Have you ever wondered why there were no startups 20 years ago?
Startups then were called “opening a new business”.
The answer is simple—internet.
The Internet has brought us the ability to open a small business in one day and by 6 pm have 20k sales.
That’s why startups are so important now and were not existent just two decades ago.
Today the playing field is equalized and anyone can play. You can compete with brands that have been around forever and have massive budgets, and win.
You just need to have a good product or service and know how to reach your customers.
The part about reaching customers is called digital marketing and it is vital for small businesses in the 21st century.
Digital Marketing for Small Businesses
If you are a small business owner, one of the biggest changes you can make in your digital marketing strategy is changing your perspective.
One of the biggest changes that you can do for your business is to start looking at it as a startup.
I know I might be a bit boring with this analogy, but it’s really important.
The mentality of startups and old-fashioned businesses is different. Once upon a time you would open your business and it will take years to get your customers and build a brand.
Back then you could pay a fortune in advertising and not know how effective it is or does it target the right group.
There were simply no ways to measure objectively marketing success. It was more of a good will trust and hope that your marketing investment will pay off.
Today it’s totally different. We can measure every possible metric under the sun.
From numbers of visits of our website, to heat maps where we see how the customer moves his mouse trough out website and what products they are looking at.
With all this information available to use we can analyze exactly who we should sell our product to and how to get to that customer.
Small budgets can get us very far and grow our businesses beyond our expectations.
That’s why we need to think of our business as a startup, and use this to our advantage.
Like David fighting the Goliath we can beat way bigger competitors if we use these online marketing tools correctly.
Now let’s get to the technical part.
How Digital Marketing Helps to Grow Your Business?
Targeting the Right Audience
Digital marketing is great for finding the right target audience.
You can segment and target your customers on so many factors like age, demographics, interests, behaviors… the list is endless.
This is very important for small businesses because you will sell more products.
Targeting the right target audience means getting your product or service to the people who really need it.
Increasing Brand Visibility
Increasing the visibility of your brand will help you increase your sales.
Customers will automatically connect your brand logo and colors to the product they bought from you.
If you sell good quality products customers will want to buy more different products from you.
For example everyone that is satisfied with Mercedes-Benz car is more likely to buy that car again in the future.
So building your brand, your logo and brand colors, as well as your brand values is very important.
If you build a brand around quality and good customer support you will reap the rewards many times over.
Measuring Marketing Success
Objective measurement of success is one of the hallmarks of digital marketing.
Measuring success of campaigns is not just important for improving conversions, but also for planing your marketing strategy.
Having real-time metrics on views, clicks, new users, bounce rate, user behavior and so on can help you fine tune your marketing strategy.
On top of that we continually monitor our analytics and test our strategy through changing different parts and AB testing it on our customers.
This way at all times we know how our customers react, what do they want and how we should deliver it.
Reducing Costs
Digital marketing campaigns cost way less than traditional marketing campaigns.
Targeting the right audience is one big cost cutter as we explained, the other factor is digital marketing channels are cheaper and more effective.
SEO is a good example, (Search Engine Optimization) helps you to rank organically (without paying ads).
It’s important to rank in the first 5 results on the first page of Google if you want to drive up sales.
Using SEO analysis and Content marketing can help you achieve this and your brand will pop up in the first results. So anyone who searches for a product will see your brand and be able to buy from you.
The first result on Google gets over 28% more traffic. That is almost one third more than the competition.
If some keyword has search volume of 6k visits monthly, just by being the first ranked result you will get 2000 visits. This is a huge advantage.
Also, the cost-effective nature of the digital marketing method is in spending less time to get better results. You spend less time on planing campaigns on just one subtype of digital marketing, and you can incorporate other things like Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Affiliate Marketing and so on.
Attacking all of these different marketing fronts brings you more exposure for your online presence and more potential customers.
Competing Against Legacy Brands
Competing against traditional brands is the most exciting part about digital marketing.
Legacy brands have established reputation and customer base but frequently they don’t know how to adapt to the new realities of digital marketing and ecommerce.
The demographics and interests are shifting and they don’t know how to adapt their brand to appeal to new customers.
This is where your digital marketing efforts give you the most obvious advantage, you get to reach those customers and compete for their money with your product.
If you target your audience correctly and find your niche customers you will be able to outperform the legacy brands in sales and develop your brand.
Next time they buy a certain product they will connect that product with your brand instead of the legacy brand they bought for years.
Dollar Shave Club is example of this, it’s a subscription based model in which you receive quality razors and personal grooming products for a lower price.
It has over 4 million monthly subscribers and customers are very happy with the service, judged by the reviews.
This strategy competes directly with legacy brands as Gillette and Harry’s that sell their products mainly in stores and rely on TV commercials to boost their visibility.
Conclusion
If you are a small business owner digital marketing can be very important for your company. It helps them reach new customers and present their products while building their brand and values.
The effectiveness of digital marketing is giving us the possibility to do things previously thought impossible. We can compete with the most famous brands and win.
It’s up to us whether we will take these benefits and incorporate them into our business decisions.
To get a free consultation with our digital experts at Oshara please contact us now. We run the best web agency in Montreal and we can help you for sure!
