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What is Digital Marketing ? How does it benefit my business ? I do not have the budget to run any advertisements or marketing campaign. Why should I start Digital Marketing for my business ?

In this post, you will learn why Digital Marketing is essential for every business, especially so for small businesses.

Gone are the days where advertisements are only on television, radio, magazines and newspaper (Traditional marketing medium).  Digital Marketing differs from Traditional Marketing in terms of marketing platforms. Digital Marketing uses internet and online-based technologies to promote a business’s offerings through multiple channels in the digital landscape. Businesses can analyse campaigns, content and strategy to understand its effectiveness in real-time.

Why Invest in Digital Marketing ?

Many small business owners think that they only need a small number of customers.

They simply wait for customers to show up. Being passive is a downfall of many businesses.

Word of mouth marketing may be powerful. But, for that to happen, you need customers to be aware of your business offerings. No matter how good a product/service is, without marketing to the right people, there will be limited sales.

During the Covid-19 Pandemic, over 8,700 businesses were forced to shut down. Many of these have not adapted digital solutions to compensate for the loss of foot traffic.

Business need to adapt, or they will be left behind.

With the rapid advancement and evolution of modern technologies, many small and medium businesses trying their best they can to keep up, especially with the big players in the game. From changing to an online-focused business to increasing marketing efforts with digital marketing strategies to capture a growing and very lucrative online marketplace.

The following 8 reasons will allow you to understand why the use of digital marketing can help your business to survive, compete and even grow in this digital era.

Change in Customer Purchasing Journey

Ask yourself:

What is the first thing you do when you are looking for more information on a particular brand, its products/services or just general information regarding the niche?

You simply search it up in a search engine, or more commonly, you Google it. Many potential customers of a business are already online.

According to Statista,

• Singapore’s Internet penetration rate is 89%, 5.0187 million active internet users
• Users spend an average of 6.48 hours online daily

At this very moment, there is a good chance that potential customers are looking for a product/service that your business is offering. Potential customers often research online and look for a website, social media accounts, reviews to learn about what other customers are saying about your business.

Many times, when such information is not available online, they are led to think that your business is not legitimate. They start to lose trust in your brand. Once they have made that assumption, there is a high chance that they will not patronise your business. They will be choosing your competitors that have a digital presence. It would be relatively expensive to regain an unsatisfied customer.

• 88% of people consider online reviews an essential factor in purchase decision while
• 23% of people visit a business after reading a good review

Online presence is required for a business to be relevant to the many customers today. Digital Marketing gives you that presence. This is the customer purchasing journey today.

Competitors Are Online

Successful businesses are well informed about what their competitors are doing.

Not only looking to gain an edge over their competitors but to learn their successful strategies and making a better version of their own.

You will get a better understanding of successful and unsuccessful strategies when you study what your competitors are doing.

When potential customers begin to search online, they will come across your competitor’s website instead of yours. You will stand little to no chance in acquiring that customer. Your potential customers cannot choose you if they do not know about you.

Levels the Playing Field for Small Business

We all seen this happen before. A supermarket chain comes in and wipes out many local speciality shops. It happened in the online landscape with E-commerce giants as well. It’s almost impossible to compete with MNCs who spend millions of dollars into marketing efforts.

Gone are the days where only multinationals corporations (MNC) could afford running advertisements.

Digital Marketing levels the playing field for small businesses. They are capable of running marketing campaigns within their budget. (We are talking about as little as $5 a day !) Small businesses can compete against the big boys in their niche and gain their share of traffic.

Well-managed Marketing campaigns allow businesses laser-focused objectives and conversion where they have control over where, which and how their advertising budget is spent. These data are valuable to businesses in making smarter decision for further campaigns. Continuously effort will propel your business forward, levelling the playing field.

Customers Can Reach Your Business Anytime, Anywhere

Digital Marketing allows a business to reach customers that are beyond their local serving areas with well-placed marketing campaigns.

With digital presence, your business is always open even when it’s closed physically. Customers will be able to engage with your business at their convenience.

By doing so, a business can immediately increase their reach, as well as revenue.

These engagements include:

1. Make enquiries and purchases
2. Looking at your business offerings
3. Finding out more regarding your brand and many more

Get to Know Your Audience

Instead of assuming and guessing, Digital Marketing uses tools that allow businesses to engage actively with their potential and existing customers.

Businesses will be able to:

1. Pinpoint problems that customers facing when engaging with their business
2. Making improvements to make customers’ journey as smooth and easy as possible
3. Offer a solution that best fit the customers’ needs
4. Build relationship and brand loyalty

Customers will view businesses as a trusted partner than just a business increasing the positive image of the brand.

Cost-Effective

Digital Marketing is, by far the most cost-effective way to market a business. Traditional Marketing methods and mediums (Television advertisements, radio, newspaper or direct mail) are more costly and reach lesser customers.

Small businesses have limited resources. They will not be able to compete for the limited ad space in Traditional Marketing. However, with Digital Marketing, small businesses will be able to perform affordable digital marketing strategies with complete control over how much they want to spend the money.

From the chart,

• Cost of using Direct Mail is $57 for 1000 impressions
• Cost of using Social Media is $2.50 for 1000 impressions

If a business were to use Social Media, $57 would bring in 22,500 impressions !

Traditional Marketing methods usually come with several hidden costs. Cost of printing materials, buying media, creating radio or television advertisements, hiring graphic designers or scriptwriters, etc. The only real cost to Digital Marketing is time.

Digital Marketing strategies like Content Marketing, Social Media Engagement and Search Engine Optimisation require some time to be effective. Paid Digital Marketing strategies like Pay-Per-Click, Display Campaign and Paid Social Media Advertising can be used to speed up the process.

Digital Marketing allows a business to use many different strategies to gain as much exposure as possible, increasing their chances of business success.

Measurable

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage or improve it” – Peter Drucker

Ask yourself, when you’re choosing to use Traditional Marketing methods:

1. Exactly many people are looking at my ads ?
2. Did people read my direct mails/brochures or they simply throw them away ?
3. How many new visitors you received in the last 30 days?
4. What is the exact cost of a customer conversion (ROI) ?
5. Which strategy is the most successful when you are using several different platforms at once ?
6. And many more.

One of the biggest drawbacks about Traditional Marketing is the difficulty to track quantitative results. With Digital Marketing strategies and Digital Marketing Tools, a business will be able to:

1. Know exactly how many people saw your ads
2. Know exactly how many new and repeated customers you have during any duration
3. Know which campaigns/ads on which platform is the most successful in meeting your marketing goals
4. Know your ROI and conversion rate
5. Know the exact average lifetime value of your customers
6. Know if customers are satisfied with your business offerings
7. And many more.

Digital Marketing Analytical Tools allow businesses to know the exact number of many essential numbers when measuring the success of a marketing campaign. If a business does not know the answers and have these data readily available, they will not be able to manage or improve campaigns but make an estimate.

Live Tracking

Digital Marketing Analytical Tools allow businesses to track results in real-time. These data provide insights on how people are interacting with your website and marketing campaigns.

Businesses can manage multiple marketing campaigns, make edits and implement them immediately. If something is not working, you got control to change or end it immediately. Advertisement campaign daily budget can be adjusted as time goes by.

The power of Digital Marketing lies in being instant. Results, data can be analysed and changes can be made immediately to reduce wasted ad spend. There is no need to wait for the advertising contract to terminate or physically meeting with providers to renegotiate terms to keep your advertisement space and cost.

All in all, a business should not second guess and procrastinate their decision to invest in Digital Marketing. Many small businesses tend to take things slowly or only sticking with the basic types of advertising as their business evolves. But there is no guarantee that a business will attract a steady flow of customers just by existing.

This is not an effective approach.

Small businesses now have resources to be competitive in the digital world.

The question is not “Which type of marketing is the best ?”. Instead, it should be “Which type of marketing best appeals to my target market and audience to encourage them to patronise my business ?” The world is moving towards digital; customers are moving towards digital. Those who do not adapt will be left behind.

Enjoy what you read ? Leave a comment about what you think about Digital Marketing and how it transforms businesses today. Drop me a message or hit me up in LinkedIn.