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Why Digital Marketing is Important for Small Business
When any entrepreneur starts a business, she needs people to walk in her door of business place. This is possible because of the ads, coupons distributed, local promotions and banners and other publicity. She believes that since she is offering a better product at a very reasonable price, somehow it will affect the buyers and they will visit her business in hordes.Digital marketing strategy is one of the vital and essential parts of marketing aspect. In fact for establishing online presence it is one of the main pillars of digital marketing strategies.
While this strategy gets her a small trickle of consumers coming, there is a better and simpler way to do it. She must think of the huge market which is available online. No small business, no matter how fresh and having best quality products they have, should ignore this tremendous market potential.
Benefits of Online Marketing
The community of potential customers online is obviously a much bigger and different group of people than she attracts at the local level. Using digital marketing is more beneficial since you can present ourselves to a gigantic audience number. No salesmen, no big sales setup, it becomes cost-effective, scalable and properly verifiable and measurable.
She will get to know her audience and make it possible to know you personally. This is a very good way to create brand loyalty.
Other advantages of online marketing are:
- You can interact with your customers and know their tastes, likes, dislikes. You just do not focus on plain selling but long-term relationships.
- The global marketplace is on your fingertips.
- You economize by approaching more potential buyers for less money as compared to orthodox methods of marketing and publicity.
- You can track their responses of your marketing efforts without delays.
Are You Postponing Digital Marketing?
Why choose to postpone something which has an upper hand over the old methods and is still cheaper and more effective. Procrastination is never a solution – it is an additional problem you create.
Many Small business owners sometimes think that they don’t have the resources to face the online competition. They believe that they can only take up limited number of challenges and that it is doubtful whether the new system will work or not. Many of these prefer to use the traditional methods of advertising and then gradually while they expand, they will take on the latest online systems. But the thing is their competitors are already online, the pandemic lockdown has shown the need to be in constant touch with your customers.
Let us discuss an actual example of a business person who is selling clothes of modern designs, if you depend 100% on the local advertising in the newspaper your product presentation may not reach each and every potential buyer. This also means that you are missing out on the audience which nowadays relies on online references to make a choice.
They do this since they can make an informed choice with rational comparisons of price, quality, brand, durability and other factors. By the traditional way they may be waiting for their customers to get exposed to their ad campaigns and visit them. Since they defined themselves as a small business, they assume that they only need a small number of customers. Is there any harm in getting new business?
This is not a rational and right point of view. You cannot get a guarantee that you will get the right number of customers automatically. Just a shop front is not an assurance that your customers will visit you. You need to consider the profitability and use all good means to reach your audience wherever they may be. Online digital marketing gives you this opportunity to “meet” them.
Your Customers Are Online
Do you believe you are still not ready for digital marketing? You feel you need more time to take a call on this.
The issue with this approach is that your customers are already online looking for you at present. Right now, and that too Today. Assume you are selling some special type of tea and a certain group of people prefer it, the chances are they are searching and if you are not online you lose the opportunity to get more business. If you are unavailable online so that they cannot find you easily, they will select somebody else.
Today everybody searches on the net for bargains, quality, right product, easy deliveries, and best service. From retailers to housewives, students, businessmen and all buyers.
They expect that if they search online, they will find your social media presence, your website, your Facebook page, and your presence on other platforms. They may be searching for genuine reviews so they can know what others are opining about your company and products, and even more important whether it is a good place to do business.
If a potential customer cannot see you online, they may also conclude that your business may not be genuine A possibility is that a lot of these searchers may conclude to take your business seriously and they will soon move on to some other business.
If they decide once, chances are they will never return to you.
All Your Competition has An Online Presence.
Learn from your competitors. Internet has created an infinite opportunity for buyers and sellers. Think of the most common object a smart phone. It is available on all big aggregator sellers online, company websites, private websites, and thousands of other online sellers. Consider your competitors not just as someone that you are planning to go ahead of, but as people who will make you learn the ropes of modern online marketing war.
If you study your competing businesses, you will get some idea of what may work and what may not. The probability is that whatever products or services you are dealing in your competitors are already online. What is the content, which is driving the consumer traffic to their website, which videos, what blogposts, which platform?
How do they make their brand popular and a unique selling proposition? What drives the buyers to them? Do you think you can do better than they are doing? You cannot do this if you do not take part in the online big game.
If your potential buyers look for a business like yours and reach your competitors’ website but not yours, your business is not even in the race – you are just sitting by. If not now, then after some time the winner will be who goes online and reaches the right prospects. These prospects cannot come to you if they don’t know about you. And the best way is to have an engaging online presence. In this scenario, you are far ahead of you whether good product or service, or not.
So become aware of this phenomenon which is changing the buying habits and effecting great consumer shifts. Think of this, earlier we used to buy these products by vising a shop, or we got it delivered to our homes by phoning the local dealer. Today these are online and delivered to us through online stores:
Cell phones, cow’s milk, groceries, vegetables, computers, special snacks, medicines (even prescribed), notebooks, school and college books, stationery, furniture, décor items, sports goods, games, honey, educational and special skill courses, TVs, LED bulbs , electrical goods, shoes, clothes, musical instruments, vacations – the list is endless.
Be Accessible to Your Customers
It is obviously today’s digital world, the first place the average consumer looks for what they need is available online. Their search makes you reach their product or service. If you do not have online existence, they will not find you and just you cannot stand against your competitor.
If you also have an online identity with a website but your competitors are easier to reach and are easily available or found first, you are lost or rather you lose your potential customer. Besides having a responsive website (one which can be easily opened in a smartphone) and is navigable it becomes easy to be found. Besides doing some search engine optimization you can ran in Google search higher to make your website visible to your searching audience.
Right answers to Simple queries of your potential customers should be easily available to them. The basic information like where are you located, your open and close timings, your products or service and lots of other useful information from their point of view should be easily reachable to them. All the parameters of basic search should be easily comparable with your competitor’s website. Indeed, this is the way the consumers search for and get the needed information.
This is the reason why you need to have a strong online presence with a distinct identity. Your potential customers are already looking for this already. What do they find and realize? Their decision to buy will depend on what comparable benefit they get by buying form you or your adversary.
Let Customers Come to You
Consider online marketing to reach the people who are looking for you online. The scope of your business is not just your four walls and your address. The invisible dimension of the online presence decides the fate of your order. As compared to local prospects you are bound to get lots of business from the online sources.
Another hidden benefit is that suppose you have e-commerce module installed in your website, then you will be selling products even while you are sleeping. You can put up a mechanism which works 24×7 for 365 days, come day or night.
At their convenience, customers and prospects can send you emails with questions, make purchases, and browse your inventory. Potential customers like aged people who have in no way to physically reach you can still order from you. Even if they are restricted by incapacity, distance, lack of transportation system or just sheer laziness or love for comfort. You can easily see the immense growth potential and unlimited possibilities.
Get to Know Your Target Audience
Another significant point in favor of digital marketing is your ability to engage with your varied audience simultaneously . You can slowly be able to know them and then get engaged with them. On the social media platforms, or on a blog you can begin a meaningful dialogue beneficial to both. You can try a survey, get their opinions and comments, get interesting information of their buying habits, economic decisions, and many other data.
You can identify their pain points. What robs them of their sleep? What answers can you give to them on this? In place of speculation, guess or assumptions digital marketing makes available to your tools and methods to know your customers thoroughly. Facebook algorithms segregate, divide and arrange user data to suit your ads. You can target the ads on to the right audience.
With the help of digital marketing you can be just quite more than just a business. You can become a trustworthy partner for the people who buy from you. Buyers buy more from those from whom they have already bought from.
In the traditional systems very, few methods are cost saving as digital marketing. Small businesses often work on limited budgets. Many forms of digital marketing make it possible to present your brand and then reach a broader audience to sell your product/ service. Despite having budget constraints.
Online ads are far cheaper than TV or newspaper or magazine ads. Business success is better assured by using digital marketing. If you are on the edge do not think too much just go for it.
More and more transformations are coming, automation with artificial intelligence will revolutionize the businesses and professions beyond imagination. We cannot beat the automation which is coming. The very article which I am writing now by using my brain can be written by an AI software which gives me more accurate tone, a proper language and expression. In fact, innovations that take place of the human brain’s work are a routine affair. Nobody can stop that.
In the same way digital marketing is here to stay and run so many businesses online, in future it may transform into something unrecognisable.
What are the 7 C’s of digital marketing?
Get comprehensive info on 7 Cs here :https://devrix.com/tutorial/how-to-effectively-implement-7-cs-digital-marketing/
How do I start digital marketing?
You first need to make a study of 2 important things – 1. Social media platforms how they work and 2. Research your audience to reach them.
How do you make money in digital marketing?
There are various ways to make money here 1. Coaching on digital marketing. 2. Handling digital marketing , social media marketing, 3. Preparing strategies for clients. here is the link to an article I found useful https://www.webtrainings.in/ways-to-earn-money-from-digital-marketing/
What Is Digital Marketing?
Question answered here in this article.
Why Does Digital Marketing Matter?
Question answered in the article here.
How do you make a comprehensive strategy of digital marketing for your client?
We will soon come out with a full length article for this topic. Meanwhile here is a link to some useful info : http://surl.li/hohlw and https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2021/02/25/how-to-create-a-digital-marketing-strategy-eight-steps-to-laser-focus-your-plan/?sh=4c63d1687a82
What are the digital marketing courses available online?
You may visit these websites and look for courses with five stars and comments to make a choice. It is essential first you list your needs and then make a choice. Udemy, Coursera, EdEx, Khan Academy etc. However 1 platform which is free and I would recommend is Hubspot Learning and Google School