How Your Small Business Can Benefit from Digital Marketing Today

Josh Wardini
Josh Wardini

Last updated on

February 29, 2024

Decades ago, a company looking to get its message in front of prospects and customers had to utilize traditional marketing tactics. These methods proved useful at the time.

Companies had the option of print advertisements, flyers, pamphlets, billboards, direct mails, TV, radio, and newspapers to choose from. Those with huge budgets promoted their brand on every traditional marketing channel they could lay their hands on.

But with the advent of the internet, marketing efforts slowly began shifting to the digital space. In 1993, the first-ever clickable ad banner went live. This marked the birth of digital marketing as we know it today.

Today, digital marketing is the top choice for businesses around the world. According to a study, global media ad spend is estimated to reach a whopping 53.9% of total media expenditure in 2022. The reason for this is quite simple - the internet has become part of the modern man's life.

People spend more time on the internet than ever before and carry out most of their day to day activities online. So it becomes necessary for businesses to use the internet as a marketing platform if they are to reach their target audience successfully.

Now that you know a brief history of how marketing has evolved over the years, let's dive into how you can grow your business using digital marketing in 2019 and beyond.

7 Effective Digital Marketing Strategies

In the world of digital marketing, some strategies are just more effective than others. As a small business owner, you need to choose a profitable digital marketing tactic to reach your marketing goals. The following tactics are some of the most effective digital marketing strategies available to your business.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a leading digital marketing strategy as it offers loads of benefits to small business owners. Anyone wishing to rank on page one of Google will have to get their website optimized for search engines.

As mentioned earlier, the internet is where people spend most of their time these days, and Google is a vital part of it. Users in the modern world rely on Google for everything; they become virtually lost without it. When consumers need quick answers to questions, they use Google; when they need to learn more about a product or service, they turn to Google as well.

According to studies, 94% of B2B buyers say they initiate a Google search before making a purchase. Businesses and brands in 2019 that fail to optimize their websites for search engines are missing out on a great deal of value SEO could bring to their business.

Investing in SEO for your small business might seem like a lot, especially if you're starting out, but it's of great importance as your business won't grow without it.

Benefits of SEO For Your Small Business

  • By optimizing your website, you get a position of high visibility on the SERPs
  • Nothing increases your brand's awareness like being on the first page of Google for keywords specific to your industry
  • SEO brings more traffic to your site
  • SEO helps you build business growth outside your location
  • An effective SEO strategy puts you ahead of the competition
  • An SEO-optimized website is more likely to convert visitors to customers.

How Search Engine Optimization Works

Google is most concerned with offering its users the best search experience. When a user searches for information online, the search engine presents a list of relevant results that match the searcher's query. These results are ranked in lists and pages from the most relevant to most irrelevant ones.

However, you should understand that Google doesn't just pay attention to keywords. It considers other ranking factors like a site's structure, responsiveness, and mobile-friendliness before including a website on the SERPs.

2. Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social media marketing is a type of digital marketing that comprises activities such as the creation and sharing of relevant content on social media platforms to reach your branding and marketing goals.

Social media marketing consists of posting texts, images, and videos on social media platforms to raise brand awareness and ignite engagement with the target audience.

A recent study has shown that there are currently 3.499 billion active social media users. No one can deny the power of social media to grow businesses. Social media creates an avenue for small businesses to reach a vast audience and influence them with the right content.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Your Small Business

  • Promoting your business on social media helps you improve brand awareness
  • Increased website traffic as more people learn about your business
  • More conversions for your business
  • SMM helps you create a unique brand identity
  • Impress potential customers
  • Allows you to build a relationship with existing customers
  • Boosts organic visibility
  • SMM also helps you track the marketing tactics used by your competitors
  • It is cost-effective.

Here are three social media marketing tactics you can use to get the best of social media.

Use Live Streaming

As the acceptance of video content grows, there’s a chance for businesses to implement live streaming in their social media marketing strategies. Studies have shown that 80% of brand audiences prefer live videos to social media posts.

Post Diversified Content Types

Producing the same type of content endlessly on social media will do your business no good. It is essential to post different kinds of content. Don't just create simple textual posts; make sure to use infographics, videos, and images to get the word out.

Provide Value with Your Content

Producing content that offers value will endear you to existing customers and convince potential customers to choose your brand.

3. Video Marketing

In recent years, video content has grown to become one of the most powerful marketing tools. The heavy use of video content in marketing has become a norm in today's business world. Businesses now realize the power it holds to captivate their audience, thus increasing the need to monitor video marketing metrics.

Numerous studies have shown that including a video in your content can bring about a 157% increase in organic traffic from search engines. Another study has shown that Google ranks pages with video content higher in the SERPs than those with just texts and images.

Benefits of Using Video Marketing for Your Business

  • Video content helps existing and potential customers trust your brand more
  • It is an effective tool for boosting your SEO ranking
  • Video marketing can help you improve consumer engagement
  • It is excellent for building your brand awareness
  • Videos help you connect better with your target audience
  • Videos can help boost your conversion and sales.

You can either have a video published on your website or YouTube. It would be best to do both. When posting a video on YouTube, don't forget to choose a title optimized for search engines, and include a link to your website in the comment section. You must also not forget to create a relevant video thumbnail.

4. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-Per-Click is another effective digital marketing strategy. It is a digital marketing tactic where business owners pay a specific amount for each click their ad gets. In other words, you buy visits to your site.

Businesses can use this method to create publicity on search engines, apps, and social media platforms. Of all the popular PPC methods, over the years, Google AdWords has proven to be the most effective.

Google AdWords helps you place your ads on the SERPs, so that your ad shows up amongst other paid and organic search results when a Google user searches for a product or service similar to what you offer.

Studies have shown that 64.6% of users click on Google ads when they are looking to purchase an item online.

Benefits of Using PPC For Your Business

  • It is known to work well with other marketing strategies
  • PPC provides you with a wealth of targeting options
  • PPC lets you measure and track your effort using Google Analytics and Google Ads tool
  • PPC contributes to your business goals by helping you reach a broad online audience.

For you to enjoy all the benefits PPC offers, a successful PPC campaign is a prerequisite. You can achieve this by having a clearly defined budget, keyword researching, ensuring your ad matches the landing page it's connected to, and optimizing your geo-location.

5. Cold Email Marketing

Most people consider cold email to be less effective than other techniques we discuss here. But is this really true? A cold email refers to any email sent out by a brand to a potential customer that seldom knows the brand or has a prior relationship with the brand. That doesn’t sound too promising at first glance, does it? The world of digital marketing thinks otherwise.

Cold emailing is widely believed to have the potential to earn business conversions and sales when done right. In fact, 89% of marketers say they generate more of their leads from emailing.

Benefits of Using Cold Email Marketing for Your Business

  • With a compelling CTA, cold email marketing can increase the traffic to your website and even lead to conversions
  • Cold email marketing is easy to track and measure
  • You can increase brand awareness with cold email marketing
  • It is super effective, yet affordable
  • Cold email marketing is a great method for acquiring leads and validating future business ventures.

With a successful cold email outreach, businesses can reach hundreds and even thousands of potential customers. There's a 32% chance that a cold email sent out to a potential customer will get opened.

That said, cold email is not an ineffective marketing strategy. You only need to craft an enticing subject line, show you've researched the prospect, offer them a solution, and include a relevant CTA.

To get started on cold email marketing for small businesses check out this great guide on how to craft a cold email by ClosetIQ.

6. Lead Generation Marketing

Lead generation refers to the marketing process of stimulating and attracting a potential customer's interest in your product or service to build a sales pipeline. In other words, it is the generation of consumer interest in what your business has to offer.

The term “lead” refers to a potential customer of your business - someone who's shown an interest in what your offer. To capture a lead, businesses use lead generation tactics to make users do stuff like complete an online form, sign up for something, or contact them directly.

Benefits of Using Lead Generation for Your Business

  • Lead generation can heavily contribute to the increase in your sales and profits
  • It helps you better target your desired customers
  • It is a cost-effective strategy
  • It contributes to a better ROI for your business.

 

One of the most important keys to a successful business is the generation of sales leads. No lead, no sales. Every business needs leads if they’re to grow. Therefore, generating leads is as important as any other digital marketing strategy.

How do you generate leads for your business?

You can capture leads through website forms, copy with compelling call-to-actions, Google Ads, direct emailing, social media, and referral marketing. To get the best of lead generation marketing, it's best to work with a lead generation specialist.

7. Content Marketing

Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing valuable content to build brand awareness and increase conversions. It aims at using the publication and distribution of content to attract business leads, increase website traffic, and ultimately make more sales.

Content is indeed king. Whether it's in the form of a captivating video or a high-quality article, content is everything in digital marketing. No business can do without it. Content marketing is the foundation of SEO, video marketing, and social media marketing.

Content marketers employ an array of tools and mediums to reach their marketing goals. They create content like videos, podcasts, articles, infographics, social media, and blogs as a vehicle.

Benefits of Using Content Marketing for Your Business

  • It helps your business drive more conversions
  • Content marketing helps bring more traffic to your site
  • Increases your brand awareness
  • Enables you to build trust with your target audience
  • Good content can help boost your SEO ranking and online visibility.

Content marketing is about having a conversation with your target audience. It's an effective digital marketing strategy as it helps position you as an authority in your industry, humanizes your brand, and offers business intelligence you can act on to grow your brand.

Conclusion

Using all or any of the marketing strategies stated here will bring about a massive growth to your business. It's also essential to track the performance of your digital marketing efforts and monitor analytics. If you don't have a digital marketing strategy, set up one today as you could be missing out on an important opportunity to grow your brand, reach more consumers, and increase your sales.

Author Bio

Josh Wardini

Founder of SERPwatch.io Josh started building his experience in all things Internet since the year 2000. Now also an aspiring developer, he lives and breathes SEO and loves to explore how the World Wide Web works. Website | Twitter

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