Digital Marketing has totally transformed the way businesses operate. It has reached the core of every business’s marketing goals. It is the benefits of digital marketing that have given a great opportunity for small businesses to expand their establishments and grow their reach to the global market. So, if you have a small business or a start-up, then “Digital Marketing” is one of the best options for you.
In this blog post, we will specifically discuss the meaning of digital marketing and its benefits for small businesses So, without any delay let’s start by knowing what it means.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing is a process through which you can promote your products and services to your target audience using the internet and various digital channels such as websites, social media, email, messengers, etc.
You can reach them by sending emails, appearing on top of Google, engaging through Instagram and Facebook, etc.
There are many different types of digital marketing strategies that you can use to do the same and promote your business. Some of them are –
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- Email Marketing
- Google Ads
- Online Reputation Management
There are many more strategies like Search engine marketing, google analytics, etc.
To make use of all these digital marketing skills, you must know them in detail to pick the optimum parts of each and form a strong digital marketing strategy.
Let’s now look at how digital marketing benefits small businesses and is helping them establish themselves.
Top 8 Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses & Start-Ups
Many of you must have some doubts that “How does digital marketing benefit a business?”, “Why digital marketing is important for small businesses?”. These benefits are the answers to all your questions.
1. Achieving More Targeted Customers
The main objective of any business is to accomplish the marketing goals & objectives and to reach out to the target audience. And digital marketing makes it easy to reach out to your potential customers through online mode.
Especially in the initial stages of your business, if you get a chance to channel your money and advertise to only those, who are most likely to convert into customers, it’s like a dream come true. With the right strategy and at the right time, you can do just that with digital marketing.
2. High Conversion Rate
The conversion rate means the percentage of visitors to your website who take the desired action. And using digital marketing for your small business will increase your conversion rate. Through Conversion Rate Optimization, your small-scale business will reach out to a higher number of visitors completing your desired goal out of the total number of visitors.
A pay-per-click strategy, for example, will help you to achieve such objectives. It’s a method of charging a fee for each click your ad receives. Hence, you can expand your small business through this process, and increase the number of customers, by increasing your conversion rate.
3. Higher ROI at Lower Cost
As a small business or a start-up, your main aim is to market your product or service with minimal cost and get higher revenue. Larger organizations can afford higher marketing costs, whereas startups and small businesses try to work hard to keep costs low and increase profits.
At that moment, digital marketing assists organizations in reducing costs associated with product or service promotion. And it has been seen that the cost of traditional marketing is comparatively higher than that of digital marketing.
If you hire a digital marketing agency, it can get expensive in the beginning. So, to kick-start, you can conduct digital marketing in-house.
4. Enables Outdoing Competitors
The main problem with small businesses is the funds. They are not able to compete with big brands and companies due to a lack of funds and resources.
But if you use digital marketing tactics smartly, then it will help to assist you in this endeavor. Creativity is a big factor in this happening. If you have innovative content for your business or if you are creative enough, then you can knock off anything in this digital industry.
You can easily compete with any form of business whether it’s a large scale or small scale and grab eyeballs from their audience as well.
Creativity is a major factor in the digital marketing industry.
Oguntayo Mathew Adekunle, Managing Partners, Bluespectra, August 2022
5. Helps you Enhance Your CRM
The business feeds on customer satisfaction. And this can only happen when you develop good bondage or relationship with your customers. Previously, it was kind of arduous to cope with this element, due to the lack of sources and mediums.
But with the advancement in digital marketing, all kinds and sizes of companies can build their CRM seamlessly and in fact, it is very important even as a small business. This helps you build goodwill and customer loyalty in the long run.
Thus, even small businesses can now operate their CRM as strongly as large companies do with the help of digital marketing.
Given below is the list of some of the best CRM Software that aid you in CRM activities. Softwares like these make it simpler for small businesses to manage their CRM.
The best part about these software is that some of them are completely FREE.
And by using the strategy of Online Reputation Management, you can build a better relationship with your customers as well as a positive brand image in front of them. Sign up for this Online reputation management course if you wish to gain insights about the same.
6. Allows For Efficient Tracking for Future Campaigns
Let us assume that you own a departmental store. Can you tell how many footfalls happened in one day? how many customers visited your store? how many purchases were made? and how many people showed interest in your product?
Perhaps you could provide some information. But you won’t be able to measure which traditional marketing strategy has brought you more audience, whether it’s newspaper, billboards, radio, etc. This is something you’ll never know!
But, through digital marketing, you can find out which strategy and campaign have brought you the highest ROI. And using the Analytics tool, you can do so. Also, if you own a website, then you can even know all about your customers, like their demographics, geographical locations, how much time they spent on your website, etc.
This is especially beneficial for small businesses as you have a tight budget in hand and tracking will help you spend your money only on those campaigns that work for you and not keep pumping money blindly into channels that might bring no results.
7. You Can Reach Global Being Local
One of the most common disadvantages of small businesses is that it is meant to be local. But digital marketing helps you break these stereotypes & geographical barriers and allows you to expand your business and reach a global audience. And you can do all this by just sitting in your office within your city.
By global audience, we do not mean reaching everyone in the world. It means only focusing on the potential target audience, instead of targeting the mass audience. Thus, you will be reaching interested consumers all over the world.
8. Provide a Highly- Personalised Customer Experience
“WhatsApp” is the most common application which is there on almost everyone’s phone. And What if we say that through the use of a digital marketing strategy you can reach out to your potential customers through WhatsApp?
YES, it is now possible to reach out to your customers and sell your products & services through WhatsApp, without disturbing the privacy of your audience, here’s how.
There is a unique feature in WhatsApp, called “WhatsApp Business”, which you can use specifically for your business to reach out to your customers. This way you reach consumers directly on a messenger which is highly used by them while also maintaining a formal decorum.
How Can You Integrate Digital Marketing In Your Business?
That’s about it! Those were some of the proven benefits of digital marketing for small businesses and start-ups.
Digital Marketing has an impact on every type of business and almost every type of business has adapted digital marketing to expand their business. It has become more of a necessity.
Hiring a digital marketing agency may not be very good for your pockets and hence we recommend you do in-house digital marketing at the start.
Q. How much should a small business spend on digital marketing?
Ideally, a small business must allocate around 6-9% of its overall revenue to marketing to stay put and consistent. If you can push it to 11-14% then it will help you in expanding even further. From this marketing budget, allocate more than 50% to digital marketing if you’re planning to practice other forms of marketing.
We hope reading the blog has helped your business. Let us know about your views/questions in the comments section below.
