It’s not simply a matter of how much you spend on marketing, but also of how you spend it. There are easier and more efficient ways than conventional marketing to generate a far better return on your marketing spend. And that is through maximizing and refining your digital marketing efforts. Internet penetration in the United States is at its highest point ever, and thanks to services like BuyInternetCable, more people will continue to sign up for residential and business internet.
The state of the internet today, given search engines, browsers, cookies, social platforms, devices, e-commerce, and more, is perfectly positioned for brands to reach out to qualified audiences and generate better results. Moreover, it doesn’t just offer better results, but transparent ways to measure the effectiveness of your ongoing efforts. The best part? The digital world offers a level playing field to small businesses competing against much larger competitors. There are still many compelling reasons why your small business can’t succeed without consistent digital marketing. These include:
Benefits That Align With Key Business Goals
No two businesses are the same. They vary in terms of business models, talent, infrastructure, capital, and capability, among other factors. But certain key goals remain common among almost all businesses, regardless of size. Digital marketing offers several advantages that can be leveraged to align with many of these key business goals. In very brief terms, digital marketing can help small businesses to:
- Interact with prospective customers on a more personal level.
- Reach out beyond local prospects to a global market.
- Spend less money and acquire a better quality of customers.
- Engage with your audiences to establish credibility and brand loyalty.
- Track and improve digital marketing efforts accurately and in real-time.
Getting Faster Results
Don’t make the mistake of thinking your digital marketing efforts can be postponed to a later date. Instead of focusing on conventional marketing, leverage digital channels to start generating results much faster. The right search engine ads or social media ads can help you start generating traffic and revenue even before your business is up and running.
Most Of Your Consumers Are Likely Online Anyway
It is the Age of The Internet. Everyone has smartphones, computers, tablets, and other devices to access the internet. They use it to socialize, look for interesting content, find information, get entertainment, and of course, engage with businesses. In the United States, over 80% of the population has internet access. As any good business leader will tell you, you have to go where the customers are. Don’t wait for them to find you, reach out to them with what they need.
The Competition Likely Has An Online Presence
Just because you don’t invest in digital marketing doesn’t mean your competition thinks the same way. Just search for businesses similar to yours in your city on a search engine. Now search for similar businesses all over the country. Consumers have grown used to the instant gratification the internet offers.
If you want to learn about Plato, you no longer visit the library and pore through dense and complex books. You simply Google “who was Plato?” and the search engine will give you all the information available, instantly. The same applies to products. Consumers will often search for specific products or services and make instant decisions. Since you don’t have a digital presence, they won’t see you. But they will see competing businesses and choose one, which means you just gave up revenue to a competitor.
Be More Accessible To Audiences
Of course, digital marketing isn’t just about attracting audiences, but also about engaging with them. Again, the internet serves as the perfect medium for audiences to engage with brands and vice versa. It is low-cost, convenient, and a great opportunity to establish a brand image within audiences. This can be anything from answering queries to offering after-sales service or even a memorable customer experience. Audience engagement is key to growing both your customer base as well as your brand visibility.
Get Qualified and Relevant Potential Customers
Acquiring new customers can often be hard work, as anyone who has worked in sales can tell you. Too often, sales teams waste valuable time and resources chasing the wrong customers. The “wrong” customer is someone who has no interest in buying your product and is not likely to change their mind. Yes, persuasive techniques and slick pitches are often effective sales tools. But even they cannot alter a firm ‘NO!’. The result? You get very inefficient results from all that time, money, and effort you spent.
But thanks to modern search engines and transactional queries, you don’t have to spend time barking up the wrong tree. In fact, the tree will come to you of its own accord. Search engines like Google have become very intelligent over the past decade, as services like Spectrum internet plans ensure even more people have access to the internet. This allows them to identify the context of transactional queries and offer the most relevant results to that query.
If you build your digital marketing efforts around this correctly, your business website pages can often be part of these relevant results. In other words, your business appears as a relevant option to a customer who is already looking for what you offer. In essence, you have to spend far less effort and resources on acquiring customers who already need what you sell.
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