As a small or medium sized business, you probably have never pictured yourself as capable of competing with big companies with entire marketing departments and million dollar budgets. When business gets slow, you struggle to keep your head above water and riding the waves of success feels like a long way off.
Digital marketing has changed the playing field for everyone, but especially for small to medium sized businesses who can now compete and grow in ways that they weren’t previously able to. Everything from cost to customer interaction is different online, and these changes work in a way where if you have a strong digital strategy placed in capable and professional hands, your small business will be able to able to compete in a big way.
Targeted
Digital marketing allows your efforts to be more targeted.
From Search Marketing to Instagram ads, you set the parameters for who and what you want to target your marketing to. Choose keywords that are relevant to your business, age ranges for customer bases and specific locations or times of the day for your ads to run. The targeting aspect of digital marketing means that no matter how big or small, you know exactly where your marketing budget is going. You won’t waste money just throwing your ad out into the world and hoping it sticks to the right potential customer.
Cost-effective.
In this way, digital marketing is also more cost-effective.
You generally pay for results in the form of clicks, impressions or views which is helpful when you have a small budget and need to know you’re paying for results rather than chance. The cost is also simply lower for advertising, especially in the form of social media ads, PPC campaigns and content, when compared with traditional ad channels.
Connection
In many ways, it can seem like our obsession with all things digital is pulling us farther away from human connection, but in reality, digital platforms make it easier than ever to connect. For the purposes of your business, digital platforms such as social media, blogs, reviews and other forums provide a way to connect with your customers and potential customers.
Not only does this provide you with a way to get feedback and to easily reach your audience, but it also allows you to build a strong brand that customers can connect with and thereby build interest and loyalty. When a customer feels a connection to your brand, whether it’s through a funny Instagram photo or an informative infographic, they’re more likely to use your brand, or, as the word social implies, tell other people about your brand.
Analytics
As we know, the internet and our personal technology hold a sometimes frightening level of information about us. On the bright side, it also holds a lot of useful data about your business, website traffic and customer information. There are both onsite and third party options for retrieving these types of marketing data.
However you choose to get it, analytics are crucial to creating and modifying digital strategy.
The more data you can get up your customers and their behavior the better. Data analysis can inform decisions from what photo to use on the homepage of your website to which keywords to target on your PPC campaign.
Digital marketing makes it easier to keep your head above water so you can focus on growing your business. The quick turn around and wealth of data allow you to make on the spot adjustments so you never waste time or money on something that isn’t working for you.
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