Marketing is vital for driving sales. In this article we discuss the importance of digital marketing for small businesses. We also present 9 techniques that you can use for marketing your business successfully.
Importance of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses
Marketing has become digital. Even if you are a small business relying on brick-and-mortar stores for your sales, you need digital marketing. This is because your customers are online and you simply need to be where your customers are.
Your customers expect to find you online – either through a website or social media presence. The first thing that most customers do is to search online for their requirement of products and services.
The benefits of digital marketing for your business are the following:
- Understand your customers better and learn exactly what they are looking for
- Target the right prospects with better personalization
- Communicate better with your potential customers during their buying journey
- Track and monitor your marketing effort and investment
- Promote your brand to a global market with no geographical boundaries
We will next look at some of the top techniques for digital marketing for small businesses.
Digital Marketing for Small Businesses: 9 Techniques for Success
The 9 techniques for digital marketing for small businesses are:
- Website
- Google Business Profile Listing
- Customer Reviews
- Google Ads
- Email Marketing
- Video Content
- Local SEO
- Social Media Marketing
- Content Marketing
We will next discuss each of the above techniques.
1. Website
Your website is your storefront. It creates the first impression for your potential customers. You need to get the basics right and ensure that your website loads fast.
Google’s research shows that the chance of a bounce increased by:
- 32% when the page load time went up from one to three seconds, and
- 90% when the page load time went from one to five seconds.
Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors that leave your website after viewing only one page on your site.
Analyze your website load times using available tools from Google. These are Think with Google and PageSpeed Insights. You must ensure fast load times both on mobile and desktop.
A well designed website with very good content will build trust, credibility and awareness for your brand.
2. Google Business Profile Listing
Please ensure that you have a Google Business Profile page.
This is a free tool that allows small business owners to promote their business information on Google Search and Maps. You can create your profile as long as you make in-person contact with customers.
You need to keep your profile always updated with accurate information regarding your business. This includes content such as posts, new products or services, holiday hours, photos, and other updated information about your company.
3. Customer Reviews
Good reviews from your happy customers will help your business in the following ways:
- Increase credibility of your business
- Help to improve customer trust and confidence
- Influence purchase decision
- Help with word-of-mouth marketing and referrals
- Receive feedback regarding what your customers really want from you
You must ensure that you collect customer reviews and share them on your website.
4. Google Ads
You can use Google Ads to ensure that your ads appear along with other search results on Google. That improves the chances of a prospect clicking on your ad and coming to your website or any specific page. These ads are also referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
Google Ads is a type of Search Engine Marketing (SEM). This is a digital marketing strategy used to increase the visibility of a website on search engine results pages (SERPs) like Google.
SEM offers advertisers the opportunity to display their ads in front of customers who have a strong intent to make a purchase. This is why SEM is extremely effective as a powerful way to grow your sales and business.
Please use Google Keyword Planner for selecting keywords for your ad campaign.
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing is the use of email to promote products and services to your customers. It gives you a direct line to the email inboxes of your potential customers.
Email marketing is a powerful way to build your brand. Email marketing can help your business in the following ways:
- reach an already engaged audience
- create personalized messages and deliver targeted messages
- collect feedback and reviews from your customers
- run campaigns in a cost-effective manner
- increase leads, generate traffic to your website and drive revenue
6. Video Content
Video marketing is the use of video content in your business marketing campaigns and strategy.
YouTube is the second most popular website, after Google. You simply can’t ignore video content for your business.
Let us take a look at some of the statistics on the benefits of video marketing.
- 54% of consumers want to see more video content
- 86% of marketing professionals use video as a marketing tool
- 66% more qualified leads per year using video marketing
- 82% of the global internet traffic in 2022 is expected from video streaming and downloads
You can use video content to establish better engagement with your customers. According to research, video content can increase purchase intent by as much as 97%.
7. Local SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website to help it rank higher in search engine results.
SEO is vital for small businesses. Most consumers use Google to search for products and services near them.
- Almost half of Google searches include location.
- Even when users are searching for products and services locally, they first use Google.
- Over 70% of consumers who search local businesses online end up visiting stores within a five miles radius.
- Nearly one third of all Google searches end in a purchase.
- “Near Me” searches have increased almost 500% in recent years.
Local SEO will improve the visibility for your business, focusing on local customers.
Even if your business model is primarily based on sales from your physical store, SEO will help in driving in-store traffic and purchases. An increasing number of consumers are conducting online research before making their purchase decision and visiting the store.
Please refer to our blog post on “Why is SEO Important for Small Businesses”, for further details.
8. Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to connect with your audience. This includes social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.
The objective of social media marketing is to promote your brand, drive website traffic, and increase sales.
According to data from The Global Statistics, the number of social media users in India in 2022 is estimated to be 467 million. Indians, on an average, spend about 2.36 hours on social media daily.
If you are just starting digital marketing for your business, we recommend that you focus on a single social media channel. This will help you to make best use of your resources. For instance, if you are focusing on B2B customers, LinkedIn is likely to be your preferred channel.
To learn more, please read our blog post on “What is Social Media Marketing”?
9. Content Marketing
Content marketing is a marketing strategy that involves creating and sharing relevant content like articles, blogs, videos, podcasts, and other media. The objective is to attract, engage, and retain your target audience.
Through content marketing, you can establish your expertise, promote your brand awareness, and eventually drive sales.
For small businesses, content marketing is even more vital. This is because content marketing delivers among the highest ROI of all digital marketing channels.
The more content you create, the better your chances are for success.
According to data from Content Marketing Institute:
- 60% of marketers report that content marketing generates demand/leads.
- 81% of marketers view content as a core business strategy.
In Conclusion
Digital marketing can be a very effective approach for you to increase your sales. It will enable you to communicate your brand to a large number of customers in a fast and cost-effective way.
For local and small businesses, digital marketing has fewer entry barriers when compared to traditional marketing like print, radio, TV and outdoor.
You can combine digital marketing with local offline marketing such as print ads, coupon mailers or even outdoor advertising.
Also, it is easier to track and measure the performance of digital marketing campaigns, as compared to traditional marketing.
In addition to the various techniques explained above, you need to take the following action to improve the effectiveness of your digital marketing campaigns.
A/B Testing:
A/B Tests enable you to study which option generates the most conversion rates, resulting in sales. These tests are designed to compare two versions of whatever you wish to test. This includes, landing pages, CTAs, headers, colors used in a page, etc.
Measure, Improve, Repeat:
You have multiple options and channels with digital marketing. For instance, there are many different forms of digital advertising like PPC, social or display ads. Which is best suited for you? One of the approaches to figure this out is to try them, measure your results, make improvements and repeat. With respective to content, you can use Google analytics to understand the performance of different pages on your website. This will provide insights for making well-informed decisions to grow your sales. You can scale-up the particular digital marketing approach that works best for your business.
Integrate Your Marketing Channels:
You need to integrate your marketing channels so that your users have a consistent brand experiences across the different platforms and channels. You need to align your different marketing campaigns to best reflect your branding.
We have created a glossary of digital marketing terms with simple definitions for you to quickly check the meaning of any unfamiliar term. You can check it out here.
For other relevant content on digital marketing, please refer to our blogs section.
Other References
Please refer to the following articles for further references on digital marketing for small businesses.
- 10 digital marketing tips for small businesses
- Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Business
- Why Digital Marketing is Important for Small Business
- 10 Compelling Reasons Why You Need Digital Marketing For Your Small Business