This blog is the last in our series where we’ve been exploring why every small business should use the flywheel marketing strategy to bring clarity, structure, and growth to their business.
We’ve already covered steps one, two, and three of the flywheel marketing method which assist in helping to identify your audience, create clear messaging, build a strong-foundation with a customer-focused, SEO-optimized website, and implement a content marketing strategy that includes a marketing sales funnel.
The last step in this marketing strategy for small businesses is to create an internet marketing strategy that includes social media, paid ads, and more.
Let’s review the four phases that make up the flywheel marketing strategy.
As a quick reminder, the flywheel marketing method is a small business marketing strategy where your website and online marketing efforts are in sync and function as a flywheel to continually produce results.
The four-step flywheel marketing system includes:
- Understanding your audience and creating clear messaging
- Building a strong foundation with a lead generation website and SEO
- Creating SEO-based content marketing and setting up a marketing sales funnel
- Promoting your services and content
Let’s review the final phase of the flywheel marketing method—promoting your content, services, and sales funnel through internet marketing.
Successful internet marketing is more than posting to your social media channels.
Have you ever wondered why your social media posts don’t drive new business? Many small businesses think that simply posting to their social media channels will be enough, but thanks to ever-changing social media algorithms, that isn’t how it works anymore.
In order to reach and connect with your ideal clients, you have to get your content in front of your audience. Since organic social media is no longer a dependable resource to reach new prospects, the last phase of the flywheel marketing method includes helping your audience find your website and content through:
- Social Media Ads
While organic social media’s reach may be down, social media advertising is a highly effective and arguably very affordable way to reach your best customers. It will be important to understand your audience’s wants and needs as well as where they are engaged.
The goal of your ads is to gain a click. You’ll need to create compelling headlines, copy, and imagery to do so. Remember—your customer is the hero of your marketing stories, not you. They are more than likely in the awareness stage of the buying process, so you’ll need to get them to want to engage, solve a problem, or find out more information.
The goal of social ads isn’t to “sell” something. It’s to gain interest shown by getting the click. - Google Ads
When people are looking for a product or service or if they have a question, most turn to Google. With Google ads, you can ensure that your website and content are among the first listed via Google search.
When adding Google ads to your internet marketing strategy, it’s good to remember that the clicks you earn from this platform are more “ready-to-buy” prospects. They are looking for a solution to a specific problem or an answer to a specific question.
Again, the goal is to get quality leads to click on your ad—but it still shouldn’t be a “sales-based” ad. It should be something that will help them make their buying decision a little easier. - Nurture Email Campaigns
Once prospects take you up on your lead generator or opt in, the conversation shouldn’t stop after they’ve received your marketing sales funnel emails.
You’ll need to continue to engage with them via nurture email campaigns—which can include regular emails featuring valuable content you’ve curated, like tips, inspiration, updates, product announcements, and nearly anything that serves your ideal clients well. It’s important to bring value with these emails and not strictly a sales-based focus. - Targeted Email Campaigns
Emailing your entire email list is great, but you’ll likely find even more success through targeted email campaigns. These subsections of your audience who have already expressed interest in specific products, services, or types of content will benefit from valuable content you’ve created, helpful tips, and more.
Organic social media should continue to be a part of your internet marketing strategy.
In our experience, there are two types of social media posting; SEO-based and true organic posting. Let’s break down the differences.
SEO-Based social media indirectly influences the factors that impact your search rankings. And, it's important because it has the potential to drive quality web traffic to your blog and services pages, and includes sharing:
- Blog posts
- Industry news and trends
- Service highlights
- Testimonials and reviews
- Before and after pictures
- And more
But, these types of posts are not designed to drive engagement or increase sales. This strategy is used to help Google trust you a little bit more. These posts basically tell Google that you are who you are and do what you say you do. SEO-based social media posts should be a portion of your overall SEO strategy by adding in 3-4 posts per week to the platforms your target audience is using.
On the flip side, your main social media content should educate and entertain. This doesn’t have to be a big production—clear sound, great lighting, and helpful content is really all you need. However, your organic social posts shouldn’t be long, boring, and only talk about what you want your ideal customer to know. Remember, you should be the guide in all of your content and marketing messaging.
Additionally, it will be important to turn any long-form content (podcasts, videos, etc.) into short-form content (YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikTok videos) to help educate and solve problems for your audience. In reality, you should be able to get 10-14 organic posts out of one piece of long-form content.
And, to be clear, we’re not telling you not to have fun with your social posts—we just want to ensure that “fun” isn’t all that your ideal customers are getting. You can throw in some trending strategies—but remember, your goal should always be to give, give, give, and give some more when it comes to organic social media content. Don’t try to sell—just give.
As you’ve seen in this series, the flywheel marketing strategy does take quite a bit of work upfront. But, the investment of time and money is worth it, because once every piece is in place, your marketing will more or less continue to work on its own if you keep feeding it great content.
It’s also extremely important that you set key metrics and review your internet marketing strategy outcomes on a regular basis.
By implementing this small business marketing strategy, you’ll stop spending time and money on marketing tactics that don’t produce results and finally see the growth you’ve been working so hard to achieve.
Small businesses deserve to have a marketing strategy and partner that works as hard as they do.
Treefrog Marketing is a marketing agency for small businesses located in Lafayette, Indiana that builds effective marketing strategies and systems that help small business leaders take their companies to the next level. We specialize in marketing leadership, strategic marketing and advertising, digital marketing, graphic design, web design, social media, SEO, and more. For more information, please visit our website. You can also connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
