Why Digital Marketing is Important for Small Business

Table of Contents

Intro

You might not be a digital marketing expert, but you need to know what it is. Digital marketing is a fancy term for the tactics you use to promote your business online. The good news is that digital marketing is relatively inexpensive and accessible. The bad news is that digital marketing can seem like a huge, complicated task that you don’t know where to start. In this blog post, I’ll tell you why digital marketing is as important as traditional marketing to get a potential customer for the business owner.

Why Digital Marketing Is Important

Your business website should be the first point of contact with your customers. The goal is for your website to be the online equivalent of your business card. If customers can’t find you on Google or Facebook or any other social media platform, your business is unlikely to grow. Your website needs to work on all devices and platforms. That’s why I strongly recommend that you use a mobile responsive design. You need to be present on digital platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to promote your brand. In fact, you need to be on all social media platforms to grow your business. You should also know about the latest technologies so that you can optimize your site for search engine optimization. For small business marketing, digital marketing is the important part.

 

Are You Postponing Digital Marketing?

Your small business is depending on digital marketing to succeed. You’ve just launched your website, and now your task is to get visitors to your site. But you’re just not sure where to start. You’ve heard about social media, but you don’t know if it’s right for your business. I understand. But how would you feel if your family doctor had you make an appointment six months down the road? At least your family doctor will actually see you in person. You won’t get the same kind of service from a digital marketing agency if they send you an email asking if you’re interested in their service. So are you delaying digital marketing? Or do you know what it is, but you’re afraid of what you don’t know? Digital Marketing Is A Great Investment You’ll never know unless you try.

Your Customers Are Online

Even if your customers are offline, they still spend a lot of time online. A 2014 study by Ditto Labs revealed that about 75% of people use the internet in the U.S. at least once a day, while 67% have used it in the past 12 hours. This means that you have the power to reach your customers right from your website. Some small businesses don’t know how to make this happen. In fact, a study by Experian Marketing Services showed that 68% of businesses that could prove that they have more than 50 visitors per week did not provide digital marketing services to them. Your Google Search Traffic is The Best You’ll Ever Get When people search for something online, Google offers a big index of the results.

Your Competitors Are Online

Before we talk about how to use digital marketing to grow your business, let’s talk about how your competition is using digital marketing to grow theirs. First, your competitors are probably using the same tools to reach their goal, as you to drive traffic and traffic to their sites. Consider this common set-up: A site called haleighthespark.com has been around since 2011. It focuses on home décor, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. It only has 23,000-plus visitors a month. Its average time on site is 4 minutes, 14 seconds. It has 600 Instagram followers. It sells a lot of items on Groupon. You might think that the company is trying to flog each and every item on their site to drive traffic to Groupon, but you’d be wrong. Just a week ago, they lasted just over 300 products.

Competitators trying to reach their goal
Customer purchasing from online

Be Accessible to Your Customers

Digital marketing for small businesses is simple and accessible to most people. In fact, you don’t even need to have a website in order to engage with your customers. That’s right – a great percentage of online adults use a digital device, such as a laptop or smartphone. If you have a website and eCommerce store, people can purchase your products through it. On the other hand, if you sell on Facebook or Instagram, users can simply follow your business profile and get the full experience. You don’t need to spend a lot of time working on your online presence. And you don’t need to create an elaborate website to create a successful digital marketing strategy.

Let Customers Come to You

I get it, customers are busy. You want them to buy your products and services, but you don’t want them to call or send you a direct message. But in many cases, you’re not quite ready to make a sale. Think about those times when you’re on the couch, eating a sandwich while you work on your computer. It’s not so easy to call customers up, but you’d really love to say hello. If your potential customers are busy and on the go, then what’s the point of trying to reach them? The good news is that digital marketing solutions have become very easy to use. The bad news is that most businesses have their website, and most customers visit it to get a quick overview of your company before making a decision.

Get to Know Your Target Audience

First, you need to understand your target audience. This is the kind of thing that marketers do before starting a digital marketing campaign. There are many different types of target audiences, and they’re all unique. They can include: Gender (single, married, widowed, divorced, etc.) (single, married, widowed, divorced, etc.) Age (14 to 64) (14 to 64) Race (black, white, Hispanic, Asian, etc.) (black, white, Hispanic, Asian, etc.) Education level (elementary school, high school, college, etc.) (elementary school, high school, college, etc.) Occupation (manager, scientist, teacher, etc.) (manager, scientist, teacher, etc.) Industry (retail, health care, IT, hospitality, food, travel, etc.) (retail, health care, IT, hospitality, food, travel, etc. After considering this factor, you should set your marketing plan to apply any kind of digital marketing technique to any kind of digital platform to reach your target customer.

Businessman selecting their target audience before starting their marketing campaign

Conclusion

If you’re running a small business or a brand, digital marketing is something you need to be considering to create brand awareness as well as to reach the targeted customers.