Many small and medium business owners (SMBs) fear tackling the beast that is known as online marketing as they feel they do not have adequate experience or know-how to do it properly. In order to convince you that online marketing is not only essential to your online business success but also that it can be easy to do, here are our 5 main reasons we believe online marketing is worth a second look.
Online marketing allows SMBs the opportunity to reach a large target audience which was previously only available to large companies with large advertising budgets. Thanks to online marketing, SMBs can also target very specific groups of people.
Online marketing is much more cost-effective than one might think. In many cases, small businesses have little to no resources available for traditional marketing methods. Thanks to email marketing, social media, SEO, and Search Engine Advertising SMBs can spend less money than traditional marketing methods, while still being able to reach their customers.
Online marketing enables businesses to directly measure the success of their marketing campaigns. There are many solid indicators that can be observed to determine a business's return on investment such as leads, conversions, subscriptions, and sales.
According to Google data, companies that utilize online marketing strategies have 2.8 times better revenue growth expectancy and SMBs utilizing online marketing techniques have a 3.3 times better chance of developing their workforce and their business.
Online marketing allows companies to interact easily with their customers through channels such as social media, for example. Businesses can completely customize their campaigns in accordance with their targets which increase customer retention as well as enable them to measure their customer's reactions/behaviors.
Thanks to Online Marketing business owners can be closer to their customers and can create better relationships with their targeted audience. Through Online Marketing customers can review/rate the business' services and help generate a great brand reputation for your business. That being said, it is really important to take care of these review platforms as bad reviews can have an adverse effect and can ruin your business.
If you are looking for the best way to invest time and money into your business, Online Marketing should be at the top of your list. Online Marketing provides a better Return-On-Investment than others marketing channels thanks to precise targeting. Moreover, Online Marketing is the fastest promotion strategy to see financial results.
Trust is vital for any business. As we said before, a business must take care of its customers to obtain their trust. According to a study from Nielsen Global, 90% of people state they would trust information about a brand, product, service from people they know, so it is better for a business if their customers only have positive things to say about them.
With Online Marketing there are many possibilities to create interactions with your customers and the best way to do so is through a direct call-to-action. Call-to-actions are buttons such as "SIGN UP", "LIKE", "DOWNLOAD", "CONTACT", and/or "BUY NOW" that encourage the user to complete an action on your website. This allows businesses the opportunity to interact with their customers and to lead them to a sale.
Reach everyone, everywhere! An article from SmartInsights outlines that there are currently more users of mobile devices than those of laptops. For this reason, it is important to ensure you are reaching your target audience where they are browsing. Optimizing a website for mobile devices is not always affordable for everyone, however, you can still reach your customers via social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and also through various online directories.