How Digital Marketing Helps Small Business

The importance of digital marketing for small business

It’s an amazing time to be a business owner. So much opportunity. 

Opportunities that didn’t exist for past generations of struggling businesses, where they were locked out of much of the traditional methods of adverting and growing a business.

But those days are done. Now is the time of digital marketing.

Small business digital marketing is your ticket to success

What are the benefits of digital marketing? Digital marketing can help you attract more customers than you would with traditional methods with less effort and a smaller budget. 

It’s why so many small businesses and solopreneurs are so successful with their online marketing efforts.

How is this possible?

Well, digital marketing helps you target people who are most interested in what you have to offer. Plus, it enables you to measure your success on a daily basis. This makes it incredibly powerful for every user.

Digital marketing offers many benefits, like improving your conversion rate and the quality of your leads. It also massively increases your competitive advantage and makes you more competitive even against bigger brands.

This is why it’s so important for you to understand the importance of digital marketing and embrace it for your business. 

Let’s go over some of these powerful benefits of digital marketing for small businesses.

Digital Marketing Lets You Focus your Efforts on the Right People

With traditional media, you have little control of your audience. Yes, you can adjust how often your ads display on television, magazines, and billboards, but have little control of WHO actually sees your content. Of course, you know a bit about factors such as magazine readerships or the demographics for some areas — but it is mostly a shot in the dark.

Digital marketing, however, allows for targeting a specific audience and sending them personalized, high-quality advertising communications. You can even use your ad data to then retarget the audience for even great impact.

This means it’s easier for you to attract customers and is one of the reasons digital marketing is so effective for even the smallest business.

Online marketing makes finding and selling to your target audience easier than ever before.

Engage at Every Stage of the Customer Journey

Knowing the customer journey for your audience is helpful for all of your marketing campaigns, and with so much of the purchasing journey happening online, you need to show up where your customers are at.

And with product searches, online reviews, and social media platforms right in the palm of consumers’ hands, it’s essential that YOU are online and pulling up on mobile phones and mobile devices, so you are right where the action is happening.

Digital marketing channels allow you to interact with your target audience at every stage.

From the first introduction to research and comparison to purchasing decisions, using social media platforms, search engine marketing, and email automation in your digital marketing strategy, you can be visible to your audience and assist them in their buying decision.

And today’s digital marketing tools make it easier than ever to be right there with your prospective customers.

RELATED: Choose the Best Social Media Channel For Your Business

Digital Marketing Gives You More Bang for Your Buck

Digital Marketing is more cost-effective than traditional marketing methods. You can target a specific audience with digital marketing methods, which helps to save on marketing costs and cuts down wasted time and effort.

Track Your Results

You can track the results of your digital marketing campaigns so you know what’s working and what isn’t. This helps you to focus your budget on the most effective strategies.

Reach More People

Digital marketing methods allow you to reach a larger audience more easily than traditional channels. It’s also more flexible than outbound marketing and print advertising, so you can adjust your campaigns on the fly to get the best results.

Easier Tools

Digital marketing tools have also come a long way in recent years. They make online marketing accessible to more people. You no longer need crazy technical skills or stacks of cash to create a website or a social media campaign or to start content marketing. 

Today’s tools make it easy, effective, and affordable.

The Fall of Traditional Methods?

And most importantly, traditional marketing methods are becoming less and less effective as people become more resistant to old-school advertising techniques that waste precious marketing dollars. 

Digital marketing tactics are both more effective and more affordable to reach your ideal customers.

And really, the affordability of digital marketing cannot be overlooked by any small business owner. 

Yes, there are paid advertising options online, but it is amazing what you can do organically and for free. 

So regardless of your budget, digital marketing is a must in your marketing strategy!

Digital Marketing is Measurable

Digital marketing provides a holistic overview of all the metrics that matter to your business. This is a huge advantage to digital marketing.

Despite traditional forms of advertising being useful in many ways, its largest limitations are a lack of accurate, quantifiable results. Digital advertising has the capability of showing real-time and accurate outcomes, unlike most offline advertising campaigns.

If you have ever placed advertisements in newspapers, you will realize how difficult it is. 

When you know your actual ROI and your cost per customer, you are in control of your business growth. 

Digital marketing does just that.

Using build-in metrics on social media channels, you can see which posts are working best, who your most engaged audience members are, and even what time is best to post. 

With free tools like Google Analytics, you can see how many people came to your website, how many pages they visited, and what action they took. 

And for every dollar in a paid advertising campaign, you can see directly how many leads were generated, or sales were made.

You cannot get this kind of precision metrics with traditional marketing. 

No print ads will tell you how many sales they directly brought in. 

No billboard will tell you how many new leads you got.

Knowing your return on investment is one of the best parts of every digital marketing strategy.

Amazing, right?

Digital Marketing Lets You Know What’s Working and Adapt

With traditional marketing, it can take days or even weeks to know if a marketing tactic is working, and by then, you may have blown through stacks of cash for nothing.

Online marketing makes it easy to see what is working and what’s not pretty darn quickly, like in hours.

Digital marketing allows you to know how many people viewed your website pages, your paid ads, your social media posts, online content, and videos. You get instant, accurate data to make decisions on where to focus more or less of your time, effort, and money.

Is your video marketing generating more leads than your digital ads? 

Is your website traffic coming more from search engines or your social media campaign? 

With digital marketing techniques, you will actually know the answer.

This allows you to make crucial decisions on the fly, and since most digital marketing is hands-on, you don’t have to stick with an advertising contract that is doing nothing for you. You control the ad spend, the ad creative, the schedule, all of it.

Ad not generating leads? Turn it off.

Your marketing message off? Change it instantly.

Is an ad doing better than expected? Scale it in the blink of an eye.

The flexibility of digital marketing relieves so much anxiety around marketing your business. You can test, you can change, you can start or stop, you have freedom. 

It’s pretty darn amazing.

RELATED: How to Increase Website Traffic for FREE

Digital Marketing Small Business Lets You Improve Content Performance and Lead Generation

Imagine you made a product brochure and distributed it via snail mail with the intent to increase brand awareness and get more sales. That brochure can definitely turn browsers into buyers; the problem is that you don’t know whether someone opened your brochure or put it straight in the trash.

This is one of the biggest drawbacks to traditional advertising.

Take that same brochure, work it into your digital strategy, and add it to your website for an audience online. You’ll know exactly how many people visited the page, downloaded the file, and how long they interacted on the page.

Want it to have even more reach (for free): add it to your social media for a cost-effective way to get more eyes on your content. And you’ll know how well it does.

You have real data. Pair this knowledge with your lead generation strategies, and you can automate qualified leads for your business on autopilot.

Digital Marketing Helps You Compete with Bigger Brands

As a small business, you have to compete with the biggest companies that have millions of dollars to invest in advertising and nationwide campaigns.

How are you supposed to gain any traction against the big guys?

In many instances, digital marketing has an excellent chance of surpassing big companies, even for us little guys. If you were wondering why digital marketing is important for small and medium business, this is it.

For example, relevant keywords can be identified, and you can create quality material that helps you rank for search engine results on the keywords your buyers are looking for.

Google doesn’t care which brands are the biggest. Instead, search engines prioritize content that searchers want.

Your social media presence, content marketing efforts, and digital strategy can compete with every other brand out there, regardless of your size. Paired with the affordability of digital marketing and so many big brands reluctant to fully go all-in on digital channels gives you an amazing opportunity.

Is digital marketing good for small business?

You bet. Now is unlike any other time in history for the small business. 

The opportunity for you to get in front of more people than ever before, many times for free, is something I would hate for you to miss out on.

And all of this digital marketing isn’t difficult to start. 

It doesn’t take a lot of skill to start on social media or with content marketing.

You don’t need to be a fancy digital marketer or have a digital marketing degree to show up on an organic search on Google.

You don’t need exclusive, expensive software to generate leads or build brand loyalty.

You have the same tools and opportunities to set up your online presence, your social media accounts, distribute content as everyone else – there is no barrier to entry like there used to be.

You can do it all.

Let’s Get Started with Digital Marketing for Your Business

So what are you waiting for?

Now is the time.

Now is your time.

It’s time to level the playing field, focus your money and effort on the right people at the right time, double down on strategies that you know are working, and really get the most bang for your marketing buck – all by embracing Digital Marketing strategies for your business.

Don’t get left behind or pass up this opportunity.

Need a little digital marketing help?

My digital marketing videos, articles, and resources will help you understand the basics of getting started with online marketing strategies like social media marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization, content marketing, and more.

It’s a great place to dip your toes in the digital marketing pool.

And when you’re ready to get more step-by-step online marketing tactics, a full digital marketing strategy, and the support you need to make it all work together, the Smart Arsenal is where your ideas can be turned into results regardless of your skill level.

I’d love to have you join other small business owners like yourself, taking advantage of this magical time in business marketing in the Smart Arsenal. Let me be your digital marketing coach; let me show you how you can market your business online with ease.

Because you don’t need crazy tech skills, fork loads or cash, or a dedicated staff to market your business. In fact, you don’t even need a lot of time. 

What you need is to be SMART.

Want to get your digital feet wet with a step-by-step email marketing course?

I have an Email Marketing 101 course available, where you can learn how to:

Build Relationships

Nurture relationships that convert leads to paying customers 

Showcase Your Expertise

Share information that demonstrates the value you offer

Build Trust

Recommend relevant products and services to people who trust you 

Help More People

Help your customers get the best results from their purchases

Have Loyal Customers

Grow a loyal base of followers who buy from you again and again

Continual Growth On Autopilot

Simple to set up an asset that continues to collect quality leads 24/7/365.

All with the amazing digital marketing strategy: email marketing.

You can stop hustling for new customers with traditional advertising and put your growth on autopilot with this easy-to-follow, step-by-step process for attracting your ideal customer 24/7.

Learn not only from digital marketing experts in the Smart Arsenal but from real business owners that have built successful businesses using digital marketing strategies like email marketing.

Learn the best strategies for online marketing small businesses

Want to learn more about how you can leverage digital marketing at your small business? Click here.