Your digital marketing plans for 2024 should be considered like a road map.

Marketing, but especially digital marketing evolves constantly. Therefore, to have a digital marketing plans for 2024 in place, you need to adopt the most relevant strategies for your business.

With a robust marketing plan in place at the end of what has been a rubbish year for most business for the dawn of the new year, you will be in a better position to allocate your time, money and other resources.  You will be prepared to take steps for business promotions and growth, and also be able to make your company stand out from your competitors.

This is the final part of a 3-part series of articles looking at how to develop a robust and deliverable marketing strategy for your business in 2024. You can find the other articles here, article 1, article 2

Check out 5 more of the best ways to update your marketing strategy in the list below.

Take advantage of free tools available

Digital marketing isn’t always about things that cost money.  There are plenty of elements you can access for free.  Some of them hold more value than others and invariably you won’t need all of them, just those that are relevant to your business.Google analytics (GA) – The number one free digital marketing item all businesses need.  Any business that has a website should have GA tags added to their site.  Your web developer can do this, if you can’t do this then there are plenty of youtube tutorials.  If you still need help get in touch with a marketing agency like Bluespace Media. Google My Business (GMB) – Again this is a vital digital asset every small business needs, and yes its free.  It’s easy to set up, simply register a gmail address and you are away.  The key to making a GMB profile work for you is ensuring the content is regularly updated and you post on this profile as Google uses these profiles in their Local SEO algorthim

Shop functionality in FB & Insta – There has always been a shop function, but this has now been upgraded and is now seen as a decent ecommerce option for small businesses.  It’s a little bit more tricky to set up with all the recent changes to FB, but again there is plenty of support out there in terms of forums and video tutorials.

Maximise your digital marketing plans for 2024 with the free tools available

Website and SEO checkers – there are loads of these out there.  We have one!  If you are concerned  or just want to check on your site before upgrading it or ditching it.  It is worth using one of these checkers.  It will highlight the good, the bad and the ugly and give you some key information, meaning you can make a more informed decision about the direction you need to take and of course how much you may want or need to consider to invest.

There is so much out there to access, other key areas where there is FREE stuff;

Social media schedulers – such as Hootsuite these are massive time savers

Images – there are a number of free to access image site such as shutterstock.  Remember to credit the photographer if you use an image

Planning apps – such as Trello can be very effective to help you with managing your digital marketing plans.

2) Local SEO

This is a key digital marketing consideration for all small businesses.  Especially those who operate in a fixed radius of their home postcode.  Google now has a separate algorithm for local search.  Local search is when someone types in their postcode or a town of where they are looking for a product or service, or when they type near me.

The key elements to local SEO are ensuring your NAP (name address phone number) listings are accurate and identical across the internet. Customer reviews with via google, facebook or other third party sources. Regular content added to your website, socials or online listings.

For more information on Local SEO click here

Voice search is set to be over 70% of all searches in 2024

Voice search is estimated to be as high as 70% of all searches made on the internet in 2024.

So what’s going to help in this area?

Being conversational, you should get on to question-based searches. Consider how common questions will be relevant to your business – queries beginning with ‘how’ are the most popular.

It’s also worth noting that it favours content from social media, especially when looking for video or images.  So working on your social media strategy is a great idea at this point.

Again, it helps to think of the user and their thought process when doing searches. ‘What’ or ‘who’ questions tend to be asked when beginning research and ‘where’ queries suggest that they’re ready to act.

Voice search is great for local businesses

Voice searches are more likely to be localised as they’re often off-the-cuff queries.

This plays into the hand of businesses in a physical space because of the common ‘near me’ search, like ‘restaurants near me’ or ‘barbers near me’.

Improving your Google My Business rating will help you greatly here. It’s also worth getting your listing on other directories like Yell.com.  And other search engines like Yahoo & Bing!

Ideally you need to keep the information as consistent as possible across all of these platforms.

Those which have positive reviews will fare best.

You should still keep up any main SEO activity.  This involves converting long-tail keywords into conversationally-worded searches, securing reciprocal links and giving or getting reviews on your business.

4) Coupon & deal sites

If you have a product or service that people can buy from your website.  Then creating a deal or offer exclusively on a site like Wowcher, or Groupon is a great marketing initiative.

Ok, the downside is having to give up a chunk of profit initially, but if you have additional products or services to eventually sell then the value is long term.  Get a customer , look after a customer, keep a customer. The additional benefits are that these sites have massive traffic volume and so can be an effective way to reach more eyeballs as opposed to having to spend on digital advertising.

Customers can help shape your marketing

If you create a useful customer survey, it’s well worth the task, even if it’s not easy to execute. Surveys help you gather a large volume of data quickly on a given set of questions. Customer surveys give you the opportunity to poll your users on questions that could otherwise remain unanswered.

Invariably they will tell you honestly, why they picked you, why they continue to work with you.  The good and bad of what service levels they receive.  They are also useful to test your ideas on for new products and services.

Another great way to prove your worth is through the creation of compelling case studies that tell others about the positive impact your product or service has had on any of your existing customers.

If you would like more information or understand how Bluespace Media can help you and your business with your digital marketing strategy for 2024 Get in touch via our website

You are also welcome to a FREE copy of our “How to make your small business an online success.” Send an email to Hello@oldsite.bluespacemedia.co.uk It is available to buy on Amazon for only £3.99 of FREE to access if you have a Kindle account.