What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is any marketing that uses digital channels to reach consumers. This might be email marketing, social media marketing, display ads, search engine optimization, text messaging advertisements and many more.
You might be feeling a little overwhelmed when you see that the list of things that are required for a successful digital marketing presence is so numerous. Thankfully, most of these kinds of outreach follow the same general best practices and you will be able to use the same keywords and other information in many forms of your digital outreach.
Why is Digital Marketing so Important in 2022?
Digital marketing has never been more important. As more people work from home and shop from home, you will need to have a good digital marketing strategy to support business growth and customer engagement, and awareness. According to the U.S. Census Bureau "Total e-commerce sales for 2021 were estimated at $870.8 billion, an increase of 14.2 percent (±0.9%) from 2020. Total retail sales in 2021 increased 17.9 percent (±0.5%) from 2020. E-commerce sales in 2021 accounted for 13.2 percent of total sales. E-commerce sales in 2020 accounted for 13.6 percent of total sales." As you can see, not only do digital sales is a massive industry that cannot be ignored, but it is growing a drastic near 15% per year!
If you are ready to learn more about why small business needs digital marketing, read on!
1. Search Engine Optimization
Without digital marketing, you will have a hard time showing up in first page, or the number one spot of the SERP's. The more that you can use search engine optimized information to promote your brand, the better you will rank in Google searches.
Search Engine Optimization is a long-term strategy and investment. You will not be able to rank for any desired keywords overnight, or even in the fist month or two. Optimizing for search engines is a time consuming practice and it also takes time to build topical authority and backlinks.
If you are looking to get a great ROI in the first couple of months, SEO is not the best channel for that. If you want your brand to steadily grow and in a few years receive constant traffic from organic search engine results, this is the strategy for you.
2. Social Media Drives Engagement With Your Small Business
A strong social media presence is much more effective at driving traffic to your business than you might think. Companies that neglect to utilize social media for their outreach online will often find that consumers do not feel as connected with their brand as they would have hoped. This is because social media offers the chance to create added value offerings that demonstrate caring and engagement with customers.
Companies that use social media to display company values and create connections with new consumers through friendly outreach will always be more successful than those who do not attempt to create these kinds of outreach opportunities. Your social media presence offers the chance to display ads that do not seem like ads and make branding outreach easy for your business on a daily basis.
3. Digital Marketing Reaches More People
There are 3.78 billion people on social media these days. This is about 50% of the population of the world. This large chunk of the population does most of their shopping online and finds out about new businesses and brands through the use of social media and Google searches. Without an online presence, your company is invisible to these people for the most part.
Gone are the days where a corner store will be a big success with limited advertising. You will need to make sure that you cultivate and maintain a digital presence to grab the attention of all of the many people who are living a large part of their day online.
4. Target Audience Definition
Without a digital marketing strategy, you cannot hope to define your target audience correctly. Your target demographic is easy to isolate when you are using online ads and social media to promote your brand. These online forms of advertising will tell you all about who clicks on your ads and looks at your websites the most.
Target audience definition and segmentation can make all of your advertising processes more effective and you can craft the right brand messaging easily when you know who you are selling the most products to. Without digital marketing, you will struggle to get this information easily and you will have to rely on broad-spectrum advertising for most of your outreach.
5. Digital Ads Are Affordable Within a Small Business Marketing Budget
Compared to print ads or billboards, digital ads are very affordable. You can also change and redirect digital ads in ways that you cannot alter or improve other kinds of advertising outreach. Once you know what your most effective brand messaging is, you can easily direct your ads to this brand message and deliver them to the right audience every time.
This is the power of digital marketing, and you will be able to harness this uniquely flexible and affordable marketing strategy on a daily basis. These ads are low-cost and high-impact and will make your advertising job easy.
6. How Effective is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is not dead. People might think of this kind of marketing as old school, but email marketing still generates massive results for online stores. You will find that email marketing that is crafted correctly can send people to your website with reliable frequency, a high response rate and low cost per conversion.
It is much more than simply making sure that your email outreach is not spammy, there are many factors contributing to the success of a campaign. Email marketing is very affordable and is well worth the effort with the correct experts on your team since it can be automated quite easily.
7. Brick-and-Mortar Stores Are Expensive
It is spendy to keep a brick-and-mortar location open. You might be spending most of your profits every month keeping some of your physical locations open. Imagine if you could part with these physical stores and sell your products online instead!
Being free of the necessity of paying to keep the lights on in many physical locations is a huge benefit to an effective digital marketing presence. You will almost always sell products more effectively and readily online, and you will love being free of the costs of a physical location that must be managed and paid for.
8. Word of Mouth Promotion to Help Market Your Growing Business
Online marketing allows you to generate organic sales through effective word of mouth. This is one of the powers of social media and online content as a whole. It is very easy to send a link or forward an ad to a friend if you like a product and think that they would as well. As people spend more and more time online, these kinds of organic sharing opportunities are multiplying.
Having an effective digital marketing plan will allow you to grow your business rapidly through organic means. This would be a much tougher process with a store that has no online presence and you would have to spend a lot more money in advertising to make this kind of organic growth possible.
Although if you want word of mouth to be a driver of traffic and in the end revenue, your product or service must be the highest of quality, otherwise no one is going to share your brand with their friends.
9. Clear Branding Presence
Digital marketing allows you to tell the story of your company with ease. You will be able to craft the right kinds of outreach that communicate the value and ethos of your brand right away. This means that consumers will engage with your brand without any confusion and you will be able to drive traffic toward the right interested parties with ease.
Branding does not have to be tough if you have a clear online voice backing your branding message. This is one of the best parts of the use of online media to promote your brand. You will have superior control over the message that is being promoted when you have a good digital marketing strategy on your side.
10. Working With Influencers
Influencers have a large share of the market these days. These people have a large group of followers that they have collected who take their advice about items to buy, things to try, and places to go. This means that your online brand can become affiliated with influencers with ease.
If you become aware of an influencer who you feel can promote your brand and its values, it is quite easy to deliver information about your products to a large group of people immediately. This can be a powerful way to promote your brand, as well as your branding message and it would not be possible if your brand does not have an online presence.
11. Help Your Small Business Stand Out From the Crowd
There are many ways to make your brand superior to other brands when you are working on your digital marketing strategy. A good website that is easy to navigate as well as effective social media outreach can push your brand head and shoulders above other brands in your space.
You will not have to struggle to show added value to your customers when you are managing your online presence correctly, and this can be one of the most effective ways to carve out market space for yourself efficiently and affordably.
12. Save Money
Digital marketing can actually be quite affordable when you are using the right tools and methods to refine your outreach. You will be amazed at how affordable it can be to bid for ad spaces and your SEO processes can allow your business to show up at the top of searches readily as well.
Being able to save money on advertising can allow you to use that capital for reinvestment in your business or the development of new products and services.
13. Reduce Staffing
If you have been running a bunch of physical locations for your business, you might find that the move to a better digital marketing presence allows you to close up some of these locations and reduce your costs for employees. You will often be able to sell a lot of your product online when you are using the right digital marketing strategy, and you will probably see that the relevance of your physical locations diminishes in proportion to your improved online presence.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I Manage My Own Digital Marketing Strategy?
While you can manage your own digital marketing presence, you might find that working with a team of digital marketing experts is the most efficient way to make sure that your online advertising budget is used in the most effective manner.
Can I Avoid Using Social Media?
If you hate social media and do not want to manage your social media pages, it is best to pass this task on to an expert team of advertising specialists. Social media is a dynamic part of online advertising and it is a very affordable way to generate engagement and conversions for your business.
What If I Do Not Know Anything About Search Engine Optimization?
If you do not feel that you are an expert in SEO, you are not alone! Many people do not have the tools or experience to manage their SEO efforts alone, but that is where a skilled digital marketing team can help!
Using a Digital Marketing Agency for the Success of Your Small Business
If you want to be sure that you are getting the most out of your digital marketing dollars, you might need to consider engaging a digital marketing team to help you with your efforts. There is nothing that says that you cannot learn to manage your online presence and digital marketing strategy on your own, but it can be tough to juggle all of the marketing needs of your business while also running the business itself.
Make sure that you do not sacrifice energy and money toward ads that are not working for your business. Strengthening your digital marketing strategy can generate big results for your brand on a daily basis.
