The importance of a digital marketing strategy to small businesses can not be over-emphasized as more online shoppers are on the increase daily. According to Retail Dive, 87% of people search for products or services to buy online. And these people are searching for what your product or services can solve for them online.
You might be thinking why the market is that large right?
In this article, I am going to be sharing with you the importance of a digital marketing strategy to small businesses and how it has helped shape and position many small businesses for sales and visibility online.
At the end of this article, you will have a perfect understanding of how this marketing strategy can help you strategize your business and also, the best strategies you can start using to increase your sales and brand visibility online.
Contents
The Importance Of A Digital Marketing Strategy To Small Businesses:
1. Helps Build Relationship With Customers
one of the importance of a digital marketing strategy to small businesses is creating good and lasting relationships with their customers. Due to the high number of businesses on the internet right now, it is easier to lose customers than to retain customers right now.
Adopting different forms of digital marketing strategy to your business will help you build that customer and business relationship easily.
Most businesses believe that It’s easier to build a relationship with customers the traditional way than the digital way of marketing which makes them avoid using digital marketing for their business.
But I can categorically tell you that building relationships with your customer the digital way is very easy when you have the right digital marketing strategies in place.
How do you start building relationships with your customers online:
- Testimonials from your past customers are a great way to build relationship with your new and existing customers. Make sure this testimonials are well distributed on all your social media platforms so as to reach as many of your customers and potential customers as possible.
- Engaging your customers on social media through content is another great way to build a good relationship with your customers. Always make sure you want to create contents that help them solve their problem.
2. Small Businesses have the same opportunity as big Businesses to grow and make sales
I know you might be thinking that as a small business owner, you cannot make it or make sales using digital marketing because of the bigger businesses already adopting these strategies. Using digital marketing as a small business owner gives you an equal opportunity with the bigger businesses if you can come up with a good marketing strategy for your business. There are enough customers to go around when it comes to marketing your product or services online.
3. Targeting/knowing who your customers are:
Having the right digital marketing tools can help you identify who your ideal customer is, what they are doing, and who they are interacting with. Using digital marketing tools like Google Analytics, Google search Consoles, SEMrush and other professional tools can help you know your customers and what they need.
This helps you create better content on your social media platforms because you know what resonates with your audience better.
This is what the traditional way of marketing will not offer you. Traditionally, you are limited to knowing everything concerning your customers but in the digital way of marketing, you can know a lot about what your customers want/need.
4. Increases Brand Visibility
One of the importance of a digital marketing strategy to small businesses is that you can tell your audience who you are and how your product or services is the solution to their problems without paying for it.
Unlike the traditional way of marketing, you have to use millions of naira to showcase your product and services through billboards, newspapers, magazines, and others.
With digital marketing, you can increase your visibility online by utilizing different channels of digital marketing in your business.
The more your audience sees you on different social channels, the more your brand stick in their heads.
5. Digital Marketing is less expensive than traditional marketing
Applying digital marketing to your business is less expensive when compared with the traditional way of marketing. This is why it is probably one of the importance of a digital marketing strategy to small businesses because it is low-budget marketing you don’t want to start utilizing. Let me give you an example of why it’s less expensive than traditional marketing.
- Designing and printing a banner is roughly N29,000 and above. But when you apply digital marketing strategy to your business, you can use free professional tools like Canva to design a professional banner and download it and use it for your advert or post online.
- To advertise your business on Billboards, Magazines, Newspaper, Radio, Tv in Nigeria is roughly ₦200,000 to ₦3 million. But with digital marketing, you can advertise your product or service to thousands of your audience with as low as ₦500 and above.
Adopting digital marketing as one of your strategies to your business will save you a lot of money while increasing sales.
6. It helps to stay ahead of your competitors
Most of the businesses that are offering the same product or services as you are not even adopting these strategies yet. This will give you an edge over them. most of their customers are online and also buying things online. You can win their customers to start patronizing and trusting you.
7. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is another important strategy you can adopt to start making sales online. Influencer marketing is simply giving your product or services to social media influencers, public figures, or celebrities to influence your product or services to their audience.
The importance of doing this is that it will boost your sales and brand visibilities. Your brand will be seen by thousands of their fans which will make them trust your brand more because a public figure is recommending your product or services to them.
8. A Business can measure its Return On Investment(ROI)
Unlike the traditional way of marketing, you can measure how your money is being spent and what profit you are making when investing in digital marketing. There are a lot of tools you can use to track your spending on advertisements on social media.
9. Digital Marketing offers different channels for boosting sales
With a good digital marketing strategy, you can boost your sales from different channels ranging from social media advertising, SEO, Content Marketing, Local SEO, Google Ads, PPC, and many more, you can increase your sales.
Combining all these channels of online marketing can generate massive sales for your business.
We cannot talk about the importance of a digital marketing strategy to small businesses without mentioning ‘AUTHORITY’. When you put your business in front of your audience digitally and create contents that resonate with your audience and also contents that help them to solve their problem, they will see you as someone that has authority in your line of business.
People only buy from someone they trust. When potential customers see you as an authority figure in your field of business, they will trust you enough to buy whatever product or service you are offering.
What Digital Marketing Strategy Should You Start Using As A Small Business?
Now that you have known the importance of a digital marketing strategy to small businesses, you are thinking about which strategy you should start implementing to start getting results quickly?
As a business owner, you should not be afraid to test different marketing strategies and compare the result to know what works for your business and what does not work.
When you do this, you will be able to narrow down and focus more on strategies that work best for your business
Let me share with you a few digital marketing strategies you can start using for your business right now.
1. Content Marketing:
Before you start with content marketing, you will need a well-optimized website to house your content which will then be crawled on search engines and then be made available to your audience.
The first thing you want to do as a business owner is to have a responsive website that is user-friendly and then start creating content that solves people’s problems in your niche.
This is a good marketing strategy to start with as a small business because you can get traffic to your website for free and turn those traffic into paying customers.
2. Social Media Marketing:
Social Media is a very powerful tool you should start using as a small business. There are many social media platforms you can utilize but you cannot use all of them. You want to use the social media platform that works best for your business.
If your business is for professionals, you want to start using LinkedIn. If your business is visuals, you want to start using Instagram or Facebook. And also know who your target audience is, which will give you an insight into what social media platform you should be using.
3. Social Media Advertising:
After knowing what platform is best for your business, you should utilize social media advertising which will give you more brand awareness and sales. This is another strategy that other businesses are using and you don’t want to be left out as a business.
4. Pay Per Click Marketing:
In simple terms, Pay Per Click Advertising requires you to pay when someone clicks on your advert. This advert is going to be on Google’s first page of the search engine. This is a very good marketing strategy because as a small business, you want your audience to find you on the first page of the Google search engine as soon as possible. Big companies are using this strategy, even though they have good brand visibility, they are constantly making sure that when their audience searches for them, they are the first to show up on search engines.
5. Search Engine Marketing:
Search Engine Marketing and Content writing also work together. Search engine marketing is simply writing optimized content that people want to see on search results. There are a few things to look at when it comes to search engine marketing which are:
- On page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
- Technical SEO
These things will determine how often your content shows up in the Google search result.
In simple terms, On-Page SEO is simply optimizing the pages and content on your website and also the keywords you want to use to rank that website on the search engine which increases visibility for your business.
Off-Page SEO is actions taken outside of your website to ensure that your website is ranking on search engines. Actions like Linking building, Content sharing on other platforms that link back to your website, and so on.
While Technical SEO is optimizing the technical aspect of your website like the speed of your website, image optimization, and so on.
CONCLUSION
You have to start utilizing these strategies as a small business. You have taken the first step of knowing the importance of a digital marketing strategy to small businesses. Never give up on digital marketing when one strategy doesn’t work for your business. You have to continue to test different strategies before arriving at the best one that works for you.
If you think these strategies for small businesses are difficult, you can as well seek the assistance of a digital marketing agency while you focus on improving other areas of your business.
So far, I have outlined some of the importance of a digital marketing strategy to small businesses plus ways by which they can be carried out in order to get results.
Do you think I have I have written well or do you have questions about the importance of a digital marketing strategy to small businesses? Then leave me a comment in the comment section below.
