5 Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses

According to Forbes, 99.9% of businesses across the United States are small businesses, with nearly half of US employees being employed by a small business. 

Even with this huge statistic, it still feels impossible for most small businesses to compete with large corporations. Small businesses have a lower budget, fewer employees, fewer resources, so how could the playing field ever be level? Luckily, digital marketing is one tool that helps even the playing field between yourself and bigger corporations within your industry. Now that we have your attention, we are going to break down 5 benefits of digital marketing strategies for small businesses as established by Mooc.org. 

1. Reach

Digital marketing strategies today are more beneficial to small businesses as compared to old-school, traditional marketing techniques. These new efforts such as content marketing, email marketing, and social media marketing allow you to reach a wider audience by meeting them where they are, their mobile devices. Digital marketing gives access to a larger, potentially global market for a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing, which makes it a excellent option for small businesses. 

2. Targeting

One of the first steps in developing your digital marketing strategy is defining your target audience. By determining the group that is most likely to purchase your products and invest in your resources, you can determine where your business needs to reach in order to communicate with those ideal customers. 

Instead of putting small bits of your resources into all digital channels, start by choosing 2-3 places where your target audience is active. By doing this you can utilize your budget in a more cost-effective way, while gaining a better return on your investment.

3. Flexibility

Traditional marketing strategies do not allow room for flexibility. Investing money into a traditional campaign is a gamble; if it fails, the funds spent are gone and cannot be retrieved or repurposed. Newly developed digital marketing strategies, however, are flexible. 

Being flexible is an important aspect of digital marketing. It is important to revisit your strategy at least once every 3 months since the digital campaign components are adjustable. Keeping an eye on your competitors' tactics is also beneficial to identify any similarities between your campaigns and any missed opportunities to capitalize on. 

4. Measurability

Digital marketing channels make it much easier to track campaign performance. Each channel has analytics built into the program to measure the success or your campaign. Some examples of trackable measurements within common digital marketing channels are:

• Impressions
• Clicks
• Shares
• Reach
• Likes
• Views
• And the list goes on!

In order to determine the success of your campaigns, choose the metrics that you value most in order to start learning how your conversion rates are affected by your marketing strategies. 

5. Legitimacy 

When customers are looking for your services, they need to be able to easily identify your credibility as a trusted business. The 3 main components that customers look for in determining whether your business is legitimate or not are:

1. Website
2. Social media accounts
3. Testimonials

Each of these areas play a different role in building your trustworthiness. Your website is where potential customers are going to look to find all of the details about your product or service, your team, and how to get in contact with you. Most times the user will be looking on your website to find your social media accounts as a form of contact. Displaying your social media handles in your header and footer menu bars is one easy way to allow users to see more of your business.

Social media has become a crucial space for businesses to attract new customers. It is important to make sure your social media accounts represent your brand strongly and are active to build legitimacy.

• BONUS Tip: Collaborate with influencers to excel your social media branding. Find what type of influencer is right for your business here.

Lastly, user testimonials are another area where users are bound to look at before purchasing from you or working with you. Hearing experiences from previous customers helps solidify a new user's decision, they are more likely to trust what others say about you than they are to trust what you say about yourself. 

To be seen as a legitimate, trusted brand, it is necessary to prioritize all three components of your online presence. Incorporating these 5 benefits of digital marketing into your business strategy is guaranteed to improve your standings amongst other small businesses competitors and keep up with the large corporations.

Unsure where to start in developing your digital marketing plan for your business? Contact our team of marketing experts for a FREE consultation.