Digital marketing can be the most effective way to get exposure for your small business, but it can also be a really complicated process to learn. Especially for business owners who are busy running their businesses and taking care of clients.

In this article I will simplify digital marketing into 2 steps, getting traffic to your website, and converting that traffic into leads and sales.

Traffic

There are many ways to generate traffic to your website. The important point to keep in mind is that the better the quality of the traffic, the better your results will be. There are basically 2 ways to get traffic- free or paid.

PAID

• Online Advertising – Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads etc
• Influencer Marketing
• Solo Ads

FREE

• Search Engine Optimization
• Blogging
• Social media
• Forum posting

Using a combination of both paid and free methods is the best approach. If you have the budget for it, paid sources will get traffic to your site fast, whereas free traffic sources are more of a long-term strategy.

Conversions

Getting people to your website is the first step, the next step is getting people to take an action when they visit your website. This could be buying your product or service, filling out a lead capture form or any action that is important to your business.

Some ways to ensure that your website is optimized for conversions are:

• Make sure the load time of your site is fast
• Your site is mobile optimized
• The layout of your website is intuitive and user-friendly
• The copy is clear and conveys your unique selling proposition
• Have a strong call to action
• Make appropriate use of pop-ups and lead capture forms
• Create a compelling lead magnet

Most small business owners neglect to optimize their website for conversions and are happy to just have a website up and running, but if you are paying for traffic or investing time to get traffic to your website you must make sure that you get a return on your investment by getting sales or capturing leads.