6 Reasons Why Digital Marketing is Important for Small Businesses

A digital marketing strategy is an essential part of the overall marketing mix of a business regardless of its size and whether or not it's doing business online. 

Small business marketing for a local company can include much offline local advertising. Still it also needs to have a healthy portion of digital marketing strategies to maximize sales in today's economy. A small business doing most or all of its business online needs to embrace a digital marketing strategy to help users see it. To help you understand your target market, here are seven reasons why you should do market research:

Benefits of Online Marketing

The potential customers you can find online are a much larger group than you'll ever be able to attract locally. Using digital marketing techniques, you can reach a global audience in a cost-effective, scalable, and measurable way.

Some of the key benefits of digital marketing include:

• The ability to interact with your prospects and learn what they are looking for, i.e., get to know your customers better!
• The ability to reach out to anyone and anywhere as there are no geographical boundaries with digital 
• Target the right audience at the right time - personalization is more superficial with digital marketing.
• Communicate with your prospects at every stage of the buying process
• Save money and reach more customers for less. 
• Get to know your audience and drive engagement to create brand loyalty. Get some inspiration from the power of customer loyalty schemes. 
• Track and monitor responses to your marketing efforts quickly and instantly. 

Realize Your Customers Are Online

When someone is interested in your business, whether, in your niche or curious about your brand, they will first research online and see what they can find out about you. 

Customers expect to find a website and social media presence in today's digital age. As a result, they may be looking for reviews to learn what other people are saying about your company and whether it is an excellent place to do business. For local businesses, 87% of consumers read online reviews - a growth of 6% from 2019 to 2020.

So if a potential customer can't find you online, they may conclude that your business doesn't appear legitimate. There is a perfect chance that many of these prospects may decide not to take your business seriously and quickly head somewhere else.

Set realistic targets for your business

After collecting information on your target and existing customers, you can start using this data to set SMART goals for your business. Knowing your customer approach is essential as this will determine their future relationship with your business. The most common method in market research is using STP Model: Segmenting- Targeting - Positioning.

Segmentation: This step answers the question what is the target demographic or your product

Targeting: This refers to your approach to reaching the sectors your product aims to sell?

Positioning: This step needs effort since this is about how you position your business ahead of your competitors as a market choice.

Create Effective Strategy

Data from market research will help you to make more informed decisions. For example, they related pricing, distribution channels, marketing mediums, or identifying opportunities to introduce a new product or service. These results will also help you to make more informed decisions about your existing operations and activities.

• Should you expand or reduce?
• Is there room in your current operations to diversify?
• Are you targeting the right audience with your marketing activities

Casio used market research to get better insights into customers & resellers and adjusted the marketing strategies to be more effective.

Solve your biggest business challenges

If you have already identified a problem in your business, conducting market research will help you determine the source of the issue. For example, you can decide if a new competitor has entered the market or if brand awareness has fallen short, causing a decrease in sales. Several types of market research can help you identify different shortcomings: brand research, consumer research, product development, usability testing, consumer research, and many other areas.

See Opportunities for Business Expansion

Doing market research helps identify areas for business expansions. The information collected can offer opportunities to test the market demographic and determine if there is room for new products or services to create. Market Research can also help find the best locations for new stores.

It's time to take your business to the next level

The first step to achieving these goals is understanding digital marketing and how it can positively impact your business. From social media to SEO and paid search, you will have the tools to ensure your business succeeds online.

Hire our Social Media Management Team today!