With the ever changing dynamics of the world, small and medium size businesses are striving hard to keep themselves up to date and relevant. Brick and Mortar business are either increasing their online presence or improving on their existing business by shelling thousands of dollars on marketing and content; in an attempt to increase their market share and make their brand and products visible to audience.
How effectively you attract the right kind of audience makes all the difference between a successful business and a failed one. With increasing prices of paper and TV ads, online presence and social media marketing gives every small business owner an opportunity to present themselves in the best way possible. Making a website is just not enough. You can use different digital platforms such as coronavirus digital signage templates. Covid-19 has disrupted all business and its time to come up with creative ways to sustain in market. All the online traffic is useless unless you don’t have a strategy to convert those leads into sales. Here are 5 reasons why online presence and social media marketing is a must for our future.
- Reach people where they spend their money
Social media is a preferred medium to connect with audience. In 2019 an average Internet user had 7 social accounts that are 4 more accounts per person than in 2015. Almost 95% of the adults below the age of 65 have an online presence. 25% of the world’s population is on Face book and almost 65% of that population is American.
With The presence of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and various other social media accounts, the trend right now is that an average person spends at least 2 hours a day on it, while a teenager spends up to 9 hours a day. Promoting business online using these social platforms will be the most effective way to go in 2020 and in future. Social media is integrated into everything that we do at school, at work, during our free time or while we hang out with our friends. Tapping into the social medial also gives you an insight on how people think or feel about various topics, their food and clothing choices and help companies to find the right kind of audience.
- It levels the playing field
Marketing is no more about spending huge amount of money on conventional advertisements and TV ads. Unlike before, when digital marketing was considered only for big multinational companies that can spend a big chunk of money on promotion, social media has become a rather cheaper and budget friendly option to create same kind of buzz. Digital marketing actually levels the playing ground, proving small and medium enterprises the same amount of opportunities against big multinational corporations.
With presence of social media, small companies can come up with creative and innovative ways to use various platforms and be as effective as any multinational firms. They don’t have to spend a huge amount of money to create a dedicated call centre or pay celebrities to endorse their product; they can do the same by using various social media tools and target the right audience.
- More targeted
In conventional marketing strategies you do have some control over the target market but not as much as you can have in digital. For example, if you print your content in a fashion magazine you do know what kind of content is provided, who will read those magazines, what location of the country it will be distributed too. You can control some of these aspects but not all. You don’t know how many of those readers follow your brand, or how many are specifically interested in the type of fashion clothing that you promote. It is still a huge demographics and the conversion rate will be extremely low to none.
One of the advantages of digital marketing is its ability to customize and dissect huge demographics into small target audience. You can create different target audience for different products in your company.
- Can be hyper personalized
Another aspect of online marketing is email. This is the oldest digital marketing strategy but an effective one if use properly. With email marketing you can narrow it down to each individual personally.
3 out of 4 consumers prefer that the businesses use email to communicate with them. It helps then to have a sense of control and ample time to think before they make decisions. If they don’t like what you promoting, they simply unsubscribe. Email subscriptions are generally authentic and organic. Anyone subscribing to your news letter is doing so because they are interested in your products.
Email marketing helps you to retain your audience and help in cross sells and up sells. You can also customize your emails further with personalized messages related to specific client.
- More affordable than traditional marketing
Small business cannot afford TV, radio or billboard campaigns, but most of them can easily afford digital marketing techniques and reach out to engage with relevant audience.Take into account the cost of running ads on different platforms; Email marketing cost per lead is about $50, which is second to social media audience targeting at $30. Compare to this events cost around $800 per lead and Advertising cost about $600.
Moreover free organic web traffic always dominates and by properly designing your website and social media handle, you can create a good amount of traffic without spending a penny.To boost your business online try to boost your SEO search visibility by using proper keywords and cleaner website look. Look for platforms for people to leave reviews and feedback. More positive feedback pushes your website on the top of search results.
Important thing to remember is to do a proper research into what kind of audience you like to target. Look for different social media platforms that will help you grown. Create quality content, not just related to your product but also something that’s creates engagement with your audience. Update the keywords of your social media platforms and website. Make sure all your accounts and websites are active and come up with something new for your audience.
With proper research, a small fraction of traditional marketing budget and understanding of various social platforms will boost your business to another level.
