Step-By-Step Digital Marketing Strategy For Mompreneurs In San Antonio

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Intro

In the post-pandemic world, businesses can’t do without digital marketing. Many consumers depend solely on the internet to find the products and services they need. 

If you are a mompreneur in San Antonio, it’s time you start preparing your digital marketing strategy. This article will help you.

Most Effective Digital Marketing Channels

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1) Content Marketing

To find customers online, you first need to tell them what you sell. That’s primarily what content marketing does. It’s the delivery of quality content through blogs, social media posts, videos, etc. Take a look at this example:

It caters to customers at all levels of their purchase journey. Moreover, it fills the vacuum created by the absence of a physical setting. You gain the customer's trust and create brand recognition through the content.

2) Email Marketing

It’s the granddaddy of digital marketing but continues to be one of the most effective. It stays relevant owing to its independent existence within the web. This is why the demand for tools like Mailchimp is very high. 

The foundation of emails is the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol or SMTP. This means emails are immune to changes brought in by Google or Facebook. 

Reach is another reason why it’s the perfect digital marketing platform. Most residents in San Antonio have email addresses and check their inboxes daily.

Read: Tips to Improve Your Ecommerce Email Marketing

3) Video Marketing

Higher bandwidth and cellphones have kicked off a boom in video content marketing. 

According to Wyzowl, 70 percent of respondents said they had shared a brand video. It said 72 percent of the businesses improved conversion rate through video content. It also increases customer engagement and perception. 

Here’s an example showing Ahrefs using video on their landing page. 

You can easily develop your video content strategy if you're into blogging. You need to make your blog posts into video scripts and convert them into a video. 

You can either narrate them yourself or use any free media resources for the imagery.

4) Social Media Marketing

People are spending hours on end on social media. And where people hang out, there is marketing potential. Take a look at this screenshot to see how the audience connects with businesses. 

Around 73 percent of digital marketers find social media marketing effective. Also, around 54 percent of users search for products and services on social media platforms. 

Social media marketing is content marketing on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. So, the key to a successful strategy starts with creating quality content.

5) Search Engine Optimization

This has been a buzzword among digital marketers for a long time. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It entails the creation of content on key phrases that users enter on search engines like Google. 

It should, however, be noted that SEO includes backlink building as well. Quality content, together with backlinks, will place your website on the first SERP. This means more users will visit your site. 

Take a look at the below image. These websites secured the top spot using SEO by competing with 8M similar pages. 

The advantage of SEO-driven traffic is that most are pre-qualified leads. People intend to either gather information about a product or buy it. 

6) Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing

If you are short of time and want your business to be placed atop a SERP, choose PPC. Paid search marketing works by placing your ads above organic search results. This means users will see your ad first before the first organic result. 

The only difference in appearance compared with organic results is the‘ ad.’ 

Here’s how it appears on search:

The advantage of PPC is that you pay the advertiser, Google, or any other search engine, per click. As those who click on an ad are mostly pre-qualified leads, the chances of revenue generation are high. 

7) Display Ads

You might find a banner or a pop-up ad on a website that you visit one of these days. These are the display ads, and they are a widely used digital marketing channel.

Display ads have a wide reach and cost less per click than PPC marketing. Distributed through Google Display Network, they appear on millions of sites. Here’s an example of how it looks. 

Note: Display ads have also gained notoriety for disturbing website experience. Poorly made ads annoy users and increase bounce rate. The key to a great strategy is to invest in aesthetics and great copy. 

Step-by-step Digital Marketing Strategies You Can Use

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1) Build a Brand Identity 

Digital marketing is all about selling brands defined by Unique Selling Points (USPs). Ask yourself what sets your business apart and why should a customer choose you? 

For example, here’s a restaurant whose USP targets health-conscious customers. 

Let’s take an example. Suppose you are a mompreneur selling ready-to-eat meals in San Antonio. There are, however, many who sell the same product. So, you decide to set your business apart by offering several benefits to customers. They are:

1. a) Organically cultivated ingredients
2. b) Complete video of food preparation
3. c) A unique ‘elite’ option for regular customers
4. d) Free delivery options and scratch cards 

You also decided to make cleanliness, trust, and health the pillars of your brand. This means you have a well-rounded digital marketing strategy. 

2) Set Your Goals

Setting clear and attainable goals is critical to keeping a business going. As a mompreneur, you may be exposed to many business strategies followed by people around you. The rule of thumb is to set goals by considering your resources. 

If you are unsure about setting a goal for your business, follow the SMART technique. SMART stands for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. This will help set your goals more engagingly. 

How SMART works

There should not be any ambiguity in your goal. You should measure your progress towards those goals and make deductions. Keep track of your resources and how they are utilized.

3) Build Buyer Personas

These are representations of your target customer. To create buyer personas, you need to have:

1. Age group 
2. Employment
3. Income
4. Pastimes
5. Target

If you are new or confused about creating a buyer persona, use Hubspot’s free make my persona tool. Here’s a screenshot to show how it looks:

How Do Buyer Personas Help?

You will know specific preferences your customers might have through your buyer personas. Take clothes, for example. If you are selling garments for the elderly, you may want to focus on ease of wearing and cleaning. 

Use these three tools to create buyer personas:

1. A) Google Surveys: To know what’s selling hot online and who's buying it.

1. B) Facebook Audience Insights: To glean data like education, demography, hobbies. 

1. C) Hubspot Make My Persona:To create simple buyer personas and share them with others. 

4) Know What Buyer Journey is

Content is the fuel of digital marketing. It makes a stronger your customer by offering them the information they need. This information is of three types: 

1. A) Informational

These are for customers in the first stage of their journey. They are seeking information regarding a product you sell. 

1. B) Navigational

Customers in this stage are considering their options. Create content that gives the customer a taste of your product (free trial, sample download, etc.).

1. C) Transactional

The buyer is ready to make a purchase. All they need is a little bit of assurance that your product will meet their need. Testimonials, interviews, etc., will help. 

When the user sees other customers’ experiences on the transactional page, as shown in the image, it influences purchase. 

5) Let Blogging Be Your Focus

Once you understand the sales funnel, the next step is creating content. Having a blog is a great way of reaching out to customers. Here are three tools you'll need. 

1) Buffer

You can use this tool to schedule posts on social media accounts. Buffer also helps you post articles on different platforms under different titles.

2) Canva

Use this tool to make infographics, collages, and other picture-oriented designs. The tool offers many templates for infographics and collages. 

3) Google Keyword Planner

This Google product can help you what topic related to your niche is trending. Create quality blog posts on them, and you will find leads coming your way. 

6) Know Your Competitor

If you want your digital marketing efforts to bear fruit, you need to know who you are up against. This is critical for you to set realistic goals and learn from established players. 

Here are a couple of tools you would need:

• Google AdWords Keyword Planner - This free tool helps determine which keywords your competitor ranks for. You can also use this tool to find out the size of your target market. This also helps eliminate your biggest global competition by helping you choose keywords trending in San Antonio. 

• SpyFu - This tool lets you know all the keywords that your competitor has bought on Google AdWords. That means insight into their content strategy! 
• Owletter - It helps you analyze mails sent from your competitor's website and what type of mail works for them.

7) Optimize Your Marketing Channels

Email marketing, PPC, and SEO are critical digital marketing channels. If you are starting, begin with email marketing. It is effective and has the highest ROI compared with other marketing channels.

You can also focus on SEO to make the most of organic traffic. Traffic obtained through SEO is also highly convertible.

Tip: At the beginning of every year, analyze which channel brought you the most revenue. If strategies like display marketing and PPC are eating into your budget, drop them. 

Now, continue and improve upon channels that did work for you the previous year. 

8) Stay Within Budget 

If you are just starting, staying within your budget can save your business. Almost all marketing channels, even SEO, now demand investment. But you don’t have to spend money on all channels necessarily. 

For example, there are tools available for email marketing. And while those are indeed great tools, you may not need them as a beginner. Many tools allow entrepreneurs to use their services if the mailing list is short.

9) Measure Your Growth

Only if you measure your growth will you reach your target. It will also help you optimize your budget by relocating resources. 

Major KPIs to Measure

1. A)Website visits

This is the total number of visits to your website. This metric will help you analyze your growth in a daily, weekly, and monthly manner. 

1. B) Bounce rate

It happens when a visitor leaves your landing page without visiting any other. A high bounce rate is indicative of poor design, navigation, and low-quality content. 

You can check it using tools like Alexa, GA, or others. It’s believed lesser the bounce rate higher the quality of a site. 

Take a look at this screenshot showing the bounce rate of a San Antonio hotel website. 

1. C) Conversion

It means they did something you wanted them to, like buying a product, downloading a pdf, or filling out a form.

Tip: If you are starting, use Google Analytics to measure most of these metrics.

10) Invest in design

Website design is a critical field many in San Antonio overlook. Creating a visually appealing website is critical to keeping the business going. 

According to studies, visitors judge a business by how its website looks. The design also plays an important role in keeping bounce rates low. It also hastens conversion by helping visitors navigate the website.

Tip: If you plan to redesign the website, optimize it for mobile screens. The website should load within three seconds, even at low internet speeds.

Read: Tips to Increase Page Loading Speed

11) Have Your Marketing Calendar

If you are a sole proprietor, you must have a marketing calendar. This helps you reach the targets you have set. Here are four marketing calendar types:

1) Content calendar

This helps you to create and market content for different channels. If you have a team, a content calendar is a must. You can assign tasks such as creating blog posts and videos to your team and tracking their progress.

2) Blog calendar 

This helps you keep track of the voluminous blog posts you need to update your website and SEO efforts.

3) Social media calendar

Designed for those who bank on social media, it helps you schedule posts and campaigns. A social media calendar looks as in the image below.

12) Have a Plan B Ready

All plans are prone to failure, and, as an entrepreneur, you have to understand that you will not meet all your goals. That’s why you need a contingency plan should any of your plans fail. 

For example, suppose you wanted your website visits to reach 40,000 a day in time. After four months, however, you haven’t even reached 10,000. 

Fortunately, you have already readied a contingency plan. So, you opened more channels, including social media. Using this strategy, you can still attempt to reach the goal you had originally set – 40000 visits a day.

Five Common Mistakes to Avoid in Digital Marketing

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1) Not Devising a Perfect Marketing Strategy

Human beings are hardwired to extract benefits from objects around them. That’s one fact most budding digital marketers fail to observe. They focus on the product and go gaga about its features. 

So, before you design your digital marketing strategy, find your target audience. Once you home in on that, ask yourself these questions:

1. A) What requirements they might have
2. B) What problems are they facing now 
3. C) What problems they might face
4. D) How can my product meet those requirements
5. F) How can my product solve that problem

Find answers to these questions before you devise your marketing strategy.

2) Creating Clickbait Content

Clickbait uses cleverly crafted copy to lure visitors into clicking on a link. Examples are headlines such as “San Antonio mother makes $50K using this technique” are examples. 

Clickbait content, however, almost always disappoints the visitor. The content for such exaggerated headlines would mostly be normal run-off-the-mill type. 

For example, take a look at the below image. This is either false or scientifically hard to believe. It builds a negative impression of your brand.

Continuous use of clickbait content will tarnish the image of your brand. Users will think twice before placing an order or sharing the content you offer. 

You would do well if you give clickbait a wide berth as an entrepreneur. Create unique content in the niche that you like the most.

3) Ignoring Customer Emails 

The customer who takes a few minutes off their busy schedule to send you an email is someone who is:

1. a) A loyal customer who wants to express their appreciation
2. b) A customer seeking redress of a grievance 

Both these customers are equally important. Ignoring their responses will lead to the downfall of your business. If you are a growing business and don’t have time to respond to mail, invest in software that would do the task. 

A simple default mail like “Thank you for your mail. We will contact you soon” can be fed into this software. You can then later review important mails and draft individual responses.

4) Being Stingy 

Refraining from giving offers will lead to a fall in customer satisfaction. According to a study, 91% of customers who redeemed a coupon said they would visit an ecommerce site again.

Moreover, offering discounts will increase the size of the customer basket. That’s because those purchasing items on a discount tend to add more items to the cart than they normally buy at a time. 

They will also be more willing to buy certain items at full price. That's because they believe they have already received a good deal from others.

5) Creating a Website Without a Blog 

Now, imagine a shop and a selection of items for sale. But you don’t have a salesperson to welcome and explain the products to a potential customer. Your shop will have to be shut very soon. 

A blog does almost the same job as a salesperson. It connects with customers in their different stages of the purchase journey. 

For example, you explain how an expectant mother should prepare for delivery in one post. 

On the other hand, you can tell the reader about the products they should buy in advance. And, incidentally, you happen to sell those products! Savvy the connection?

One Bonus Tip

1. I) Post Quality Content on Your Blog

Here are Some Blogs Links from Popular Mompreneur Blogs

1) The Creative Mompreneurs

It's a conference for mompreneurs in San Antonio to come together and support each other. 

2) Mompreneur Effect

This website offers blog posts on tips and interviews of entrepreneurs. It also provides training to women who want to enter businesses. 

3) Techie mamma

Run by a mompreneur, it offers courses and tips on technology. These techs include email marketing, social media engagement, website design, etc. 

4) Resettled Life

A unique business that helps people to sell their belongings at a profit. It also offers consultations to help you decide what possessions you need and whatnot. 

Key Takeaways

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1. Brand your business and set your goals before devising a marketing strategy.
2. Choose marketing channels based on your budget.
3. Begin with channels like email marketing and SEO.
4. Learn what a sales funnel is and create content to target customers on every leg of their journey.
5. Focus on blogging on topics related and relevant to your business, so you have enough material on the web.
6. Always respond to customer grievances, be they negative or positive
7. Prepare a plan B that you can put to use if you fail to reach a goal