8 Incredible Ways Digital Marketing Helps Small and Medium Businesses Flourish
Modern social media managers need to understand the value of a good digital marketing strategy. There is a time and place for traditional marketing; however, the future completely belongs to digital. And this holds true as much for small and medium businesses as for large-sized firms. Digital marketing is the most cost-effective marketing tool that businesses can use for customer engagement, client acquisition, and increasing revenue.
In today's world, everybody is online. Gone are the days when one would advertise in the yellow pages and wait for people to call.
In today's digital-savvy world, where the rate of adoption of digital transformation has been accelerated post-Covid, digital marketing is not only the most cost-efficient tool that small businesses can use for client acquisition and engagement but it also is the ultimate way to architect a perennially healthy sales pipeline.
In today's world, businesses need to have a social media presence. They need to have an attractive and user-optimized website to grab the attention of their target audience groups and to keep them engaged.
According to Kyle Lorber, social media manager for some of the top-grossing residential real estate firms in New York, it is important to decipher the value of a good digital marketing strategy:
“It’s unreal how many people you can reach through digital marketing before you ever spend a dime.”
Kyle also is of the view that if your content is engaging enough, people will share it on their own and if you’re lucky it may even go viral. That’s something he terms ‘priceless advertising’.
According to Martech Series, 97% of people research businesses online before deciding to visit in person.
Whether that’s looking up an address and checking business hours on Google, or scrolling through Facebook reviews, your perceived reputation online and how it’s perceived matters. Also, the more filled out and engaging your online presence is, the more people your company will reach.
Some of the great advantages offered by digital marketing to help grow small and medium-size organizations include the following:
1. Online Advertising is Cost-Effective
Digital marketers with small and medium budgets need to realize that digital ads are more affordable as compared to traditional marketing methods. An ad in a relevant industry magazine can cost you $500-$1500, and you have no idea how it will be perceived by the people. Furthermore, your reach is also limited to the readership of the magazine.
With digital marketing, small and medium-sized businesses can reach thousands of people with a limited budget, and Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Google track every interaction and view of your analytics.
For instance, if you decide to promote your brand on Facebook, you need to spend just $20 and you will get 10,000 views depending on your location and that's actually wonderful for your brand recognition.
Similarly, the average cost-per-click for Google Ads is between one and two dollars. If this cost is compared to the cost of putting a commercial on national television – a 30-second spot costs around $115,000 if broadcasted nationally.
That's equivalent to $5 per 1,000 views. Also, with digital marketing, you can engage with your target audience groups in real-time. With traditional marketing, one has no idea of who's watching their ads and how can communicate with them in real-time.
2. You can Make your Website Rank by Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques
SEO is the process of optimizing your website with informative content, page speed and security, keyword research, and more to enable your website to rank higher on SERPs.
Every business no matter small big can strategize their SEO plan and execute the same. Doing the following basics correct always helps:
- Focus on the keyword you’re trying to rank for and include that is meta-title and description
- Optimize and bring your website load time to 2-3 seconds at the maximum
- Research keywords that help greatly with your SEO techniques
- Start amassing quality backlinks for your website
3. Use Social Media Marketing to Drive Traffic and Build Positive Brand Resonance
Social Media, not only serves as an effective platform for marketers to generate some referral traffic but also helps them to build positive brand resonance. Effectively and proactively addressing customers' queries and pain points on social media platforms helps marketers gain some positive word-of-mouth and does wonders for the online reputation management architecture of the brands.
Also, you can plan your posts in the form of a "content calendar" to keep your target audience groups intrigued and engaged by posting consistent and knowledgeable material from time to time.
Not just organically, but the marketers with small and mid-sized budgets can also fuel their content marketing endeavors by strategically investing in paid advertising on specific social platforms, which needn’t always be an expensive affair.
4. Provide Contextual Content that Helps your Audience and Familiarizes Them with your Brand
Content marketing is the ultimate method for small and mid-sized business owners to ace the race with the help of highly valuable, informative, and consistent content to help them attract the attention of the target audience groups and generate profits.
Engage your audience by providing them with helpful material through blogs, videos, and other mediums.
Content marketing familiarizes users with your brands and helps build positive brand equity.
Way to a Credible Content Strategy
5. Embrace Email Marketing for Product Promotions, Client Engagement, Retention and Acquisition
Email marketing informs customers in your mailing list about the new products, services, and offers available. Personalized emails tailored according to marketing campaigns, segmentation, and customers' interests can help brands optimize their readers' engagements in a variety of ways.
Building comprehensive email lists can help your brands target customers, capture their interests, and convert them into sales, as well as retain them and compel them for re-purchases and to spread some positive word-of-mouth.
6. Strategically Employ your SEM (Search Engine Marketing) Moves to Rank Higher through Paid Advertisements
Marketers can improve the visibility of their websites and can make them potentially rank higher on Google through SEM. SEM strategies play a crucial role in getting traffic on your website and in acquiring leads. SEM doesn't essentially mean spending lots of bucks:
- Avoid using “broad match keywords” that attract irrelevant traffic
- Focus on optimizing the ad quality scores by optimizing the landing pages
- Reduce the number of keywords used on landing pages and keep them very specific to one or two keywords
7. Reflect your Subject-Matter-Expertise (SME), Knowledge, Quirk and Fun through Video Marketing
The use of engaging video content can help small and mid-sized businesses bring awareness about their brands and grow their businesses to new heights. Modern users like to watch videos that are informative, yet quirky and funny and though all these qualities needn't be essential in a single video, there's no harm in trying an interesting combination of two or more of them either.
- Videos must be consistent, informative, and content-rich for engaging the viewers enough so that they get inquisitive to learn more about your business
- Write engaging and eye-catchy titles. Ensure that your video titles include the primary keywords that are relevant to your brand so that the title may be effective in attracting potential customers
- Marketers can employ videos to link to other pages on their website and can use a few of them to upload to video-sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo and consider linking to other relevant videos on your site.
8. Grow Your Followers with Influencer Marketing
Marketers can take the help of influencers to engage with their followers on social media platforms and influence them with their ideas on various topics. Audiences adore and trust their favorite influencers and as such it’s best if they learn about your brand from people they already know and trust.
According to Mediakix, 80% of marketers believe that influencer marketing is effective, and 89% believe that it is as good as (if not better than) conventional marketing channels.
An influencer can help your startup grow in the following ways:
- Define the goals for your influencer marketing campaigns
- Have a clear grasp of your objectives and your target clients to create an effective campaign
- Don’t engage an influencer for a one-time deal when you’re looking for someone to promote your brand. Make an effective relationship with your influencers first before they can voice in the favor of your brands
Wrap Up
A solid digital marketing strategy is the only way for small and medium-sized brands to grow their revenue and flourish in today's digital-savvy world, particularly as we transcend to the next normal.
Employing the above strategies will help you digitally transform your business even by making a small investment and will smoothen your avenues to client acquisition, engagement, and sales conversions. With proper planning, you will also be able to generate additional revenue by repeat purchases and by optimizing your after-sales services.