How Digital Marketing Evens the Playing Field for Businesses
Advertising on television or radio stations can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars per day. This may be more than most small businesses can afford to pay. However, due to its inexpensiveness, digital marketing tools may help level the playing field and allow companies of all sizes to reach their target audience.
Social Media
It costs nothing to create a social media account for your business. By posting quality content, your organization can amass a following of hundreds or thousands of loyal customers. Social media channels can be used to amplify blog posts or landing pages without having to spend any money doing so. Twitter is best for posting links to posts while Facebook is ideal for having conversations. Instagram can be a worthwhile platform for sharing pictures or videos.
Local Marketing Software
Even businesses with one or two employees can find success in utilizing local marketing apps. In fact, professionals such as plumbers, doctors, and dentists may find it more effective to use local apps to market their services as they may only serve a limited geographical area. Tools such as Yelp or Google My Business can help to increase traffic to a small business website, landing page or social media property.
Paid Advertising Costs Less
One of the key benefits of digital marketing is that you can advertise for less. You can expect to pay less than $1 each time someone looks at or clicks on your advertisement. The best part is that you can determine how much you want to spend on a campaign and how you want to allocate that money. There are several different types of paid advertising, including paid search, social media ads, and banner ads.
Most digital platforms allow you to suspend a campaign if it isn’t giving you the results that you hoped for or expected. The ability to suspend a campaign gives you the ability to reallocate resources in an effort to obtain a greater return on investment elsewhere.
Let Your Customers Advertise for You
Digital marketing can also be useful for small businesses because customers can do some of the advertising for you. For instance, followers may be notified when a friend likes a brand’s page or when a person leaves a comment on a company’s website. When an individual shares a blog post or article to their social media pages, their friends and family members can read and share it themselves. This can extend your brand’s reach without having to burn through any of your precious marketing dollars.
Make Use of Analytic Tools
Analytic tools can help you learn more about your customers and what they say about your company. For instance, you can find out how old a site visitor is, what country they are in or what type of device he or she used to access the internet. It may also be possible to determine which search engine was used to find your website or social media post.
Furthermore, you can find out how many times a post was mentioned or shared. Having this information can help you tailor future marketing campaigns to meet the needs of your target market. For instance, if you know that most people use search engines to find your content, it may be best to advertise on search engines as opposed to on social media sites.
Digital marketing can be a boon to small businesses that are looking to maximize their brand’s reach without spending too much. By keeping customer acquisition costs down, companies can improve their margins and increase profits. That money can then be reinvested into future marketing campaigns aimed at helping the business continue to grow and thrive.