If you think you need to be a big business, a global entity or a multinational corporation to benefit from online marketing, think again. If you operate a smaller local business, you can use digital marketing to your advantage, and gain a distinct competitive edge over your competitors in your neck of the woods.
Here are a few of the most compelling reasons for finding out more about putting your business online.
- High-tech does not mean high cost, with digital marketing being one of the most cost-effective forms of business promotion. Many digital marketing channels require little outlay while the return is bigger than what a traditional marketing platform can deliver.
- Conversions through digital marketing are significantly higher when compared to other forms of marketing. In other words, digital strategies are more effective and this applies to smaller businesses as well as large corporations.
- Because of higher conversions, revenue also increases. For example, companies that use social media generate 78% more business compared to companies that don’t. As another example, email marketing also has a very high response rate and this is reflected in the revenue generated by this form of online marketing.
- Digital marketing is far better at targeting the right market. Online marketing is more focused on key demographics – in other words, the people who are more likely to pay for your product or service. Again, email marketing is a prime example. It goes straight to the inbox of the person you want to do business with.
- Digital marketing also includes mobile marketing and with this area growing by around 22% every year, this represents a huge opportunity. Companies that make their websites more responsive on mobile will be rewarded, and this is as true for a small local business as it is for an international organisation.
- Even a small search volume means more customers for your business. This is because these people are already interested in a local business, and the product or service you provide. That means that keywords with 10 to 100 searches a month can represent thousands of dollars of sales for your business.
- Digital marketing employs specific tools that allow you to easily measure the results for every platform. This will help you evaluate performance and help you in making decisions for even more effective campaigns in the future. Traditional marketing platforms make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to unearth this priceless information.
One final thing to consider. Research has found that 50% of consumers on smartphones and 34% of consumers on tablets or computers who carry out a local search visit a store within a day. For all those customers, your local business won’t come into their calculations if you’re not online. If you’re not digital, you’re not visible and that is why small operations that continue to ignore this form of marketing are the ones that struggle to prosper in the modern marketplace.
