Why Small Businesses Need A Digital Strategy
Every company, small, medium or large, needs to have a digital marketing presence. These days, it’s almost a requirement for doing business.
Statistics show that 85 percent of all adults have a social media presence. That means 85 percent of your customers have a Facebook account. Or an Instagram account. Or Tik-Tok. Or any of dozens of other social media sites. And they visit those sites regularly. Many do so daily, others at least weekly.
What does that mean? It means your customers are on social media. So if you want to connect with those customers, you go where they are: on social media. No brainer, right?
And that doesn’t even include the customers that search for products to buy on Google. Or Amazon. Or Bing. 87 percent of shoppers read reviews when shopping online. That’s like word-of-mouth advertising times several billion. You can’t put a price on marketing power like that.
So, yes: every company needs to be active in the digital marketing space. Here are some more benefits to being in digital marketing.
- It’s where the customers are. More stats: 86 percent of adults own a smart phone and most use it to surf the web. To shop. To buy things. It doesn’t matter what product or service you sell, your audience is already online. That’s where you need to go to connect with them.
- It’s where you connect. Online marketing is all about establishing relationships with your customers. Two-way relationships, where you show them what they can buy and they tell you what they think. You can personalize your message to them, right down to using their first names and asking how their kids are! They can leave reviews and comments, and answer surveys and questions from you. This two-way street of open communications is brand new in marketing, and is highly effective in establishing solid, long-term relationships.
- Hyper-Targeted marketing. The old methods of advertising–TV, print ads, even mailers and flyers–were dependent on the hope that your message might be seen by someone interested in your product or service. In the brave new world of digital marketing, you can find your customer and put your message in front of his or her eyes. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that if you were looking for a customer who’s left-handed, loves baseball and takes vacations in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Facebook or Amazon or Google can deliver your advertising message to exactly those people. Digital platforms like those have amassed billions of bytes of information about consumer behavior to be able to drill down specifically to find and deliver your potential customers. As you can imagine, that’s also hugely cost-effective.
- The power of analysis. In addition to being able to deliver your marketing message to exactly the right audience, the world of digital marketing also provides an almost endless stream of data that you can use to spend your advertising dollars more effectively. You get almost instant and deeply detailed data on the results of your ad buys. You can see how many customers saw your message, how many clicked on it and how many bought something. You can analyze your ROI (Return on Investment), Cost Per Click, Click-Thru Rate and any of a dozen more metrics that enable you to fine-tune and adjust your marketing efforts. You can also compare your results instantly with your competitors, whether an individual company or an entire industry.
Of course, digital marketing involves more than ad spending. It means having an attractive and effective web presence. It means regular communications with your customers through email messaging or a company blog. And a lot more tricks of the trade.
And that’s where Fuel Media comes in. We have years of experience and some of the top experts in digital marketing ready to be put to work to enhance and expand your company’s digital presence.
If you are ready to bring your company into the brave new world of digital marketing, please contact us for a consultation and begin the process of creating your own digital program, customized for your needs.
