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Grow your Small Business with Digital Marketing? / How Digital Marketing helps to Grow Business!
Updated: Feb 21
Is Digital Marketing only for big corporations?
Digital Advertising is better than Traditional Advertising.
The reach of Digital Marketing is higher than Traditional Marketing / Advertising
You can run campaigns across geographies with Digital Advertising
Digital Advertising can be managed remotely & in a dynamic manner
Digital marketing can be completely targeted
Digital Marketing increases the effectiveness (ROI) of marketing budget & business operations
Digital Marketing helps obtain valuable leads
Digital marketing democratises the advertisement process
Digital Marketing has options available for every business/marketing objective
Digital Marketing is futuristic and technology makes a lot more possible
How does Digital Media support customer conversion process?
Is Digital Marketing only for big corporations? Digital marketing is no more just the cradle of big business incorporations. In-fact digital marketing has in a way democratised the world of marketing and advertisement. Digital marketing has essentially started a new order of advertising, where all that matters is the right mix of strategies!
What & Why of Digital Marketing/Advertising.
Digital Advertising is better than Traditional Advertising. You need not always have huge billboards (expensive & often overlooked) across metro cities to catch a customer’s attention. With the right platform and timings, you would rather reach out to your customer just when she/he is interested or ready to buy your kind of product or service …or at least thinking about it.
So there’s a huge, impressive hoarding about a new restaurant, outside a busy tube station where people are hurriedly walking past, trying not to miss the next train! The food platter on the advertisement is mouth-watering! But at that point of time, I am busy ensuring that I am keeping up with my professional commitments & other items on my to-do list! Table booking can wait till the former is accomplished!!!! Compare this with a restaurant advert that pops up on my mobile just when I am thinking about where to book a table for dinner (having accomplished my professional goals for the day and in a mood to celebrate having done that). Which advertisement do you think is expected to deliver better outcome (in this case a customer actually booking a table)?? Add to it the benefit of advertiser having to pay only if the customer clicks on the advertisement as compared to a road hoarding where advertiser might be paying a cost directly proportional to the footfall around it (without having a clue about many people actually paid attention to it!)
Digital marketing is even more useful for small businesses as it can be targeted, specific, more effective, measurable & thus highly strategic. Most important, it allows for lot of space for personal creativity. This creativity is not just limited to designing the audio-visual content. In digital marketing a creative marketeer can effectively outdo it’s deep-pocket business competitors (big corporations with huge advertising budgets), because your campaign does not need to be grand; it just needs to be the right mix of content, keywords, placement & time. So even with small marketing budget, digital marketing can be your trump card if you know your customers well enough! Let’s look at all these benefits one-by-one…
1. The reach of digital marketing is higher than traditional marketing
One can reach endless number of people online, while the reach of traditional marketing is always limited to its location. You can expect to get noticed by a road-side hoarding only by the number of people who cross that road at some point of time (so you effectively miss out on all those potential customers who never cross that road as it simply doesn’t fall in their route). But you can find ways of appearing on their mobile and laptop screens immaterial of their physical location. Digital mode of advertising can also help you reach out to people who would not be regularly visiting spaces outside their home (unwell, elderly, work-from-home….). So, the possibility of reaching out to a larger number of people is much higher online.
2. You can run campaigns across geographies in the same ad set, simultaneously
In traditional marketing, you need to invest in local resources, individually, to be able to advertise in that geography (you would hire a person in every high street where you plan to distribute your pamphlets). Whereas in a digital marketing campaign, you can specify multiple geographies in the same advert and launch it simultaneously in all target geographies.
3. Digital marketing can be effectively managed remotely & in a dynamic manner
You do not have to be physically present in the geography where you advertise to be able to micromanage your advertisement. You could launch an advert focussed on New York city while working in Sydney and also keep updating the advertisement features constantly without being physically present in the target location. While you cannot edit a traditional advertisment once it is launched, it is quite possible to keep editing a digital advertisment as you receive feedback. Also, AB testing provides an opportunity to launch advertisments for the same product from multiple point-of-views. Different customers have different priorities as well as aspirations. AB testing provides an opportunity to advertisers to launch different advertisment copies of the same product and find out the approach that works best for that product.
4. Digital marketing can be completely targeted
I could be a neighbourhood nail parlour sending post-box offers to everyone in my local area. That makes sense considering that people prefer to go to nail-parlours and saloons situated in proximity to their home. However, by doing this, I am also spending money and resources on households that would never be my customers (all male households, senior citizens with limited mobility, an antifashion activist…). However, online / digital modes of advertisement allow me to choose my target audience. Here I can spend money in reflecting my advertisement to only women, in a certain age-group, certain income level, interested in fashion or nail art….! I can target my advertisement to just about people who have the highest probability of buying my product or service.
5. Increases the effectiveness (ROI) of marketing budget & business operations
The targeting process is the single largest factor why digital marketing has a much better ‘Return of Investment’ (ROI). I can cut wasteful expense on actions that are sure to not generate returns or conversions. Also, designing a digital advertisement is often much less money intensive then designing & distributing a physical advertisement. I have better control on running a digital advertisement where if I find the advertisememt not performing, I can pause it and save my unspent budget. All these factors help in reducing spending amount on non-performing areas. Additionally, since digital marketing allows me to advertise my business beyond geographical boundaries, it helps me widen my customer base and increase revenues, further increasing the ROIs.
6. Obtains valuable leads
While digital advertising might not always provide immediate sales, it provides a wealth of information about potential customers who can be converted with a little more effort. Although data privacy laws do not allow platforms to share identifiable customer data, still these platforms provide you ways to remarket to all the customers who displayed more than casual interest on your previous advert. So repeatedly taking my ads to the screens that have previously spent more than usual time in browsing my advert or website has higher possibility of gaining conversions. So digital platforms provide valuable leads about customers who might not have converted at the first instance, but seem closely convinced and are more likely to pay attention to your content next time.
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