Digital marketing pitfalls for small companies

Why do people start businesses?

There are many reasons. Follow a dream? Do something you love, but for yourself and not for a big company? Have a great idea? Spot a gap in the market? There are many different reasons. All of them are exciting – almost intoxicating. Small companies, SMEs, start-ups – we’re all entrepreneurs now.

It’s because people are passionate about what they do, sell or make. They feel empowered in a way that previous generations didn’t. The digital revolution has brought this about and made it possible for people to start businesses without big overhead costs. 

But the bald fact remains that while they may be great at what they do, make or sell, most are not generally experts at digital marketing. They don’t know where to start, they underestimate the effort that’s required, but most important of all, they don’t know a good recommendation from a bad one.

They don’t, for example, know which is the best website platform for them. While they absolutely do know they need to be high up in the Google rankings, they don’t know how to go about achieving that. They don’t know how to establish content marketing, leverage social media or interpret their Google Analytics data. I could go on.

Small businesses get off on the wrong footing

Inspired by their new business, but constrained by what they can afford and – crucially – not knowing enough about digital to enable critical evaluation of ideas and proposals, they are incredibly vulnerable to cowboys – or to bad operators. Tamara and I have witnessed this many times. Small companies – desperate to get started with a website – waste money. And it's money they of course can’t afford to waste.

It’s really frustrating. Here are some examples of what we’ve seen:

• No SEO strategy or any optimisation at all
• Hardcoded pages which can only be edited by the dubious supplier who “designed” the website
• Disastrous user journeys
• Wrongly tagged content (no useful data)
• Out of date practices and design approach

Throwing good money after bad

After a while, however, the penny starts to drop and they start to realise that their website and their digital strategy is not working for them. The phone doesn’t ring. No one adds an item to the basket, footfall doesn’t increase. They look at their competitors… And then they pick up the phone and call people like us. For help.

The way we work is very systematic. We approach a project like this from a rational perspective. Can we fix what’s there, or do we need to start again from scratch? The question really is, what’s in the long term interest? Will trying to fix what’s there actually mean the business loses revenue and market share?

Before we make a recommendation, we audit extensively, research and analyse. Either way, we define a strategy that puts it all right and sets the business up for the future.

Does this sound familiar? Get in touch with Tamara and Alice at ALTA Digital to see how we can get your business off to the right start – or to get it back on the right footing.