Does your small business have a digital marketing strategy? If not, you’re seriously missing out. Online marketing is essential for small businesses today, and it’s quickly taking the place of traditional marketing methods like billboards and print advertising.
But why is digital marketing so important for your small business? Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why you should take your marketing efforts online.
6 Reasons Why Digital Marketing Is Important for Your Small Business
If you feel a little unsure about creating an online marketing strategy for your small business, it helps to understand the reasons why digital marketing is a must.
Your Customers Are Going Online
We’re in the digital age, and people are spending more and more time online. When you’re marketing your small business, you want to go where your potential customers are.
When a consumer wants to find out about a product or service, they are increasingly turning to the internet to do their research, whether it’s by typing in a Google search or listening to an influencer’s recommendation on social media.
Without an online presence, your small business is missing out on being there when the prospect is looking for you. What’s more, if potential customers can’t find your business anywhere online, they’ll be suspicious and will question the legitimacy of your business.
Target the Right Audience
When you use traditional marketing methods, for example, billboards or advertisements in a magazine, your message might be going out to thousands of people. But they may not be the right people. The people who see your billboard message might not have any need for your product or service.
With digital marketing, you’re able to specify the exact type of person who’ll actually have an interest in what your business has to offer. You can narrow it down by age group, income level, buying habits, and even their personal interests.
Once you’ve found your perfect audience, digital marketing allows you to personalize your message to them. In doing so, you’ll make a real connection with your potential client which will make your business stand out from the crowd.
Your Competitors Are Doing It
If you want to stay ahead of the competition, digital marketing is essential. When a potential customer searches online for a product or service, you want to appear as an option. That means ranking high on Google searches.
Another reason why digital marketing is important for small businesses is that it allows you to do some detective work. You can research your competition and what marketing tactics they’re using.
Competitor research can be done by taking a good look at your competitors’ social media accounts. What audience are they targeting? How are they communicating with their audience? What kind of content are they sharing? You can learn from your competitors’ mistakes, and replicate their successful tactics.
Engage Prospects Throughout Their Buying Journey
Not every visitor to your website will be ready to make a purchase. Some prospects will just be doing their research. Digital marketing allows you to engage your prospects with the right messages at the right time in their buying journey.
For your prospects who have just begun their online search for solutions to their problem, you can use your blog to give them helpful information. For prospects who already know about you but are unsure whether they want to buy from you, nurturing them through email marketing can be highly effective.
Digital marketing allows you to communicate well with your potential customers, which makes them feel more valued. Many successful companies use their social media channels as a way of answering customers’ questions and responding to their concerns.
Customers Will Come To You
With successful digital marketing, you won’t need to chase down leads anymore. The leads will fall right into your hands. How is this possible? It all comes down to a strategy called inbound marketing.
The idea behind inbound marketing is pretty simple: provide value to your prospects in every stage of their buyer’s journey.
Now that the world has gone digital, consumers don’t want to be told what to do or what to buy. Instead, they want to search for information themselves, make an informed decision, and choose between competitors to make just the right purchase.
Inbound marketing positions your small business as the solution to a prospect’s problems so that they come to you for help and ideas. This establishes trust between you and the prospect – trust that eventually helps them decide to do business with you.
Digital Marketing can Track ROI
When you’re running a small business, you have a limited budget to work with. You want to make sure you get the most results possible while spending the least amount of money. Digital marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways you can market your business.
Inbound marketing costs 62% less than traditional outbound marketing to get the same amount of leads. That means you’ve cut your marketing costs in half while still achieving the same results. In other words, your return on investment (or ROI) will be much higher when you adopt a digital marketing strategy.
How To Do Digital Marketing for Your Small Business
Now you are aware of the impact digital marketing can have on the growth of your small business, you might be wondering – how do you do it? There are several types of digital marketing, each with its own benefits.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (also known as SEO) is perhaps the most important facet of digital marketing. SEO improves your rankings in Google searches for keywords that are relevant to your business. In other words, when people search for your product or service on Google, your business will pop up in their results.
This is a free way to organically get prospects to find you, go to your website, and start their buyer’s journey. What’s more, they’ll be the perfect prospects who have already been searching for a product or service like yours.
Local SEO
When potential customers search specifically for your business online, you want to make sure that you show up. This means more customers are able to call, visit, and shop at your business.
We rank #1 in Google Maps for numerous SEO searches, and there’s a reason for that. We’ve developed a successful local SEO strategy for our business – and we can do the same for yours. We’ll get you higher up in the search results on Google Search and Google Maps.
Social Media
A staggering number of people use social media in 2022 – 3.96 billion to be exact. Most people spend a significant amount of time scrolling through their social media accounts. The average amount of time that adults spend on social media is 95 minutes per day.
Social media is a unique opportunity to build brand awareness. When people become familiar with your online presence, you’ll stay at the top of their minds for when they want to purchase a product or service like yours. It’s a way to stay in touch with your prospects and customers and to learn more about your target audience.
Email Marketing
Studies have shown that email marketing has the absolute highest ROI for small businesses, with an average ROI of $42 per dollar spent. That makes it an essential part of your business’s digital marketing strategy.
Email marketing allows you to build stronger relationships with your audience by adding value to their lives. By sending them helpful content regularly, you can develop authority as a trusted business in your industry.
Blogging
Having a blog for your small business is another important facet of a good digital marketing strategy. You’ll want to have a blog on your website to keep up with the competition.
Blogging will draw relevant traffic to your website, so it will generate quality leads for your business. Your blog is a unique opportunity to provide value to your prospects in order to nurture them. It’s also a great way to build authority – to have people see you as a trusted expert in your industry.
Video Marketing
The average person watches an hour and a half or more of online video content every day. It’s no wonder that 92% of marketers who use video say that it’s a highly effective part of their overall digital marketing strategy.
Video marketing is a great way to stand out from the competition by humanizing your brand. Video is far more engaging than text – it captures people’s attention and keeps it for longer. What’s more, using video on social media gives your content a higher chance of being shared.
Paid Advertising
Advertising on Google is another way you can get relevant traffic to your website because it allows you to target the exact keywords that you want to show up for.
When you’re at the top of search results, you’ll receive more high-quality leads. Digital advertising for your small business gets you ahead of the competition because you’ll show up higher than competing businesses.
Mobile Website Development
People are browsing the web or their social media accounts almost every waking moment, according to studies. 94% of participants in a Facebook study said they hold their smartphones when they’re watching TV. Americans spend an average of 158 minutes a day on their phones.
For this reason, you want to have your website optimized to work well on mobile devices. It creates a better experience for the user and keeps them from moving on from your website. Mobile website optimization also significantly affects your SEO performance.
Website Speed Optimization
You’ll also want to have your website’s speed optimized. When a visitor goes to your website, they expect it to load within 3 seconds. Beyond that point, 40% of people completely abandon a website.
Having a high-speed website makes sure your visitors are getting the best possible user experience. Fast loading time makes your website look reliable and professional. And on top of that, your website’s speed affects your SEO rankings.
Step Up Your Game with a Digital Marketing Strategy
The benefits of digital marketing for your small business are huge. Digital marketing helps you easily capture the right kind of leads, nurture them, and turn them into customers – and all for a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing.
CincySEO can help you get started with digital marketing. We offer everything your small business needs to be seen by more potential customers, from SEO to social media and everything in between. Reach out to us and let us know how we can help!
