10 Reasons Why Every Small Business Needs Good Digital Marketing Strategy

 

10 Reasons Why Every Small Business Needs Good Digital Marketing Strategy

The internet has made the business a lot easier these days, almost everything you need to make your business become successful on the internet. You can get a professional website with an attractive business logo and easy marketing tools that will propel your business into a success, online. Even if your business does not conduct any transactions online, your current and potential customers still expect you to have it online. If potential customers don’t see you online, they may assume that you are not good enough to handle their demands. The following 10 reasons are important reasons your business should be online.

1.      It is a lot easier to showcase your business products and services online -Brand Building

With billions of people thronging to the internet to search for products and services, the internet remains your number one market place to launch your products and services. The internet is a platform that gives all businesses to showcase what they have to offer to potential clients.

People get attracted to attractive photos and videos of products and services, especially when they offer something new and unique.  If you have a website and top social networks like Twitter, and YouTube, you can leverage these things to share your content with billions of local and international customers.

Your online presence will never sleep and that is the edge it has over all other marketing strategies. You can put your new products and services online and monitor the outside of your business hours.

Brand visibility is one of the main aim of businesses moving online. There are lots of similar brands already online ahead of you, that does not mean you are not competitive and irrelevant. If you have social media pages online, for instance, you can add as many followers as possible as you can to increase your brand visibility online.

Make sure you share content that can generate interactions among your online followers. If you create content that can be liked, and shared, your brand awareness or visibility will quickly grow because those who share those contents are unknowingly endorsing your brand.  

Brand building is the core of any business that will survive the test of time. It means building trusts of your customers in the value of your business. Your customers must trust your products and services if you want to succeed and one of the best ways of building this trust is to launch your business online.

Psychologically, current, and potential new customers believe that having your business online means high integrity. It gives your customers that opportunity to give you reviews, whether good or bad, and that will surely make your business grow. You need to create a lasting positive impression of your business online to build trust in your customers. You can achieve this by emphasizing on the quality of your products and services and the more trusts you build, the more customers will likely stick with you than follow an unknown brand.

Reviews are important when building a business brand. Some will see reviews as a double-edged sword because there might be few negative ones. It is important to keep negative reviews to the barest minimum of you want to maintain integrity. You should also consider negative reviews as an opportunity to make corrections and reply to such reviews once the corrections are made to reassure your customers.

Potential customers will likely read old and new reviews (including the negative ones) before making a final decision to buy your products and services. Your business appearance online is an opportunity to encourage happy customers to leave positive reviews and invite their friends and family to patronize you.

Yelp and Google Places are some of the largest review places where many people like to evaluate businesses. You should encourage your current loyal customers to leave reviews there so that your business can show up on Google maps and other search results for local businesses.

2.      It Attracts Potential Customers to You

In addition to serving as a cheap tool to launch new products and services, the internet will also attract new, potential customers to your business. If a secret customer wants to find more information about a client, they will likely do it online before any other place. They might be looking for a company in one specific area, or a company providing a specific product that is quite scarce. You should know that most potential clients will not put too much effort into finding you, they should find what they are looking for through a Google search.

Take for instance your business is about food and wine distribution and a potential customer is having an emergency family gathering and requires a special wine brand with some seafood. They will likely use their smartphones to search for wine and seafood in your city or town. If your company is listed in the search results, they will likely want to read more and they will likely become your new customers. One great effect of this is that your new customers can recommend you to others.

One of the benefits of having Local Google listing of your business is that your company will be listed in Google maps. This means locals and travelers to your city or town can be directed by Google maps to your address. This perhaps is the easiest and most convenient way of driving higher revenue to your business.

Helpful online information on credible sources like Google Places can be very useful for both local and foreign visitors. Many online business owners make the mistake of promoting their businesses for local people only. If you have plans of expanding your business beyond the local area, you should aim at attracting foreign visitors too.

The business opening hours must be clearly stated, so also are the main products and services rendered. You should give a clear direction to your place of business and you may want to nearby landmarks just o ensure that customers find it easier to locate you.

3.       Having your business online helps you build relationships with existing customers and new potential customers

Having your business on social media is all about building new relationships and sustaining the old ones. The social media networks will give your brand a voice. It will eventually make your business more relatable because customers and potential clients will relate with the brand on a more personal level. If you own a restaurant, for instance, create exciting recipes and give them funky names and take good pictures and post them on your social media pages. You will be surprised at how many shares, likes, and comments you get within a few moments.

If you are not on social media networks, you are greatly missing out on the greatest online marketing opportunity of your life. Social media remains one of the easiest, yet most effective marketing tool to promote your brand on the internet. Social media drives people’s interest in your business and helps you form a real relationship with people.

4.      It is available 24/7 and 365 days a year

The internet never sleeps, that is why it keeps working for you even when you are at sleep. Grocery stores, restaurants, and gas stations are just a few of the businesses that run 24 hours service, it is still impossible for most companies to do that. 

One key benefit of having your presence established on the internet via a business website or social media profile is that clients and prospective customers can see you at any time, whether day or night.

Even on holidays and during a pandemic situation where all businesses and people are on lockdown, more people can still see your business online. There are so many businesses today that process customer orders only via the internet, from all devices, including smartphones and portable computers. Even if you operate the traditional offline business, you can still follow-up on new leads and inquiries when you are online. You can answer all customer queries or questions outside of your business operational hours, thanks to the internet.

Similarly, one of the benefits of putting up your business online is that it increases your company’s responsiveness. With the internet, you can deliver your business proposal easily. You can also purchase and confirm your order almost instantly, on the internet. This means that your clients, including vendors and associates, can receive your order immediately. This increase in responsiveness will lead to saving more time, energy, and resources.

 Online stores can also process customer orders and confirm them almost instantly and you will receive a copy of such process. In the past, most purchased orders are dropped off, mailed in or called, this system will make the work of the sales representatives harder because they can spend several days to process such orders.

With the application of an online store processing to your business, it becomes easy to automatically track all your inventories, the number of sales alongside outstanding orders plus every other necessary processing required for successful order processing.

With faster business response time, you will spend much less time, energy, and resources on administrative tasks and your clients will be happier for getting their processed orders in a timely manner.  

With numerous benefits like this, a significant number of offline businesses are selling off their old, analog procedures for digital, online methods of processing orders.

5.      Supports Sales and Marketing Webinars and Customer Support

With the internet, your customers can learn something new from you, through your support and online coaching.

You can answer questions directly from customers online and you can give them sales video webinars. With the free marketing tools on the internet, you can create a video of your products and services, or even a product specification and description sheet that gives your customers a better understanding of your products and services.

With the internet, you can create answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) and direct your customers and potential customers to the page to get answers to commonly asked questions. Not only will internet tools like FAQs save you more time, but they can also help you provide quicker and better services. The reason why online customer support works efficiently is that your existing and potential customers are looking for certain information before they make a final decision to buy your products and services.

The potential and existing customers may also look for you online if they want to resolve an issue with a product or service they bought in the past. For instance, your customers must be able to go to your website and resolve certain product issues by following guidelines or steps that are illustrated by texts and videos.

In some cases, your potential customers may be doing researches on alternatives to your products and services, just before making their final buying decision. With your online presence, you can easily give them the technical and non-technical information they are looking for that will eventually influence their decisions towards your business.

Your online customer support means fewer email inquiries and phone calls and you must provide this support information when they are looking for it. When you spend lesser time handling customer support queries, you will focus more on activities that drive higher revenue and profit to your business.

Email marketing strategy is one of the most effective sales and marketing strategies you can use on the internet today, to follow-up new leads, sustain customer loyalty and boost sales and revenue.

6.      Extremely low startup cost

Using the internet for your business is almost free to startups. For instance, social media networks are free to join and use to promote your business. You don’t have to construct any new building or rent an office apartment when you start a business that is going online, and in most cases, you don’t need to hire any staff.

All you need to do to startup your business online is to create an exciting website that can be easily navigated from one page to another, then host it and fill it up with contents including texts, images, and videos of your products and services. If you are already selling products and services offline, the transition from offline to the online platform should be very smooth. Putting your business online will drive new customers from far and near, which is the edge it has over offline business startups.

If you have to outsource some online jobs such as technical expertise to manage your website or hire freelancers to design graphics, write content and perform social media marketing services, you can all get these for a fraction of the normal cost.  The internet gives you the opportunity of hiring people remotely to handle the technical and non-technical aspects of your business at very reduced prices.

It is possible to spend tens and thousands of dollars to develop the most ideal website for your business, you can get the same service at much cheaper costs online.

 A great website can be designed for very little cost and there are some pre-designed templates that you can use to develop your website for free but you have to pay a little for the web hosting and domain name to get the site live on the internet. Some web hosting service providers also provide free website development tools that can be used by beginners with no website development experience.

Keep in mind when starting your business website, you will need tools like web hosting, domain name, and autoresponder for email marketing service.

Keep in mind that the internet has been designed for businesses, which means a prospective client may just be a few clicks away from your online store. Through the internet, you can now resolve and educate customers. You can also accept orders and process payments faster via the internet.

While building and launching your business websites, you should learn about easy or subtle ways of driving more traffic towards your business website. You can leverage your videos on YouTube and social media networks for instance, by including links to your web content in the description of the video.

People will surely want to view and read more about your content when you direct them from other sites to your website. If possible, you should become a guest blogger by writing about new content on other websites. As a guest blogger, you are allowed to include a link to your website page in your profile description.

Having your business online reduces operational costs. Just a single task you perform on your business online can reduce operational costs significantly. Consider the costs of paper invoicing to digital versions, you will definitely save more handling such invoicing online.

Receiving orders for your business online will eliminate the need to hire customer support staff. Your purchase orders and payments can be stored in your personal or business email, thus eliminating the need for papers.

With your business available online, you will become more organized. There is no need for keeping lots of office files on your desk when every document is in the digital form. It will even help you eliminate the need to rent or buy, and office and you wouldn’t have to buy office furniture and some other heavy equipment.   This means that the loss of vital documents or theft of sensitive business files will be eliminated because everything will be stored digitally.

Purchasing of goods and services, billing of customers and vendors, order fulfillment, and direct shipping to the final destination, are operational costs that can add significantly to your business over-head. Since you have tools that can perform all these steps online, you can save tremendously in operational costs, day after day.

7.      Work from anywhere you want

One of the benefits of having your business on the internet is that you are in complete control of the situation. If you don’t like working in those long, winter days or you are afraid of working in the hot, humid conditions, perhaps you should put your businesses online and work from anywhere. You can work in the comfort of your bedroom or while on a vacation outside the city or country, as long as you are connected to the internet.  

Having your business on the internet will give you the location freedom that means you can make decisions from anywhere. This also means you don’t have to drive or travel to a physical address on a daily basis to handle your business. You will have more time for yourself, family, and friends without compromising the success of your business.

As long as there is a solid, uninterrupted internet connection, there is no place where you can’t handle your business online. There are some business owners who live in one country and their websites are hosted in another while their warehouses are located on another continent. There is business management software you can use in monitoring your inventories and transactions online without leaving your physical locations. Except for a few cases, the internet will reduce the time, and resources spent in a physical location. The world has become a global village where you can virtually work from anywhere to expand and run your business online smoothly.

With your business available online, your business will adapt to your personal lifestyle. Even if you are a surgeon or therapist, you can connect with your clients online when you are not handling emergency treatments that require your physical presence.

8.      It helps you target a global market

Having your business online will help you reach local markets instantly. Another benefit this system offers that is being underrated is the fact that it can launch your local business into a global and more competitive one.

Millions of people traveling from one country to the other often ask people for recommendations on business products in their destination countries. If your business happens to be reviewed on top review sites, then you will probably show up on Google maps and search engines in your line of business.

With your physical business address, you are only limited to the number of people who can visit your business premises at a given time. With your business website, you can have thousands and millions of visitors visiting your online store and making orders at the same time. Imagine the income potential you will generate if you can expose your business online to billions of people in different countries and continents.

The success of your business will largely depend more on your online exposure than offline presence. When your business is live on the internet, you can drive more traffic to your business site, and you need to ensure that your site has great content that will generate interest from your online visitors.

Keep in mind that you can leverage on your website by sharing your web content on the different social media platforms. If you give out good content that will inform or entertain people, such content will go viral quickly. Information travels fast these days and that is why your business products and services can go far beyond your dreams.

9.      It enhances the image of your business

 Improving your business or company image should be enough reason to launch your business online. Without a website or social media profiles, your current and potential customers may start wondering how serious you are about the business.

In the highly competitive world of today, companies or businesses of all sizes and launching their presence online, even those who felt it was unnecessary in the past. If you don’t establish an online presence for your business, you should not expect your prospective customers to take you seriously. Lack of online presence may lead to the loss of existing customers and the lack of interest from prospective customers.  There are lots of competitors out there, ready to snatch your customers with enticing deals. when you establish an online presence for your business, you will be able to discover what they want and how their immediate and future needs can be resolve.

You should consider maximizing content for promoting your business online. For instance, most people will react to visual images, videos, podcasts, blogs, and live videos. Do you have a promotional event coming up? You should do everything possible to put the event live on your social media pages and take snippets or full event video to share on YouTube and other social media sites for your followers to like, comment on and share.

The most powerful marketing content on social media is the visual contents that constitute 80% of the total social medial marketing. These are followed by videos, blogging, live video, and podcasts. You should aim at leveraging all these marketing contents to entice your followers on social media for immediate and long-term effects.

Though social media contents are cool marketing tools to enhance your company’s image online, you need to avoid over-using it. Your Facebook and Twitter updates should be periodic, that is, once or twice a week, and the same goes for the use of hashtags. Let your followers look forward to your content so that they don’t get bored by the same message all the time.

Remember to use “killer” images in higher resolution on your Instagram pages. These vividly colored images have more potential to attract people than ordinary-looking images. It is important that you maintain some level of consistency when you use social media to promote your business online. Let your profile reflect the deepest core of your brand and do not try to copy an idea from your competitors, you should spend some time to create a brand identity that is different from others. There is nothing wrong with using the same brand logo and image across all your social media profiles.

10.  It helps you track customer behavior

Search engines like Google have provided a number of free business analysis tools you can use in tracking your customer behavior online. You can only access these tools when you have established a website online. Web analysis tools offered by these search engines can track current and potential customers based on the influence of demographics, race, sex, financial status, and other factors that influence what they purchase and what they don’t purchase.

When you have real-time figures from the analysis offered for consumer behavior analysis, you will be able to reposition or refocus your products and services to meet such changes in consumer behavior. You may introduce surveys on your products and services online and from the feedback you get, you can create or re-formulate your services and products to meet new demands.

Having your business online will improve your creativity. Just before launching a new product, many online businesses allow their loyal customers to test such products and give their honest review. If you want to increase innovation and creativity, you should have your business launched online.

Conclusion

Business automation has become one of the cost-efficient benefits of putting your business online. It is important to note that putting your business online does not mean you should ignore your offline business completely; they can be operated together to further increase your sales and boost your income generation.  

Another wonderful advantage of putting your business online is that you can easily and constantly announce gifts, discounts, coupons, and discount vouchers on your website or social media platforms. Everybody wants to take advantage of freebies and this could be your best marketing strategies to entice more followers that will eventually transform into customers. You may want to announce freebies, and discounts on holidays such as Easter, Christmas, Muslim, and Hindu festivals.

Having your business online encourages easier selling and marketing. It will also make your business advertisements a lot cheaper and easier. You should aim to release well-written copy for your services and products to entice online web visitors. A pushy salesperson who is trying to convince your potential customers physically can be annoying to some people. A subtle sales copy with lots of unique benefits people will derive from your products and services will convince people easily.