER INTEL?
HERE’S HOW TO GET STARTED:
Your competitors aren’t just those who offer a like-for-like
product or service. You can think of your competition • Start with your customers! The best place to
in 3 ways: see where you rank up against your competitors,
or to find which competitive alternatives are most
Direct competitors - those brands that offer the same relevant for you, is in the mind of your customers.
products or services as you. Ask them about which other competitive
alternatives that they’ve tried, and dig in by asking
Indirect competitors - brands that may offer different “why” so that you can learn from real stories.
products but compete for the same space or budget • Search for a few key terms related to your
as you. industry, and note where each brand ranks
on the results page.
Comparators - these might have a similar look and feel • Try out your competitors – you don’t need to buy
like your brand or be other brands that your target their products if it’s costly, but you can read their
customers use frequently too. reviews, explore their website and sign up for their
newsletter.
You want to know what you’re up against, and you can • Note where and when you see your competitors’
learn vicariously from both triumphs and mistakes Get ads and screenshot them.
inspired by your competitors’ wins, and use your differences • Follow lots of other brands’ social channels.
to highlight what’s unique about what you’re offering. • Use paid-for online tools like Alexa for analysis
on how well your competitors’ sites do in search
rankings and web traffic.

For more on this, check out HubSpot’s guide

to competitive analysis.
5 steps for setting your strategy
5 GET READY TO MEASURE

Having brilliant ideas for how you’ll drive traffic, build on your goals – so bear in mind things like geographic
brand awareness, and grow your customer base is just or demographic information that you’re interested in
the beginning, it’s crucial you know how you’ll track tracking as well. Track the performance of these metrics
progress, so you can adjust your plan based on what over time and you’ll start to get a benchmark number
gets the best reaction. There are lots of different things for how your content is performing.
you can measure (metrics)—but a benchmark of what
a ‘good’ score is (KPI), will depend entirely on you.

GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE!

If you posted a new blog post that included some

video content on the page, look at how many:
• Views you get
• Views of the video
• Engagement with the video (likes, comments, shares)
• Clicks to your blog CTA
• Leads from the post
• Increase in leads from the post vs. posts without videos

Before you start any campaign, familiarize yourself with “Pick the metrics that will provide
important metrics associated with your goals, like those
examples we’ve listed above. There are plenty of the best insight as to whether
different things you might want to measure depending or not you’ll hit your goal.”
Digital Marketing Techniques
So, you’ve got your plan. You know who and what you’re
going after, you know what you’re going to measure,
and you know what you’re trying to achieve. It’s time
to get going.

The good news is that it’s easy to experiment with different

ideas to reach your audience on social media, search
engines, and your own website. You can try different types
and formats of content to find the best results.

The great thing about most digital marketing

campaigns is you can begin to track reactions soon
after they’re launched. That means you can soon work
out which campaigns are delivering the best return
on investment (ROI) and which techniques are most
efficient for your brand.

Here are the digital marketing techniques that we’ll

cover in-depth:

1 SEO
2
On-page SEO Audit
3
User Experience
4
Paid Search Ads
5
Display Advertising
6
Sponsored Social Posts
7
Email Marketing
8
Native Advertising
9
Customer advocacy marketing
But first, meet the Flywheel
The flywheel model is a comprehensive, unified way of
representing the forces affecting your company’s
growth. It focuses you on delivering a better customer
experience at every digital touchpoint with your customers
by considering how you’re attracting, engaging, and
delighting people and turning them into promoters for
your brand.

If you leave with one main lesson from this guide, it’s this:
today, trust is at an all-time low. Think about it. People
don’t have the same trust that they had with businesses
back in the day. But one thing that remains truer than ever
is that people trust their peers—their friends, coworkers,
family members, and partners.

So, when you think about digital marketing, you’ll want to

consider how you’re turning strangers into people who will
advocate for your business and products.

They’ll then provide you with new customers down

the road, and your flywheel will spin faster. And you’ll
do this by delivering a relevant, helpful, and great
customer experience.
Digital Marketing Techniques
Attract: Earn your people’s attention, don’t force it. Attract
visitors with useful content and eliminate barriers as they
try to learn about your company.
• Blog
• Keywords
• SEO
• On-page SEO Audit
• Social Publishing
• Paid search ads
• Display Advertising

Engage: Form good relationships with your prospects.

Don’t just treat them as deals. Enable buyers to engage
with you on their preferred timeline and channels.
• Content
• User experience
• Email marketing
• Native advertising
• Sponsored social posts

THE FLYWHEEL Delight: Tie your success to your customers. Shift

resources to be more effectively distributed throughout
the entire customer experience.
• User experience
• Customer advocacy marketing
Digital Marketing Techniques
1 SEO

One of the best ways to reach new customers is to make You can tell if a website is popular if other websites
sure your site’s appearing when your customers are link to it. For example, if you have 10 websites that link
searching for answers to their problems or questions You to your website, your website will be more popular
do this through search engine optimization (SEO)— than a website that has 5 websites linking to it.
optimizing your site in the right way to improve the rank Work to improve authority is called off-page SEO.
of your results when people search for terms related to • An example of off-page SEO is building backlinks
your market. from other pages to your page.

Google accounts for nearly 90% of the searches on

desktop, so if you want to go direct to the source, read
their SEO guide to help the indexing of your site. This will
happen automatically — Google’s ‘spiders’ continuously
crawl, categorize, and rank all web content against a
huge number of measurements.

Then, to deliver the right information to users, search

engines analyze two factors:

• Relevancy between the search query and the content

on a page. Search engines assess it by various factors
like topic or keywords. Work to improve relevancy is
called on page SEO.
• Authority is measured by a website’s popularity on
the Internet. Google assumes that the more popular a
page or resource is, the more valuable it is to readers. Example: HubSpot has a backlink in Entrepreneur.com giving HubSpot
How does a website become more popular? more authority in search engines. From the ultimate SEO guide.
Digital Marketing Techniques
1 SEO CONT.

When you’re looking at your site’s content, make sure it’s:

• Relevant — update it regularly, and use the same words

people are searching to find your product or service.
• Easy to read — don’t use images as headlines, and make
sure description tags for pictures or videos are accurate.
• Credible — if another site links to yours, that’s a vote in your
site’s favor. So if other people have recognized this expertise
by linking back, that will help.
• Honest — similarly, if you try to load up your site with
keywords or links on hidden pages that are intended to be
seen by crawlers but not customers, that counts as deception
and can incur a ranking penalty.
• Well-built — if it’s easy for people to navigate, Google will
probably like it. Make sure the links to your sub-pages are
logically named, and minimize add-ons like auto-playing
videos or pop-ups asking for email addresses. You’ll also want
to make sure that your site loads quickly.
• Accurate — like most people, Google doesn’t like spelling
mistakes or broken links. They can count more than you
might expect.
• Optimized for mobile — more people now search on mobile
over desktop, so sites which are more mobile-friendly are
rewarded over those which are not.

Download a beginner’s guide to SEO keyword research.
Digital Marketing Techniques
2 ON-PAGE SEO AUDIT THINGS TO AVOID THAT COULD COST YOU
SEARCH PENALTIES:
An On-page SEO audit will give you an idea of how
SEO-friendly your website is overall. Here’s how you do it: Don’t hide your keywords – or stuff too many of them
into your copy. This includes forcing them into places
• Get a list of your pages they don’t belong to try and rank for terms that don’t
• Export all of your site pages to a spreadsheet, then sort come naturally to the page you’re on at the time.
them by the most frequently visited
• Once you’ve completed your keyword research, take Keyword stuffing is the oldest trick in the book when it
your keyword categories and see which fit best by comes to SEO – and nowadays, search engines have
page. Add that category into a column alongside the been developed specifically to detect it. Not only does it
page name look spammy, but it’s not approved by search engines
• Add another column for any keywords you’ve not and will result in penalties.
currently got covered
Promote a good user experience - The most important
This is where your content comes in. You’ll need to work in thing to consider is your visitor’s user experience. While
those keywords to your priority pages on, especially within optimizing your website for an algorithm sounds purely
your metadata. Metadata tells search engines what your scientific, remember that the goal of search engines
content is about. Metadata includes things like your pages’: is to deliver the best experience possible to their end-
users: searchers. If you keep that goal in mind with
• Titles your SEO strategy, you’ll be more likely to make good
• Descriptions choices. Think about humans first and search engines
• Headings & Content second, and you’ll be alright.
• Images Titles & Alt Text
• URLs
Digital Marketing Techniques
3 USER EXPERIENCE

Your website is your chance to show off exactly what your

brand is all about and connect with your customers on your
home turf. Here’s where you want your customers to go for
information, helpful content, and buy your products. Your
conversion rate is the number of visitors to your site that
ends up converting into leads through a form submission.

Thinking about user experience when you’re putting

your site together means you can help visitors find which
product is right for them, help them decide yours is the
brand they want to buy from or help them keep in touch
— for example, by signing up for a newsletter.

So check your site’s analytics and note how people are

behaving on your site - where they click, which pages
they spend the most time on. Your overall user experience
probably needs improvement if you see a high bounce rate “More people are ditching
(people leave the site after clicking on only one page) or a
low dwell time (if it’s less than 30 seconds, it’s likely visitors
desktop computers for phones,
haven’t found what they’re looking for). so make sure your website
works on any device.”
Digital Marketing Techniques
3 USER EXPERIENCE CONT.
PRO TIPS

Good experience basics Less need to drive traffic - if visitors to your site are
buying from you easily, you don’t need to spend as
• Update content regularly so that your page much effort and money on other ways to attract
stays relevant more visits.
• Test your website’s speed here
• Check that your pages load quickly - every second Cost-effective - a good conversion rate means you
counts when it comes to keeping someone’s attention. get more bang from bucks spent (i.e., higher return
It’s better to have less functionality or simpler design on investment) on the advertising that lured visitors
in order to keep pages loading quickly to your site in the first place. Builds brand loyalty a
• Ensure your calls to action - newsletter signups, buy great user experience encourages return visits.
buttons for products - are emphasised through
attractive, logical design Builds brand loyalty - a great user experience
• More people are ditching desktop computers to get encourages return visits.
online via phone or tablet, so ensure your website can
automatically resize for smaller screens, and works Tricky to master - creating a brilliant user
well with tapping, swiping, and one-handed operation experience involves a keen eye for design, copy,
• As with many things in life and digital marketing, the and user friendliness.
most elegant user experiences have the simplest
design structures. You wouldn’t fill your shop window An ongoing process - there’s no one-size-fits-all
from floor to ceiling, so try to resist the temptation solution, and you’ll have to monitor how visitors are
to do the same on your website using your site.

Test, and test again - try using growth-driven design

principles to improve your website’s user experience.
Take the free Growth-Driven Design Certification
Course at HubSpot Academy.
 Digital Marketing Techniques
4 PAID SEARCH ADS

Having a great website helps you organically pop up

higher in search results, but you can also leapfrog to the
top of a page of results by using paid search ads linked
to a set of keywords relevant to your brand.

You pay for each click on your ad (which is why these ads
are also known as pay-per-click, or PPC).

Getting an ad into that highly visible area involves winning

an automated auction that takes into account the
price-per-click you bid on a given keyword, as well as the
quality (as determined by SEO principles) of your site.

Example: 4 ads on “Food Delivery” search

“You have one line to catch

their attention and get
them to click your link in a
sea of similar-looking links”
Digital Marketing Techniques
4 PAID SEARCH ADS CONT.
PRO TIPS

GETTING STARTED You know your leads are quality - the people
who clicked on your ad had searched for something
You can have an ad built and online in a matter of minutes you’ve got.
using platforms such as the most widely used Google
Adwords, as well as similar offerings from Yahoo and Fast results - much quicker than waiting for
Bing. Find which keywords your ideal customers would your natural search ranking to rise
search for. Start with a specific description of the product
or services you sell and include your location to help Easily targeted - you can bid by keyword, and
you target the most likely buyers. Instead of ‘knitwear’ by region
(too broad), go for ‘hand-knitted angora sweaters,
North London’. Competitive - common search terms might
be expensive
• Write your ad.
• Who’s your customer? You have one line to catch Text only - you can’t show images or have
their attention and get them to click your link in a sea much control over how your ad will look
of similar-looking links.
• Set your maximum daily budget. Costs - easy to manage, as you pay on a
• Keep in mind that popular keywords cost more per cost-per-click basis
click than less common terms (because other
companies are bidding for them too).
• Use your platform’s conversion tracking.
• If an ad isn’t driving the traffic or sales, reword it,
and test, test and test!

Download the free guide to getting started with Adwords

Digital Marketing Techniques
5 DISPLAY ADVERTISING

Display advertising can be a great means to get your

brand in front of potential buyers when they’re browsing
their favorite sites.

You buy display ads through ad servers that use data

on someone’s recent search and click history to
automatically determine the website and user to show
a particular ad to. In the simplest of terms, display
advertising refers to the use of ads—from text to video
to audio—on a website.

Display advertisements serve as a way for businesses

to monetize their website traffic, as advertisers pay to
have their promotion displayed alongside the content
on the page.

The most common type of display ad is the banner

ad within a website.

Example: Amazon Prime Video Display Ad

Digital Marketing Techniques
5 DISPLAY ADVERTISING CONT.
PRO TIPS

GETTING STARTED Wide reach - Google’s Display Network can reach

over two million websites.
• You can build, post, manage and track ads on Google
Display Network, which also ranks your ad quality Easily targeted - by both context (ads are intended to
to determine how visible it is on the pages it appears. appear on related sites) and audience (who’ve shown
• Pick good imagery - either your own or from your ad an interest in what you’re selling).
server - to win attention and clicks.
• Make it obvious where users can click on the ad, and Eye-catching - you can create simple text or
what happens when they do. Does it take them to your image-based ads, use video, or build interactive ads
homepage, or directly to a product page? in a variety of sizes and shapes.
• Track your clicks and conversions. If you never get clicks
from a particular site, you can exclude it; if a particular Lack of control - you have to trust your ad server to
site and ad win you a lot of conversions, you might want choose where to place your ad, plus you have ad-
to increase how much you spend on the ad. blockers to contend with. In terms of costs,
you’ll usually pay either:
• Per thousand impressions
• Cost per acquisition
• Cost per click
Digital Marketing Techniques
6 SPONSORED SOCIAL POSTS

Having a great social media presence is a prerequisite

for this one. If you’re already writing brilliant content
that shows off what your brand is all about, paying to
promote posts can get those posts into the news feeds
of people who aren’t following you - yet.

You’ll want to find the social networks that your target

audience uses. For example, if you find that 80%
of your target audience is active daily on Instagram,
you’ll want to focus your social media energy on your
Instagram channel.

Example: Instagram Advertising

Digital Marketing Techniques
6 SPONSORED SOCIAL POSTS CONT. • LinkedIn
• Users: 645 million
Here are the top social media channels laid out, but • Audience: Baby boomers, Generation X, and millennials
depending on your audience, they may be using more • Industry impact: B2B
niche social networks. • Best for: B2B relationships, business development,
and employment marketing
Facebook
• Users: 2.2 billion
YouTube
• Users: 1.9 billion
• Audience: Generation X and millennials
• Audience: Millennials, closely followed by Generation Z
• Industry impact: B2C
• Industry impact: B2C
• Best for: Brand awareness; advertising
• Best for: Brand awareness; entertainment,

Twitter and how-to videos

• Users: 335 billion
• Audience: Primarily millennials
Snapchat
• Users: 300 million
• Industry impact: B2B and B2C
• Audience: Primarily Generation Z
• Best for: Public relations; customer service
• Industry impact: B2C
• Best for: Brand awareness; advertising
Instagram
• Users: One billion
• Audience: Primarily millennials
Pinterest
• Users: 250 million
• Industry impact: B2C
• Audience: Primarily older millennials and younger
• Best for: Natural-looking media, behind-the-scenes,
and user-generated content; advertising baby boomers
• Industry impact: B2C
• Best for: Visual advertising; inspiration

To go more in-depth into the social networks, check

out the ultimate guide to social media marketing.
Digital Marketing Techniques
6 SPONSORED SOCIAL POSTS CONT.
PRO TIPS

GETTING STARTED Cheap - cost per click can start at as little as 5 cents

• Choose the social network where your buyer personas Effective - Facebook ads can have a click-through rate
are, and always optimize and test your content up to nine times higher than banner ads on other sites
• You may want to create a post around a new offer
or simply word it to attract users to your page. Easy - you can have a campaign up and running in a
• Do a ‘dry run’ - try out your offer or call to action as an couple of clicks
ordinary post and see what style and wording attract
the most likes, shares, and comments before putting Community management – you need to be prepared
money behind them. to deal with comments and bear in mind that some
• Start with a simple image or video posts and track how users can find business messaging in social spaces
many clicks and follows you get, before moving into annoying. So your content will need to be respectful of
the more complex and expensive formats, like a multi- that difference
image carousel or canvas ads.
• Check out Canva’s post for nondesigners on creating
beautiful social images.

Download your free guide here

Digital Marketing Techniques
7 EMAIL MARKETING

In the process of building your empire, winning new customers

is as important as nurturing the relationships with customers you
already have. Stay in touch with your loyal followers with emails
that go beyond the announcement of new products. Instead,
build connections with:

• Newsletters - increase brand awareness and drive traffic

with what’s new on your site
• Seasonal emails - stay on your customers’ radar with
Christmas or birthday emails
• Exclusive offers - make loyal customers feel special with
the odd discount or gift
• Reminders - if a subscription is ending, drop a friendly email
• Flash announcements - boost sales with flash discounts,
like a 48-hour sale

Check out this example from Brooks Sports.

When Desiree Linden won the 2018 Boston Marathon, she

became the first American woman to win the race in more
than 30 years. To her shoe and apparel sponsor, Brooks
Sports, it was an opportunity to celebrate their long partnership
together. The resulting email campaign focuses almost entirely
on the Olympic marathoner’s amazing accomplishment.

Email campaigns like this one allow companies to demonstrate

their loyalties and add value to the products their best users
have chosen. The blue CTA button at the bottom of the email
reads, “See Desiree’s go-to gear.” What better products to call From HubSpot’s 19 Examples
attention to than the stuff worn by America’s latest legend? of Brilliant Email Marketing
Campaigns
Digital Marketing Techniques
7 EMAIL MARKETING CONT.
PRO TIPS

GETTING STARTED Quick - you can develop and dispatch an email in a

matter of minutes
• Collecting email subscribers depends on the
optimization of your digital marketing efforts: make Builds strong relationships - you can communicate
sure your blog, social media and paid campaigns regularly with the same individuals
are driving to a landing page that’s optimized for
conversion to collect lead information. Cost-efficient - email marketing can be really cheap
• There are dozens of easy-to-use email services
(including Hubspot!) that let you design emails, Easy to ignore - we all receive too many emails, so
manage your address list and track analytics your message can be overlooked
such as the number of opens and clickthroughs.
• Less is more. Figure out a clear objective for every High consequences for misstep - if you send just one
email you send - to promote your new line of soaps, annoying or irrelevant email you run the risk of having
remind customers you exist, get them to download your customer unsubscribe
your app?
• Test, test, test: What types of subject line words result Check out 101 landing page optimization
in the highest number of opens? Where are your tips here
readers clicking?
• If you want to try out email marketing, you
can use HubSpot’s free email marketing tool.
Digital Marketing Techniques
8 NATIVE MARKETING

Native advertising is just the term for a type of advert

that looks and sounds exactly like the content that
surrounds it. Much advertising on social media counts as
‘native’, especially if the style and tone of the ad is similar
to the content surrounding it. Sponsored content
is another important native stream and indeed many
online publishers - like Buzzfeed - have come to rely on
it as an important revenue stream.

For a small business, large-scale publisher partnerships

probably aren’t realistic. But if you’ve got something useful
and interesting to say about a particular issue related
to your business, you could explore having an appropriate
third party site with a similar target market to you publish
your blog articles or any video content you make as
advertorial.
Digital Marketing Techniques
9 CUSTOMER ADVOCACY MARKETING

As we mentioned before, trust is at an all-time low

between people and businesses. So, you’ll want to think
about turning your happiest customers into promoters for
your brand. One way to identify your happiest customers
is to run NPS (net promoter score) surveys. These surveys
measure how likely someone if to recommend your
product or service to someone else.

GETTING STARTED

Survey your customers

NPS is determined by asking customers, “On a scale
of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend to a friend?”
and asking them why they gave the answer they did. In
order to get an accurate NPS, you must ask the above
question and provide a 0-10 numerical scale customers
can choose from. It’s customary and helpful to provide a
blank field where customers can elaborate on why they
gave the answer they did, and although this qualitative
feedback doesn’t impact the overall NPS, it gives you an
idea of areas of improvement you can focus on to raise
your overall score.
Digital Marketing Techniques
9 CUSTOMER ADVOCACY MARKETING

Categorize their responses

Once you’ve collected responses to the question, tally
how many answers you have in each of the following
categories:
• Promoters: People who respond with a score of 9 or 10
• Passives: People who respond with a score of 7 or 8
• Detractors: People who respond with a score
between 0 and 6

As you may have already guessed, promoters are happy

customers who will sing your praises to friends and family, PRO TIPS
while detractors are unsatisfied and not only might churn,
• Once you’ve identified your NPS, you can measure how
but they could dissuade potential new customers from
your marketing efforts (and overall customer success
learning more about you. Passives aren’t highly satisfied,
efforts) contribute to turning more of your customers
so they’re at risk of switching to a competitor. into advocates. Consider tracking this
score over time.
Calculate the score • Identify where your potential customers learn about
Determine what percentage of your respondents are reviews. Where do they go to compare you against your
promoters and what percentage are detractors. Then, competitors? This could be a review site that’s specific
to your industry.
subtract the detractors percentage from the promoters
• Now that you’ve identified Promoters, you’ll want to
percentage to figure out your NPS. If you survey 100
reach out to them to ask if they could leave you a review
customers, and the result is made up of 70 promoters,
(or advocate in other ways) about their experience with
10 passives, and 20 detractors, your NPS would be 50. your company. Encourage your Promoters to speak on
your behalf.
Ready to go
Bearing in mind what we said about the importance of
HELPFUL RESOURCES
keeping things simple and light-touch when you’re
starting out, don’t be afraid to use a combination of
• How to advertise your small business online,
marketing techniques and ideas. It’s useful to think of your
by MOO.
marketing activity as an ecosystem - when all your tactics
• Learn how Sarah Bell successfully launched
(online or offline) work together, the whole is greater than
a candle company by creating a community,
the sum of the parts.
by MOO.
• How do you mix digital and offline marketing?
You might not get it right every time, but if you keep a
14 inexpensive marketing tips for small businesses,
keen eye on the performance of your activity it’s possible
by MOO.
to minimize your risk since you can more or less switch
• Take the free Social Media Certification by HubSpot
your tactics on and off at will. And, while it’s important to
Academy.
focus your attention on what’s working, as you start
• Want more in-depth tips? Check out our ultimate
to gain confidence in digital marketing, and your strategy
introduction to digital marketing.
starts to pay dividends, let yourself have some fun and
• Want more examples? Check out why we think
experiment with different tactics too.
these 7 companies created stellar digital marketing
strategies.
Good luck!
Have a plan in place but not the correct tools to help?
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tools to help you execute your digital marketing
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