Why Digital Marketing Is Vital For Your Small Business

Sales are essential to any business, but even more so to small businesses. In order to generate those sales, you need to be carrying out marketing activities that put your brand, products or services right at the forefront of your target audience. However, as a small business, it is also essential you manage your cash flow and finances carefully meaning you probably don’t have a huge budget for marketing activities.

This means that you will have to work smarter, not harder in order to achieve your goals. This is why using digital marketing tactics that are cost-effective and easier to implement is more beneficial.

Benefits Of Digital Marketing

• Reach a new audience
• Keep an eye on your competitors
• Use tools to speed up your work
• Keep track of metrics to measure success
• Different platforms to use
• Manage your budgets

Your Audience And Customers Are Online

Digital marketing enables you to reach a wide audience of your existing and potential customers 24/7. Using paid marketing you can target specific audiences you want to engage with your brand, whereas SEO can help you put your brand in front of those who are searching for your products and services.

It’s also important to remember that the customer buying journey isn’t linear. There are many stages a customer can go through before they decide to actually make their purchase, and the journey one customer takes can and most likely will be different to that of another. For example, if you sell watches one customer might just purchase a watch as a present following an email they received notifying them of a 20% discount. Whereas another customer might have been thinking they’d like a new watch, but they’re not sure which one to get, so instead they do their research, they browse social media, they read reviews, they ask their friends and family, then when the time is right they might make the purchase following a display ad that appears to them.

This is why being online is important as no one can predict when the right time will be for a customer or all the journeys they could take to get to that purchase stage. So by being online and utilising multiple channels you can increase your visibility and chance of success.

Monitor Your Competitor’s Performance

The data digital marketing provides can also be put to great use for monitoring what your competitors are doing and the results they are achieving. This can help you benchmark your performance against there’s, in order to create targets and assess your success. It may seem obvious, but this kind of information can provide insight into how you can improve your own campaigns and ultimately grow your own business.

Different Channels To Use

There are many different digital marketing channels and platforms available to choose from, each with their own benefits and more suitable depending on your marketing budget.

• Social Media Marketing
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
• Digital PR
• SEO
• Content marketing

What Do You Need To Spend?

Depending on what you’d like your digital campaigns to achieve will depend on how much money you should budget for. Our main piece of advice is that when setting your budget you should be realistic, and by that we mean you can’t expect to run multiple high-performing campaigns on multiple channels using a budget of just £100. However, that doesn’t mean you have to spend a fortune either. Our highly talented team are used to managing an array of budgets, therefore we recommend speaking to them to discuss your goals and what you’d like to spend.

What Analytics Should You Be Tracking?

There are lots of different metrics you can report on that will show the success or failure of your online marketing activities. Depending on the goals, and the different digital marketing channels you’re using will decide which metrics you should prioritise. Some of the key metrics are:

• Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) – The amount of return you are getting for every pound you are spending. For example, if you have a ROAS of 12 it means that for every £1 you spend, you’re receiving £12.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR) – The ratio of users who are clicking on specific links in your campaigns.
• Cost Per Click (CPC) – The amount you’re spending for every time someone clicks on the links in your campaigns.
• Cost Per Action (CPA) – The amount you’re spending for every determined action your campaigns are generating. For example, if you’re running a campaign for bookings your CPA could be £2.30, which means you’re paying £2.30 every time you receive a booking.

Digital Marketing Tools To Take Advantage Of

There are many different tools available that can make managing digital campaigns easier. Here are just a few different tools we like to use and recommend:

• ahrefs

ahrefs is a great tool for helping you analyse the visibility of a website for the keywords you want to rank for. It can also highlight keywords which you can take advantage of as part of your SEO strategy.

• Hootsuite

Managing social media accounts across multiple platforms can be challenging and very time-consuming. Luckily there are various scheduling software providers that can help you plan your content in advance. Hootsuite is one that has a range of packages available for different price points.

• Google Analytics 4

The next generation of Google Analytics, allows you to understand your website insights and your customer’s journeys as they navigate to and across your website.

• Coverage Book

Want to monitor the reach, links and coverage of your press releases? Then take a look at Coverage Book which helps you report on the success of your Digital PR campaigns.

• Spyfu

There are lots of great uses of this platform, but ultimately it’s a great one for finding out which keywords will be more beneficial to your PPC campaigns.

Ultimately, it isn’t a question of whether digital marketing is necessary. It’s how can you use digital marketing activities to successfully reach and engage with your target audience, drive conversions and make revenue for your business? Covid showed businesses just how important it was to have an online presence, with 65% of businesses accelerating their digital marketing due to the pandemic. So whether you work in a product or a service business, B2B or B2C, if you aren’t online you will be left behind.

If you’d like to create or advance your digital marketing strategy, but you’re not sure how or where to begin, or perhaps you don’t have the time, then we’re happy to discuss your goals, activities and budget. You can get in touch with one of our experts by calling 0161 327 2635 or emailing [email protected].