Top 5 Reasons Small Businesses Need Digital Marketing in 2021

Digital technology has changed the way businesses operate today. There is a massive repository of prospects online that your business can not be missing out on. But, big companies are not the only ones who can benefit from online marketing. As a small business owner, you can too. 

Digital Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing

Let’s first dive into these two different forms of marketing.

Digital Marketing

Includes all marketing channels and methods you can use to promote products or services on the internet, but also via electronic devices such as mobile phones.

Digital marketing makes it easier to calculate ROI so you can make sure your ad spend is driving conversions. Also, your efforts can be highly targeted to a specific audience, demographic, etc. - something traditional marketing lacks.

Traditional Marketing

Promotion or advertisement on print advertisements, billboards, flyers or pamphlets, TV, newspaper, radio, etc.

Traditional marketing has its place, especially for large businesses that don’t need to be as laser-focused on immediate ROI, but it’s much more challenging to track results. You can’t add a tracking pixel to a billboard!

What are the Reasons you Need Digital Marketing for your Business?

1) Your Competitors are Online

For your business to be successful, knowing what your competitors are up to is critical. The most successful companies continuously analyze the marketplace and learn from their competitors to compete. Take what you like from their strategy, improve upon it, and make it your own. 

By conducting online analyses, you’ll be able to determine these critical questions about your competitors and allow you to compete with them:

• Do they write blogs?
• Do they have creative content?
• Do they create videos?
• Do they have appealing graphics?
• What makes them unique?
• What kind of relationship do they have with their customers?
• What sort of marketing programs and initiatives do they run?
• And more!

2) Customer Accessibility 24/7

The average consumer searches for things they need and want online. More often than not, there is a pretty high success rate finding these products/services, such as “things to do” or “where to get the best ice cream.” Without an online presence, these are opportunities you can be missing out on. 

Long-lasting relationships with your customers or prospective consumers can be formed in ways traditional marketing cannot offer. Some ways it improves the methods of traditional marketing with your customers are through:

• Automated and personalized emails or texts triggered by visitor behavior and data.
• Retargeting ads to re-engage past visitors and have them “try out” this product.
• And more.

3) Gives Measurable Results

Remember how we said that traditional marketing makes it difficult to track results? Well, you don’t have to worry about the difficulty of monitoring specific metrics with digital marketing. 

Every digital platform you use should come with specific tools to help you measure and track your results, ultimately giving you an ROI for your time and money (think Facebook pixel for Facebook ads). 

Tracking allows you to evaluate your performance and inform key decisions for your business, such as where you should be allocating your money and resources. You can measure results in real-time and pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of your digital marketing strategy.  

4) Target and Interact with the RIGHT Audience 

One of the ways digital marketing outperforms traditional marketing is in the way you’re able to target a specific segment.

When you interact and engage with this particular segment, it can give you insight as to what your targeted audience's interests are.

This information can help you create a better experience for your prospects/customers and can allow you to develop a better understanding of your target audience.

5) Profitable

You may have fallen into the notion that digital marketing is expensive. On the contrary, it has proven results while being cost-effective.

Better yet, tackle digital marketing with the help of an agency partner and experience results like this 85% increase in return on ad spend.

Reasons Small Businesses Need Digital Marketing

Digital marketing has become the most powerful way to help businesses thrive and is becoming more prevalent every day. While some small businesses have not tapped into the digital world yet, those who have can relate to the following:

1. Direct competition with their competitors
2. Better customer relationships due to 24/7 availability made on the web
3. Better ROI/easier to measure results
4. Quickly reaches their target market.
5. Cost-efficient

If you’re unsure where you should start, contact us, and we’ll take care of the rest.