Why should a small business invest in online marketing and advertisement?

Understand the basics of online marketing for businesses

Highlights of the article

• In the current world, businesses prefer online marketing to traditional marketing because of its multiple advantages and cross-channel opportunities. 
• Online marketing and advertising offer numerous prospects for small businesses, irrespective of their size.  
• Online marketing and advertising make acquiring customers, generating leads, and retaining them easier. 

Companies that do business in their geography or small businesses that wish to scale up to cater to a bigger market have a lot of potential with online marketing. With the increasing digital usage at an increasing rate, it is becoming easier to reach people through screens and get them to do business online. Online marketing is taking over traditional marketing to a great extent. 

Traditional marketing methods are expensive and difficult to track regarding reach, conversion and Return on Investment. In the case of online marketing, it is effortless to track the returns on marketing and advertising efforts. 

It is highly recommended for small businesses invest in online marketing and advertising. It can help them in customer acquisition and retention at better costs than traditional marketing and advertising. 

Top 5 reasons why a small business should invest in online marketing

1. Highly accessible to customers 
2. Direct customer interaction at every stage of the buying process
3. Global opportunities
4. Efficient tracking of goals and milestones
5. Personalization and customization 

Let’s get into each of them in brief. 

Highly accessible to customers

The online world has an excellent ability to interact with your customers. Establishing multiple channels for your customers to reach out to you and understand more about you is possible. Building brand awareness is accessible when, as a brand, you can run campaigns and do organic marketing to appear on the screens of your prospects meaningfully. 

According to recent research, about 81% of people look up a brand online before making an offline or online purchase. This means that if your brand is not online, it could be difficult for you to win the trust of your customers. 

Direct customer interaction at every stage of the buying process

There are five stages of a customer journey. They are awareness, consideration, purchase decision, retention and advocacy. In an offline world, it is hard to keep the customer reminded of us after purchase. With offline marketing, it is hard to identify the target market, and we must wait until they come to us. 

With online marketing, a brand can stay in touch and interact with its customers at each customer journey stage. The key idea is to establish a relationship with your prospects and customers. This can happen by mapping the touchpoints of a customer and deriving the maximum out of it. 

Global Opportunities

If your business has no geographical limitations, the world is your marketplace. There are multiple ways of marketing your offering to a global audience. Get into the basics of marketing – the 4Ps- if you want to explore the global market. 

• People – Narrow down the specific places you wish to cater to and understand the digital behaviour of those people. 
• Price – Adjust and work your pricing models based on the country and its business scope 
• Place – Choose markets with high digital customers and engagement behaviour 
• Promotion – Create a comprehensive marketing mix so that you seem like a brand they can trust 

Efficient tracking of goals and milestones

With automation and integrated analytics, tracking the performance of campaigns and organic marketing is straightforward. While Google provides a palette of options to follow performance, like Google analytics, Google search console and Google Ads Keyword Planner, there are also multiple 3rd party tracking and analytics platforms. 

Keep track of your marketing and advertising, from the website to the paid ads. Be sure to review insights into your social media performance regularly so that you understand your content performance and the preference of your audience. 

It is also easy in the online world to monitor competition and take lessons based on their performance. 

Personalization and customization

The most significant advantage of online marketing and advertising is the extent to which we can customize and personalize. Leverage the technology of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to target your customers’ pain points. 

When you get to know your customers at a deeper level, it is easier to target them with what they like. This can increase conversion rates and bring down the cost of customer acquisition. 

Plus, people love consuming something made just for them. We’re all humans anyway. 

On an ending note: 

A business, regardless of size, must explore the power and potential of online marketing and advertising. As a small business does not function with huge budgets, it is easy to get started with marketing with minimum budgets and scale up as you go. 

All you need to do is get started. Be ready to experiment, learn and relearn. That’s when you begin to gain expertise about your market, peoples’ behaviour, their response and your brand’s stance in the market.