Research has successfully proven that most businesses will not thrive without leveraging the power of online marketing in today’s world. The influence of online marketing has greatly contributed to building small-scale businesses into very large ones. However, it is very essential that you know the terrain and understands how it works. This would help know the benefits of online marketing for small businesses and how to make it work for your business.
As a small business owner, it is important that you understand the benefits of online marketing for small businesses. At this rapid rate of adoption, you should act really fast in jumping on the bandwagon.
What is Online Marketing?
Online Marketing can be defined as a set of intentional steps, strategies, and tools that are used for promoting products and services through the internet. It however includes a wider range of marketing tools and actions than traditional business marketing. This is due to the more complex nature of the internet.
Types of Online Marketing
Although online marketing appears all unified, it involves several aspects that may not be useful to you as a business owner(small or large scaled). This is why it’s important to recognize what areas your business needs and what it doesn’t.
There are a number of online marketing strategies with which you as a business owner can plunge into and they include:
- Owning a website
- Search Engine Optimization
- Pay Per Click (PPC)
- Email Marketing
- Blogging.
- Social Media Marketing.
- Influencer Marketing.
i. Owning a website
A website in the real sense is one of the essential foundations of online marketing. It should be your very first step to creating an online presence, creating a platform from which you can expand your online footprint. Having a website is also perfect for online branding.
You can hire the best hands to create your business website if you don have any yet by contacting an Iconic Digital World web design expert.
One of the benefits of owning your website is the fact that you can place your products on it, exposing them to visitors who may be willing to buy. If you can successfully attract the right traffic, having a website would be more than beneficial to your business.
ii. Search Engine Optimization
After creating your website, search engine optimization is another form of online marketing that would make your content more visible to its target audience.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the ranking factor that determines the results a person browsing the internet would see when he or she types in a query. Search results are usually ranked according to their level of relevance to the search query.
Having a good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) website helps your content rank higher in the search engine result pages(SERPs). This means you’d have more visitors and possibly more customers.
Check out the top 8 ways to make your website SEO friendly and retain your clients here.
iv. Pay Per Click
This is a form of advertising where you generate conversions when someone clicks on your advert. This form of marketing is mostly found on social media, websites, and other media spaces. It works by you creating ads that target specific keywords with an aim to attract users looking for that exact query to your site.
v. Email Marketing
Your email can be a great form of asset when building your small business online. It is a direct link to your present, past and incoming consumers. An email marketing database especially comes in handy, helping you keep your consumers aware of the latest developments. It can also easily be used to establish a personal relationship between you and your customers.
vi. Blogging
Blogging has a way of retaining and not just attracting your consumers. It keeps your business page actively engaged and they (your consumers) in turn will always want to join in the conversation.
Blogging helps build credibility and authority as much as SEO does. Stop the wait, hire writing experts to set up and run your business blog here today!
vii. Social Media Marketing:
The Social Media Space has billions of users at the moment. Most people tend to use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and the likes to follow news updates and connect with family and friends. This is an avenue for businesses to enter the mix and market their products and services. Social media marketing has been proven to be helpful to small business owners around the world.
viii. Influencer Marketing:
This is just like having the face of your brand in the space. Influencers (celebrities or largely people with lots of followers) are highly regarded and relate well to people who follow them. More often than not, chances are, followers would patronize a business if an influencer recommends it.
It means that wherever people tend to see their face they tend to go check out what the business is all about just because a celebrity/influencer is representing the business which also generates conversion to the brand or small-scaled business.
What are the characteristics of Online Marketing?
Online marketing has become a vital part of the modern business such that you as a business owner do not have to go through traditionally advertising your services to the masses (television, radio stations, having to get a slot on newspapers). And there are a large number of online marketing companies that offer online marketing to both small and big scale businesses collectively.
Also, online marketing has several characteristics that cannot be found in any other form of marketing. Some of those features/characteristics include:
a. No Time Limitation
The key goal of marketing is to penetrate the market space but because the internet has the leverage to exchange information by beating time and space, both small and large scale businesses have more time for marketing their services online thus providing worldwide marketing at any time, anywhere they are.
b. It is relatively cheap in terms of cost-effectiveness
Online marketing is way cheaper than any other means to advertise (newspaper, television, radio station). Traditional marketing has become so expensive that both small and large scale businesses now use online marketing to market their services with better conversions too.
c. Building Brand Awareness
The use of online marketing has helped companies, brands build visibility using the internet space for both small and large scale businesses allowing the small businesses to compete with the bigger companies.
For example, if a consumer wants to purchase a laptop, he or she has the opportunity to surf the internet for different brands and types of laptops available and also see the features attributed to each laptop brand and also see the pricing from the lowest to the highest. At the end of this process, the customer is more aware of each brand.
d. Fast Tracking of Products
This is advantageous to the seller allowing them to track their products faster than any form of advertising. For example, if a product seller has advertised a wristwatch on two websites then the seller can easily track which of the websites is generating and sending more leads and how much of those leads are being converted into real sales.
What are the benefits of Online Marketing for Small Businesses?
Online marketing has helped many businesses rise from the cradle into becoming the giant that they are now. Basically, you get to enjoy the following benefits which include:
1. Reaching your Audience faster
We live in the digital world where everything is done in the digital space and there are a thousand and one businesses out there looking for attention and also consumers who would buy from them. One of the things online marketing does is that it helps you reach your target audience faster compared to other forms of advertising.
2. Growing your Brand
With online marketing, you have the opportunity to get to growing your small business brand and also give you brand loyalty from your consumers.
3. Reduces Cost
Online marketing helps small businesses in reducing the cost of paying for a full advert on other advertising platforms (Television, radio stations, newspaper). It also offers a better reach to prospective consumers.
4. Ability to Track your products
With the use of Online marketing, you have the opportunity as a small business owner to keep track and monitor your marketing responses easily and instantly.
5. Understanding your Customers
It is one thing to have a business and another to be able to understand what they want. With online marketing, you can deduce the heart of your prospective consumers and also loyal consumers by constant engagement. In other words, you get to know your consumers better.
6. It is time effective
Using Online Marketing gives you enough time and less stress. Not having to wait on someone to print all the materials just to ensure your audience is reached out to. Basically, you can reach them in a split of a second.
7. It allows you own a space
Online marketing gives you the ability to own a space for yourself as the digital space grows every day, allows you to take the advantage of social media tools that are necessary for engagement.
Bottom line
As a business owner, you will need to engage online marketing tools to help your business grow and give the returns you expect. It levels the playing ground to a large extent, and if you play your cards right, you’d attract the right audiences.
For the best strategy tailored to your business’s specific needs, we at Iconic Digital World are only a DM away.
