In 2014, spending on digital marketing overtook TV advertising. Since then, the popularity and effectiveness of digital marketing have only increased.
72% of consumers connect with their brands through digital marketing channels. But why are smaller business owners slow to adapt to digital marketing? Digital marketing helps to connect with existing customers and rapidly generates more leads, allowing small businesses to rapidly expand and scale up operations.
These are five ways that digital marketing helps small businesses expand their business.
Increasing brand awareness
To generate new clients and customers, small businesses need to get their brand out there. Digital marketing is the easiest way to do that.
Social media allows interesting content to spread rapidly, across a vast volume of potential consumers. This makes it a goldmine for small businesses. Approximately 75% of consumers admitted that their shopping behavior was influenced by social media, and 33% of consumers actively use social media to find new brands. Social media marketing needs to be a core part of any small business’s marketing strategy to expand their brand awareness.
Saving Costs
Digital marketing strategies cost much less than advertising on television networks or in print magazines. A small business looking for a way to streamline their marketing strategies and cut costs would be wise to consider expanding their digital marketing efforts.
HubSpot found that digital marketing delivers small businesses a smaller cost-per-lead than traditional forms of marketing.
Expanding the Customer Base
Other forms of marketing can be limited in their reach. They may reach a specific target audience from a specific demographic.
But people of all ages and demographics use social media and the internet. No matter what your target audience, you can easily get your brand out to a wide cross-section of people, widening your customer base.
Legitimizing the Brand
When consumers come across a new brand, they often look to gather as much information as possible about the company. They want to see it is a legitimate brand they can trust to deliver a quality product.
Often, this means looking at the company website, its social media pages, and reviews from previous customers and clients. To demonstrate legitimacy, small businesses need to have a coherent digital marketing strategy. They need to ensure they are active on social media and their website looks up to date.
A static website or inactive social media page is a red flag for many potential customers. It shows that the brand may be defunct or is selling a product that is not very popular. Ballihoo found that 63% of consumers were more likely to use a brand with brand information on their social media pages.
Increasing Sales
Ultimately, the purpose of marketing is to increase sales. Digital marketing allows you to funnel consumers to promoted content and advertisements and generate more sales.
There are also ways to sell products directly from your social media pages. Amazon and Twitter have come together to allow consumers to make purchases on Amazon directly from their Twitter feeds. YouTube and Facebook also have ways to sell directly to consumers.
Digital marketing is of huge benefit to small business owners. When all is said and done, business owners want their marketing strategies to have a positive effect on their bottom line. Digital marketing does that by both lowering costs and increasing sales.
