If you are a business owner, whether it be a small or medium enterprise, you need to have knowledge in digital marketing to attract more customers. A lot of business owners still believe that online advertisements and marketing like TV ads and announcements may be used to grow their business. However, this can offer some limitations including the fact that it can only reach your local community. Nowadays, online advertisements have expanded opportunities through digital marketing with an attempt to reach the online marketplace.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing is the process of attracting more audiences, your target market, and will be the basis of determining whether the business is a success or not. Receiving a lot of website traffic will only be effective if these are turned into sales or leads for the business. In this digital age, digital tools in marketing are helpful to businesses as they become competitive, they survive in the e-commerce battleground and also make the business grow. The use of digital media and technologies mainly on the internet to promote and advertise is called Digital Marketing. It may be a website, social media - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, search engine optimization, QR codes, a radio advertisement, or any tool for marketing that is electronically produced.

Why use Digital Marketing?

Small and medium businesses should consider the greater population of prospective customers online. With digital marketing, you can reach a bigger audience from the online marketplace. With this being said, you are now growing your network and this will lead to your business growth as well.

The different options in digital advertising are cost-effective. Compared to printed and televised advertising, email marketing and web presence are cheaper ways to engage with your audience. A concrete example of this is having products or services online and customers can just place their orders directly from your website. The world is put in the customers’ hands through digital marketing. Here are some reasons why digital marketing can help a business grow:

Digital marketing is not limited

Any type of business, whether small or medium enterprises, has access to it. Some businesses may not be capable of spending for a billboard sign or a TV ad but with the variety of options available in digital marketing, even small businesses can now put their products or services online.

Digital Marketing is cost-effective

When it comes to budget, marketing gets one of the biggest chunks from a business’s expenses. Digital marketing allows businesses to optimize their budget while getting more leads. Some businesses that use email marketing and social media marketing have brought them remarkable 40% savings from their marketing budget.

It delivers conversion

Businesses evaluate their online presence by the percentage rate of audience traffic from visiting subscribers to paying customers. With this, there is a concrete call to action as a result of having a business website, a Facebook page or a mobile application and many other useful digital applications.

Digital marketing generates revenues

High conversion rates can give profitable advantages for business owners in terms of better income or profits. Some reports say that companies can grow their revenues 3 times better and small to medium enterprises have better chances of growing their business.

It promotes interaction between business owners and their target customers

Communication with your target audience will give you an idea of what your customers want. This can also result in a good customer service experience for them and in return, you get a higher retention rate of customers.

Digital marketing also caters to mobile consumers

If there is one thing common among people now, that is having a mobile phone. This has become a handy alternative for desktops, laptops, and tablets. With the convenience of having a phone on the customer’s hand, their purchasing decisions are increased.

It builds a reputation and a properly established branding

A business that delivers what they promise will build customer loyalty and because of their experience, they become your brand ambassadors. They share it when they know that they had a good experience with their business transaction with the establishment. This is how communities influence each other.

It gives a good return on investment

The goal of any digital marketing strategy is to get more traffic from targeted audiences and turn them into paying customers. Once traffic and actions to purchase increase, income starts to grow and without knowing it, your ROI has been realized.

Digital marketing earns people’s trust

Because of digital marketing, people take time to read testimonials, customer reviews, product evaluation and proof of ailment which makes this a deciding factor whether to purchase and trust other people who share their experience with the business.

It entices the target audience to take action

Digital marketers creatively make use of strategies on how they can turn their audience to become subscribers or paying customers. Call to action buttons will make your page visitors decide what to do next which may be to download, subscribe, add to cart, or call.

It prepares business owners for the Internet of Things (IOT)

Internet of things is a global ecosystem that interconnects devices that includes mobile phones, home appliances, and other electronic gadgets through the internet. Once your audiences are connected to this online grid you can include your business into this interconnected grid and still maintain good communication and call to action for your customers.

It promotes business survival

With a good digital marketing tool or strategy, your business will make money for you. It is very essential to every business that digital marketing should turn leads and convert them to revenues.

Digital marketing will make your business grow if you choose proper techniques and strategies for your targeted audience. Remember that you are not only after increased traffic but there should be targeted results to ensure that the business will survive.

How to grow a business with Digital Marketing?

With all the reasons stated above, it is also important that a business can use it strategically for it to be effective in making a business grow. Here are some strategies that can lead to loyal and income-generating customers:

Develop a strong social media presence

Social media is known to be a key marketing tool. Based on data analysis tools, it powerfully grows by the day. In fact, according to experts from Paddle Creative, social media marketing is the process of marketing to customers through social media channels. Through Facebook and other social media sites, many businesses have increased their number of customers. With just a click you can reach millions of social media users all over the world and building the following engagement is the goal in social media sites. Social Media also has a better customer feedback system as well as it provides faster communication because the customers can directly send their inquiries to business owners.

A good strategy to boost social media presence is to take advantage of online influencers. To do this, the business will do research on the micro-influencers that their target audience is following. Using these micro-influencers will give them new content that they can follow and share. This takes time and effort to be able to build a dedicated audience for your social media account.

Create weekly blog posts

A blog is a perfect way to talk about business products and services. It enables the business to share related content about them. Publish a genuine blog and this will surely help the business entice potential clients and build its brand and reputation.

Make quality content for a blog, it should draw interest from the readers and add value to them, too. Giving tips to customers will leave an authoritative impression of the business. This can make customers feel that they can rely on the product or service being offered.

Make sure to incorporate a promotional strategy in the blog content. Some platforms with a massive audience to ensure visibility of the blog is Linkedin, Medium or Quora. Utilize them for better exposure to the online audience.

Create a website and optimize its presence

Any website is useful if it has a strong presence over the internet. A good and yet affordable website should be well designed to represent the business. To be able to reach your target audience and let them visit a business website, search engine optimization, or SEO is the best strategy for this. Optimizing a website will make it appear on the top search results in any internet search engine. Some misconceptions about SEO are: that it is time-consuming, it is so technical and it is a waste of time and effort. But experts say that SEO is one of the most effective strategies in building increased audience traffic. SEO is an effective tool if the business is smart to take advantage of it. The business can do research on the most frequently searched key terms or words in the industry it belongs to and writes a quality content of blog posts that will add value to these words.

Develop a lead magnet

Free ebook downloads, pdf, free subscriptions, or any form of incentive that will allow the business to get a reader’s email account is a lead magnet strategy. Aside from being free, it should be able to provide value or usefulness to the target audience. The more useful it is to them, the more chance of getting their information. The best strategy is to attack the prospect audience with their pains or weaknesses, then the business will provide simple and proper solutions that can be helpful to them by letting them download an ebook about it or letting them subscribe to a newsletter that gives information related to it. Upon giving this, the business will connect them to its products or services, and hence diverting them to its marketing funnel. The marketing funnel is where the customer will leave their information before they could get the ebook or the subscription they wanted. While doing this, the business’s brand is now being established and could lead to a call to action from the customer.

Create an email list

As a result of creating a lead magnet, the business is now ready to create an email list that can now give access to the target audience. Business owners should understand that not all their social media followers are active nor see all the posts that they have. Having an email list allows the business to have full ownership and email marketing is an effective sales funnel for any business.

Using the email list, create a closer relationship with the target audience. Send them emails that would have a personal touch and that would connect them to the business genuinely. Some tools that may be used are Mailchimp or constant contact, where the business has the option to categorize their list according to audiences’ interests. Emails should be made simple, concise and full of information. This will let the audience grasp the message that the business wants to sell or provide with a quick look.

With all these digital marketing strategies, constant execution will definitely make it effective for the business to grow. It is important to make relevant and useful content for the target customers and they should be able to see them on the online platforms that they use most of the time.

This is how business is done today. People would look for a product or a service online. And if they are interested in one of the results that the search engine gives them, they check on it, they make sure of its legitimacy and they compare with other brands or competitors. It is imperative that the business is aware of the competitor’s marketing strategies or in a way has a hint on how their social media looks or what they offer on their website. So the business may know what to focus on in their digital marketing plans.

Use different digital marketing tools to make more customers become your paying clients. Make your business grow by giving them the privilege to keep in touch with you. The key to an effective social media marketing plan does not only pertain to your website that is reaching billions of people on the internet but also using digital marketing tools simultaneously across different online platforms to promote your brand and successfully grow the business.