How Targeted Digital Marketing Can Help Small Businesses
When it comes to advertising, most small businesses can’t afford to get it wrong.
Of course, the definition of small businesses includes everything from a small shop to a company with a hundred employees, but regardless of how “small” a small business actually is, that statement holds true. Customers are the life of your business and those customers are using the web to find and research your business.
Small businesses compete against medium-sized and enterprise companies with marketing budgets that are probably three times as large if not more. As a result, you need to maximize every dollar you spend on marketing to be able to compete with those larger companies for their market share.
TV, radio, newspaper and billboard ads are “broad-based” marketing tools. There’s no targeting involved, except perhaps that TV and radio ads may appear only on sports channels or during a sporting event like a college baseball or basketball game, for example.
Digital Marketing = Precise Marketing
The larger businesses have the budgets for any and all types of advertising, but they are increasing their digital marketing budget because they know that everything is going digital – newspapers are online, TV is online now, and radio stations are streamed online as well.
The Numbers
According to recent surveys, businesses are investing in digital marketing channels in the following ways:
- Social media marketing: 64%
- Website: 55%
- Email marketing: 43%
- Mobile app: 40%
- Content marketing: 39%
- SEO: 36%
Aylin Cook of the digital marketing agency Single Grain explains, “Everyone is online, all the time, and digital marketing is crucial in reaching this huge audience where they are.” [Italics ours.]
Just like how big businesses have learned in recent years, the fact is small businesses can benefit by targeting markets that can be highly segmented by location, product differentiation or customer profile. A well qualified digital marketing partner can allow you to take advantage of these untapped customers that other broad marketing strategies may not penetrate.
Measurable Success
SiteSTR provides every website we build with a free Google Analytics account, or we’ll install the code for any other website analytics program that our clients would like.
With an analytics tool installed on its website, a company finds it easy to measure the success rate of all its digital marketing endeavors. Either there’s an increase in site visits or there’s not. What link was followed by each visitor to the site? Of these, what percentage converted to a customer?
Easy to Switch Course
Because website analytics are updated daily, it’s easy to track the success or failure of a particular advertising campaign – targeted to social media or via email – almost instantaneously. Marketing managers can decide within just a few days if a social media or email marketing campaign is doing the job or if it should be modified in some way.
Planning a Marketing Campaign
As you can see from the percentages, social media marketing is the most popular method by which companies reach potential clients. This includes Facebook and Twitter ads, as well as “influencer” marketing where people with a presence on the web are employed to “influence” others – whether being paid or provided with complementary products to review.
Email marketing is targeted to individuals who sign up for a website’s email newsletters. Because people have “opted in” to receive these newsletters, the conversion rate from click-thru’s is appreciably higher than for other forms of marketing. And because you can measure the “open” rate of your emails versus the “click-thru” rate, you can always fine tune your email marketing efforts.
The Future of Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing is here to stay and will only grow exponentially. It is vital your business have a digital marketing presence to remain competitive.
When it comes to websites and digital strategy, there is a lot to unpack. At SITESTR, we can build and manage your digital presence so you can focus on running your business. Whether it’s a new site design or a digital advertising strategy, our team of experts can help you.
Does your digital strategy need some help? Perhaps you need some consultation on what your options are. Contact us below and we will get you hooked up with a specialist. All inquiries are met with a response within 24 hours.