Why Digital Marketing is Important for Small Business

You are a Small Business Owner with sufficiently profitable revenues and a respectable circle of clients. You send an email to a potential new customer to introduce yourself or meet someone at a business conference and give them your business card in the hopes of growing your business. But according to Google, you don’t exist.

You don’t have a website or social media profiles or even a Google Business Listing. This has led your potential customer to think your Small Business is either too small to bother working with or worse, it isn’t even legitimate but just a scam. In today’s times, you need to have an effective online presence to establish trust and credibility.

As a Small Business Owner, Digital Marketing is your most important tool towards establishing a credible internet presence, increasing brand awareness and promoting products and services. It can be executed on a small budget while still yielding high Return on Investment and Lead Conversion Rate. Let’s take a look at some of the most important benefits Digital Marketing can have for you.

Let Customers Come To You

Picture this – you want to buy a laptop. Would you simply enter your nearest tech-store and speak to the salesman, trusting that he will not over-sell for his personal gain? Or would you do your own research first about which exact brand and which exact model fits your requirements and budget and
then buy that from the best store – online or otherwise – that offers you the best competitive price?

In today’s times, the former is far less likely as we all like to be as educated as possible as we want to have the most value-for-money experience. This need of customers to educate themselves and explore the market on their own is what has facilitated the growth of Digital Marketing. The fact is that roughly 87% of customers start their shopping decisions online.

Digital Marketing allows businesses – big or small – to reach their customers right at their fingertips. Using effective Content Marketing and Search Engine Marketing, you can direct your potential customers directly to your company website and show them your offerings and make a sell quicker than making a hundred cold calls or chasing dead-end leads.

Generate Leads More Effectively

In the good old days, you would print out ads in newspapers or distribute promotional flyers or sponsor events in the hopes of gaining some brand recognition or earning some goodwill. Not only would this cost a lot, but the probability that you actually reach your target audience was miniscule.
Even today, this form or marketing is affordable and suitable for big brands with big pockets. But for Small Business owners like yourself, you need to spend your gold wisely.

With the use of effective Digital Marketing tools, not only can you narrow down the exact platform to reach your audience but also predict the times they are most likely to view your ads. This empowers you to communicate with them directly and in the exact manner that they are more likely to respond to. In other words, you can now focus your energy on converting potential customers to leads because the only people you are contacting are potential leads – unlike with traditional marketing where it is an unpredictable hit or miss.

You can also rely on Real-time Data Analytics generated from your active posts to improve upon the impact your past posts made. By better understanding how your previous posts have performed, you can alter your next posts to be more effective – a benefit that Traditional Marketing definitely lacks. IBM found that a lead that comes in through social media is 7X more likely to become a paying customer.

Spend Only As Much As You Want

As a Small Business Owner, you may not what to invest too much money on Marketing & Advertising even though it is inescapable. By limiting yourself to the traditional methods of Outbound Marketing, you rake up a high operational cost which may or may not even be effective. But Digital Marketing is only as expensive as you want it to be.

For example, you can either make an SEO-friendly website for free merely for establishing an online presence or you can invest a little money in paid efforts towards Search Engine Marketing and get potential leads that come directly on your website. You may simply have free social media profiles for promoting Brand Awareness or interacting with customers online; spend a little more and you can have social media ads for your products and services popping up on screens of potential customers.

There are free methods and paid methods and one definitely fairs better than the other. After all, 48% of people say they made their last online purchase as the direct result of a Facebook ad. But even the free efforts of Digital Marketing yield higher results than Traditional Marketing. So as a Small Business Owner with a limited Marketing budget, keep in mind that for a more cost-effective approach, Digital Marketing is the way to go.

Conclusion

The fact that we live in a Digital Era is indisputable. Your business doesn’t exist unless it has a digital footprint. As a Small Business owner, Digital Marketing is the most extensive, effective and cost- friendly tool at your disposal. Use it well and the world is your oyster.