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One in five consumers will stop considering a small business they haven’t been to before if it doesn’t have a website or online presence, yet 40.5% of SMBs don’t have one. Using the right digital tools and platforms is essential to finding new customers (and helping them choose you).
Here are some digital marketing tips that'll increase, awareness, customer retention, and revenue.
Build a brand
The terms "brand" and logo" are often used interchangeably. But, although a logo can be the symbol of a business, it is not the entirety of a brand. In fact, creating a logo is just one small step toward developing a strong brand identity. With millions, if not billions, of businesses trying to make a name for themselves, having a strong brand has become crucial for businesses to differentiate themselves from their competitors.
Brand identity is more than just finding the right logo to place on coffee cup sleeves or mount above your front door. It's about crafting a personality that amplifies the core elements to your brand's DNA. Today, the most magnetic brand identities scale across digital platforms, IRL experiences, and even naturally converse with real customers.
A brand is a feature — or set of features — that distinguish one organization from another. A brand is typically comprised of a name, tagline, logo or symbol, design, brand voice, and more.
Brand identity, then, is the aspect of branding that focuses on your brand's personality, as well as the values you convey to customers.
Grow your email database
The easiest way to do this is by using a loyalty platform, which is why we partnered with loyalty powerhouse, Marsello. Marsello lets you create a custom loyalty program that runs on auto-pilot integrated with Bopple and Lightspeed. Run your customer loyalty program and marketing across all your venues and online ordering, allowing your customers to automatically earn points and effortlessly redeem rewards at checkout. With Marsello and Bopple, you can now offer your customers a more rewarding experience that strengthens customer loyalty and brand advocacy.
Alternatively, try incentivising your customers to leave their email address with you. Whether that's from them purchasing within your store or when they've gone through your online store checkout. Once you've got email addresses, start sending monthly emails to your customers with things like; new menu items, specials, discounts, or other exciting news that happens within your community.
Start using social media ads (Facebook + Instagram)
I'm not going to go into huge detail about this because we'll create a blog post specifically on this topic. However, you can always get started by boosting your current content that's already on your social media pages.
Boosting a post with parameters set to reach your target market, or people that fit your ideal buyer persona, saves you money from advertising to people who won’t derive value from the product or service you’re offering. You can make your brand’s identity more well-known and recognisable with repetition coupled with engaging content. By boosting posts on social media platforms that your target audience frequents most, you can increase brand awareness.
Please note, we highly recommend starting off with a reasonable budget, gauging those results, and then increasing if you feel confident enough. $5/day is a great starting point.
Create engaging and consistent social media content
Consider using a variety of post styles. The majority of your posts should be photos that showcase your food, staff, or location, with no text needed. If possible, add a mixture of videos to your posting calendar. Reels and video content always perform better and have a higher reach. However, use images with text overlay sparingly. Images with too much text included can make the page look too busy.
Encourage your customers to take photos of their food and share the content. Adding your social media handles and branded hashtags to the bottom of your menu, or within your own social media posts, encourages your customers to use these and tag you. Consider this free advertisement to their follower base! It's an extremely low cost solution to getting new customers and brand awareness.
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