Why digital marketing is important for SMEs
small and medium businesses should use internet marketing more often.
To fully understand what digital marketing is, let us first start by defining what marketing is.
What is marketing?
Marketing is simply a process where businesses advertise and promote products to their consumer base or potential customers in order to get them to choose those products over competitors.
Without marketing, businesses run the risk of not only under performing when it comes to sales, but also going out of business and filling for bankruptcy as a result of financial loses.
Marketing is what introduces you to potential customers and gives them a sense of who you are as a brand and the products you are selling. It helps convert those potential customers into returning and loyal consumers.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing otherwise known as internet marketing, is a form of marketing that businesses use to market their products online and especially on social media platforms, websites and search engines.
Over the past decade or so, the internet has become an integral part of our everyday lives. This has pushed businesses to new fronts where they are required to evolve their traditional marketing methodologies.
In order to reach the maximum number of people possible in a particular niche, businesses have had to embrace digital marketing as a tool to help them reach the ever growing number of people who use digital platforms.
Why is digital marketing important?
- Increase customers.
- Increase sales.
- Cost effective.
- Ease of communication with customers.
- Versatile market.
- Brand development.
- Mobility.
- Beat competition.
In order for businesses to enjoy the full benefits of digital marketing, they need to plan and stick to a digital marketing strategy.
What is digital marketing strategy?
A digital marketing strategy is a coordinated plan that when executed helps reach, engage and convert online users into returning customers. Without a good strategy companies run the risk of losing their market share to competitors armed with better digital marketing strategies.
Factors to consider for an effective digital strategy
- Audience (market share).
For any digital strategy to be successful, you have to know your target audience.
These are the people you want to market and sell your products to. A good understanding and application of demographic and psychographic segmentation can give your business an edge over competitors. - Objective of the strategy.
Simply identifying you target audience is not enough. As a business you need to have a clear objective of what your digital marketing strategy is all about. The clearer your goals the more efficient your strategy will be.
Furthermore, customers will be able to distinguish your campaigns from others. - Budget.
Cost is a very essential factor to consider when crafting any type of strategy or promotion.
Depending on whether you go for videos, pay-per-click or even blogging, determining how much you campaign will cost is a guaranteed way of avoid waste of financial resources. - Monitoring.
Once the strategy is implemented there needs to be metrics in place for measuring performance.
This way, businesses can learn about their strengths and weaknesses. To add on that, you can learn from previous strategies successes and failures and improve on them.
