Importance of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses
Small businesses have been hit hard due to the Covid-19 pandemic and have struggled with several issues ranging from falling sales, cash flow issues, labour issues, and most importantly, changes in consumer behaviour.
Consumers have adapted to this new normal by shifting their buying habits from offline to online mode. This trend is likely to continue post the pandemic, so what should small businesses be doing? Common sense would be to follow customers where they are, but that would also mean investing in technologies and entering the online marketing arena to get noticed.
Big businesses have deeper pockets and infinite resources for a shift from offline to online mode and some large businesses are already building capabilities for omnichannel presence i.e. seamless integration between online and offline business. Therefore, it is vital for small businesses with limited budgets and resources to think of a focussed strategy and get optimum value for their investment.
Small businesses with limited budgets feel online marketing / digital marketing is all about spending money advertising on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc., or search engines like Google or Bing. But that’s not the case. You can get online without spending money on advertising. There are many organic ways to reach your audience online like social media platforms, email marketing, using search engine optimization (SEO) to rank higher on Google, getting influencers to help you out, and a lot more.
Key benefits of engaging effectively in digital marketing and social media
While attracting customers organically may feel like it is a long and slow process, and rightly so, it has long term benefits. Here are a few of them:
- You can reach a wider audience at a fraction of the cost you would normally spend on traditional marketing
- Unlike, traditional methods where you would understand a campaign’s success or failure after the campaign has ended, with online marketing you receive real-time information for your campaigns. This means that if you find that something is not working well, you can tweak the campaign in the interim or stop it completely, thereby saving time, effort and money
- You can track your customers’ online behaviour, understand their likes and preferences which can help you customize your offering according to your customer, thus creating brand loyalty
- By going online, you can target customers beyond your local geography and now can reach a much larger customer pool across the globe
Unfortunately, even with all these benefits, small businesses are averse to investing in online marketing. They believe it’s an unmanageable beast, for which they do not have resources in terms of time or money. Small businesses prefer to stick around with one or two traditional marketing methods which have got them success in the past, assuming the customers will stick around with them or customers will simply show up.
When your customers are online, your competitors are online, does it make sense to ignore your online presence? Think again as you may just be losing out on opportunities to generate a lot more business. If you feel you don’t know much about online marketing or how to get started, we can guide and support you through the entire process.