Why Digital Marketing Is Important For Small Business
One of my best friend Priyanka is an amazing artist, she has some skills like acting, makeup, styling. She owns a small business in my city. But she is not getting the right clients.
You know why she is losing out in business. Because she is still following the traditional method of marketing. There are many people like Priyanka who are losing out in their businesses.
Gone are the days when people used to give visiting cards and exchange ideas only through personal meetings. The exchange of cards was followed by numerous phone calls just to understand the requirement and later on ( there is a huge possibility out here) the client may not convert( mean the deal may not crack)
My question to you –
How do you decide which mobile phone to buy?
Definitely, you would go to google, set your budget and features you want, read the reviews. You might go to a local shop to find its price (in case you want to be 100 % sure). Just to discover what you were getting online was the best deal. And you just book and buy your product. You just did your big purchase online.
Thanks to digital disruption, customer behaviors are changing. Customers want to buy online. More and more small business owners are coming online and are advertising on the internet. A small business owner having a small shop in your locality might also be advertising on the same platform as big players like Amazon. 72% of companies believed that digital marketing improves their revenue by 30% and this motivated more than 80% of the companies to switch to digital marketing.
Eventually, people started building their website for business and showcase their company profile online to a larger audience. Now instead of visiting cards, we exchange URLs. Instead of meetings we zoom. Instead of catalogue , we see the social media presence. Instead of asking people about the products, we read reviews.
And if you don’t know anything about digital marketing read my first blog here.
Digital Marketing for Absolute Beginners
I will give you 5 reasons : Why should your business be online right now?
1)Your potential customers are online
Traditionally when people used to advertise, it has to be through ads on newspapers or televisions. But now it’s much more easy, affordable and achievable.
Did you know that 88% of consumers who do a local search on their smartphone, visit or call a store within a day?
In fact, nearly 46% of all Google searches are seeking local information. People are searching for you but online.
Source:www.statistica.com
Statistics clearly show most people are sitting online and consuming data. They might be just your ideal customers.
2) Your competitors are online
All your competitors are already there. They are reaching out. They are running ad campaigns. You can achieve more conversions at a much lesser cost. There are people who already are looking out for business like yours. But if you are not there on the internet, how can they find you at the first place. Competitors data can help you to make better decisions.
3)Targetting the right audience at real-time
Taking feedback from customers had never been so easy. One can easily chat and understand the requirement of a user and deliver accordingly. Images and videos can be exchanged at real-time, products catalogue can be viewed from the website. Live chatbots are always there to give virtual assistance to the clients.
If you need more clarity on how your ideal customer is read my blog here
4) Affordable
Money the most important factor for any business or startup. Digital marketing can you an edge without giving you a hole in the pocket.
5)Reputation
Going online is not about sales only. It’s about knowing your customer better and vice versa. When your business is online you make a relationship with your potential customers, you nurture them, you try and understand them and make a long-lasting relationship.
Here are 9 pointer formula from my side to build your business.
Check how businesses are working on there online presence.
1.Website (SEO Content)
You can create a website for your brand for anything you want for like the products or services you are providing etc..This will help your business to rank on google and show your website on the keywords or search words for which you want to be seen on google.
2.Blogs
Writing in an article format about your business or services on a platform like your website, or on another website online. Will let your owners know about you and your business.
3.Online Advertising
A paid version of Good ad’s on Google search engine. You pay Google for every click they drive to your website. Cost per click can sometimes get expensive so must really know what kind of content you want to advertise and its reachability to have maximum output out of it.
4.Video Content
Content which has small clips of you talking about your business and making offers, tips, or just entertain people through a video or series of videos they watch. Can be pre-made and even live clips with Facebook live or Youtube live etc.
5.PPC Advertising
Pay Per Click advertising.
6.Email Marketing
You can personalise the content you post to your audience and at a very deep level. The emails are the best way to reach people in a very personalised manner. It’s like the mail has been made and sent personally for the person.
This is content that you control. You really can’t control all aspects of the other marketing meaning if something happens to Google, Facebook, Instagram, or some other platform then you may lose all your presence all at once.
7.Social Media Marketing
7. Mobile Marketing
You send SMS for notifications for new offers and offering of the company.
I will go in detail in each one in my next blog.
Being a business owner you might not have all the time to market your self online after all you have to attend the meetings in person and do a lot of hard work. For work like this, it requires dedicated time, consistency and marketing mindset, understanding the statistics and trends.
There is no one size, fit all strategy for marketing. It differs for every territory, industry, locality, and user needs. You can hire a marketing agency or consultant who understands your business and take it ahead too.
We do such kind of work and would help you to grow further. To know more contact us here.