As we are fond of repeating at Deluxe Web, getting a website is just the first step to being successful online. In order to market your business effectively on the web, you have several options…
- Pay someone to do it for you
- Train your team to do it for you on an ongoing basis
- Learn how to do it yourself
Most of our clients are self-employed or have very few employees, or budgets that don’t stretch to hiring a dedicated marketing company, which lands us squarely in the land of learning how to do it yourself. Yep – learning takes time, but once you’ve acquired the skills, you can put them straight to work.
Here are a selection of websites that should prove to be extremely helpful in getting you or your team clued up with digital marketing…
DigitalMarketer
DigitalMarketer’s mission is to double the size of 10000 businesses in the next 5 years. To that end, their site is full of advertising and marketing resources that are accessible and highly useful. They’re certainly in it for the money, too, mind you, but they give away a ton of useful advice, videos, and downloads of all kinds. They also run certified training courses. It’s worth bookmarking the blog or subscribing to the podcast. This site is full of excellent clear articles and resources.
HubSpot
Hubspot essentially make Customer Relationship Management software, but they also provide a wealth of information for inbound marketers, and feature 3 blogs helping you with marketing, sales and service support. Hubspot also run certified training programmes to get you up to speed with various aspects of digital marketing. It’s a user-friendly, and easy to navigate website that isn’t too technical, and caters for newbs as well as seasoned pros.
Google Digital Garage
It’s obviously in Google’s interest to help you get to grips with their advertising platforms, but the free certified course they’ve created is well worth completing. It’s particularly good for small business owners who are somewhat new to online marketing. The course is broken down into modules covering things like search advertising, social media, local business, and analytics. You’ll get a shiny certificate to display to the world at the end of it. I’ve got mine!
Social Media Examiner
A great site for all things social media. This site has a nice friendly feel and caters for newcomers as well as experienced users. The blog contains news, a podcast, how tos, research, reviews, tools and opinions. There’s also a good jump-start page that helps newcomers to social media get up to speed…
Kim Garst
Forbes named her as one of the Top 10 Social Media Power Influencers. I like Kim Garst’s blog because it’s readable and jargon-free. Anyone can start here. Great content that’s always relevant, and aimed at small businesses and entrepreneurs.
Kissmetric’s Blog
The Kissmetrics blog is all about using analytics, marketing and testing. You need to understand customer behaviour in order to make systems that convert, and analytics are one of the greatest windows into behaviour. Get the most from your website by learning how to interpret website usage and behaviour with the Kissmetrics blog.
Informi
Informi is a UK-based small business advice website, so although there’s a section on online marketing and whatnot (here: https://informi.co.uk/articles/how-do-i-market-my-business-online) there’s also lots of other information on running a business that may be of help here for startups and entrepreneurs, such as managing people, finances, time management, setting up a business, legal, technology, and of course, marketing.
Copyblogger
Copyblogger is a great resource for content marketing. If you’re struggling to write content that engages people, or your ads are not performing as well as you’d like, this website can help you learn how to write great content, whether it’s for email marketing, social media, or your blog.
Marketing Profs
Marketing Profs has one of the most extensive libraries on online marketing around. There’s a large range of categories too. If you’re looking for a particular subject, this website is a good place to start. There’s articles, podcasts, tutorials, online seminars, guides and reports. Bookmark this one for sure.
Duct Tape Marketing
Duct Tape Marketing is a blog aimed at helping small businesses with online marketing. In addition to their blog, I really like their Guides section, which contains a local business guide, content marketing guide and marketing strategy plan among others.