In this day and age digital marketing positioned itself as one of the most important, if not the single most important outlets for reaching out to new customers. With printed media fading into the background and television following right behind, it is hard to escape the fact that an average person spends about 8 hours per day consuming some sort of online, digital content.
That makes double the time we used to spend consuming the traditional media formats and roughly half of our total waking hours.
If you are running or planning to launch an SMB, this playground is the most obvious channel to build up your core audience. In this article we will take a look at how exactly these digital marketing strategies will impact the future of your enterprise and how to pull them off correctly.
Digital marketing reaches wide groups of audience
What’s even more important, these days everyone has access to decently fast internet and smart devices – the groups of consumers you will be able to target are not only numerous but also very diverse. This gives SMBs an opportunity to stray away from their traditional local markets, develop an ecommerce component and take a shot at global glory. Of course, in order to be able to leverage this fact you should try to use inclusive marketing strategies that target diverse social and ethnical groups. Firing up on several fronts ranging from paid ads to social media platforms is also a must.
A great starting point for data-driven decision making
One of the greatest benefits of digital marketing, or digital technologies for that matter, comes in the fact that the resources you are using and the results you are getting leave very tangible and measurable performance indicators. Since they are stored in the platform agnostic digital format, these insights can very easily be fed back into your digital marketing system and used for a whole range of purposes ranging from budgeting to long-term planning. You always know which channels are performing, what is their ROI and tons of other valuable information that keep your campaigns on track.
Dominant presence on the local markets
Even though we mentioned that digital marketing allows businesses to branch out globally, SMBs need to have a very strong footing in their local market to make such expansion impossible. Well, it is good to know then that specific DM strategies like local SEO are designed to meet these goals. So, you are always able to elevate your local presence with an expert local SEO company and come on top of the SERP when people look at the relevant keywords. When combined with content marketing and resources like Google My Business, local SEO easily puts you at the top of the local food chain.
Flexible and versatile marketing resources
Digital resources are not set in stone which means that you can completely overhaul the things you are putting out and make quick strategy adjustments on-the-go. Traditional marketing channels take forever to get into motion, and even more to provide tangible insights regarding their efficiency. Thanks to the benefits of modern monitoring and analytics tools as well as unlimited potential of AI and Machine Learning, digital marketing makes these issues obsolete. Building your strategies will flexibility in mind and core KPIs at their foundations will allow you to make changes without any delays.
Long term self-maintaining performance
In this case we are thinking primarily on strategies like SEO and content marketing. You see, ads you are putting in the traditional media can produce excellent short term results but they also fade from public consciousness rather fast. Quality, well-optimized, and SEO-friendly content stays online much longer keeping people coming back for over a much longer period. Furthermore, informative content transforms your brand from a simple vendor to a source of knowledge and an authority in your industry. As time goes by this system becomes self-maintaining providing an excellent ROI and exposure.
Digital marketing is affordable and cost effective
Last but not least, we would like to point out that, compared to other marketing formats; digital marketing presents a very affordable, egalitarian, and wider-reaching alternative. Most resources you need to use come in free editions. The ones you need to pay make only a fraction of the costs you need to pay to advertise in the mainstream media. And considering the fact that digital ads offer a great level of personalization and can easily be retooled to encourage repeat purchases (lifeblood on any SMB company) it is easy to see what makes them extremely suitable for this market segment.
Wrapping-up
We hope these couple of arguments helped you reach a better understanding of why digital ads should make the backbone of your efforts of cornering out the local competition. Of course, keep in mind that, like in many other cases, you need to work smarter and not harder and that the choice of people that will carry out third party services may drastically impact the success of your campaigns. But, as long as you are creative, versatile, think long term and base your decisions on hard data you will have more than a solid foundation for sustainable growth.
Marie Nieves is a passionate blogger with an eye for design, a flair for storytelling, and a love for culture. She contributes regularly to various blogs and online magazines, all while satisfying her wanderlust by exploring states and countries near and far.
Digital marketing stock image by airdone/Shutterstock
