Why should you care about marketing?
In order to run a successful small business, you need to devote a sizable percentage of your budget to marketing. Many Small business administrations recommends earmarking up to 8% of your gross revenue for marketing purposes.
You also need to get a good grasp on why marketing is important for small businesses. You’ll understand why you need to set aside so much money for marketing when you see why it’s so essential in the first place.
Are you having a tough time wrapping your head around the importance of marketing? Here are seven reasons why marketing is important for small businesses.
Digital marketing helps small businesses build lasting customer relationships
Many small businesses admitted their biggest challenge since the break of covid-19 (2019) was retaining and re-engaging customers. It’s safe to assume that most of them are online and using the internet on a daily basis, so increasing digital marketing efforts presently will definitely help.
There are over half a million businesses start every month in the US alone, so “losing” customers is a lot easier today than it might have been 20 or 30 years ago. But, if you know your target customers well, and your product even better, digital marketing is a fantastic tool to keep them coming for more and push your competition away.
Unlike many in-store buying experiences, digital marketing doesn’t stop at checkout. It goes beyond to ensure a buying customer becomes the brand’s ambassador.
Some ways digital marketing improves the “traditional” methods of keeping loyal customers are:
-Using digital testimonials from happy customers instead of the old “word of mouth”. These testimonials should be posted on your website and used in social media campaigns as well.
-Automated but personalized thank you and follow up email campaigns instead of the physical letters or pamphlets. You can reach larger audiences for a lot less money, and send an email in the right moment to the right people.
-Engaging customers on social media once they leave your store or buy your product online, to keep your product on their minds and have them come back next time.
-Remarketing and retargeting to have them try out “this other product” that compliments what they already bought.
Let the public know your business exists
As long as your business makes a great product or provides a great service, you might be under the impression that it’ll be easy for your company to stand out. But that is simply not the case.
There are more than 30 million small businesses in USA alone. That makes it easy for companies—even great companies—to get lost in the shuffle.
One of the top reasons why marketing is important for small businesses is because it lets the public know about a company’s existence. You’ll be able to put your small business on the map through your marketing efforts.
Smaller businesses can stay competitive with larger businesses
Digital marketing doesn’t demand that small businesses have an arsenal of expensive tools and huge budgets to get noticed, make sales, and grow. Sure, some tools will be needed but a lot of the things depend on the knowledge and experience of the owners. Knowing your target audience and your product “in-depth” usually means more than any fancy tools – especially with the help of digital marketing.
Ann Smarty, one of the biggest names in digital marketing, said this in her article for Digital Marketer:
“The great thing about digital marketing is that ingenuity and creativity can always win over big marketing budgets.”
..and there’s no bigger truth than that. Sometimes even the fact that you are “small business” can do more for your campaigns than investing millions of dollars into video production. Example?
A viral Christmas ad done by a small hardware store in Wales, which was filmed by the owner and recent one stars his son. It gathered over 2 million views on YouTube, and many of the comments were in the same tone – “I want to buy from this small business after seeing this ad.”
Get measurable results
With the help of the specific tools, you can easily measure results for each and every digital marketing platform. This will help you to evaluate performance and help you in making decisions.
Looking at the above reasons, small businesses should definitely opt for digital marketing. Many startups and small businesses adopt traditional methods of marketing but the results with traditional methods are very slow and are able to attract customers at a local level only.
Whereas, the group of potential customers found online is comparatively very large as compared to the potential customers that are targeted locally.
With digital marketing, small businesses can attract a large number of audience. Digital marketing is a cost-effective way to transform your business. Hence, it is wise for the small business to utilize the potential of digital marketing and get ahead in their business.
Digital marketing is more affordable than traditional marketing
Many small businesses can’t afford a radio, TV or billboard ad campaign. But many can afford digital marketing techniques to reach out and engage with ideal audiences.
How affordable is digital marketing compared to traditional marketing methods?
Take email and social media marketing as examples. In 2015, email only asked you to invest $1 to gain back $38. In 2018, email marketing’s average cost per lead (CPL) was $53. That’s only second to online retargeting ($31). Compare that to events/tradeshows ($811) and TV/radio advertising ($611) and it’s a no-brainer.
Moving forward – free, organic search still dominates web traffic, ahead of traffic driven by paid campaigns. Take claiming and optimizing a free Google My Business Profile, for example. That’ll:
- Boost your local SEO visibility
- Increase foot traffic if you are a local business, especially from smartphone users
- Positive GMB reviews help improve a business’ online reputation free-of-charge
And yes, that’s free (well, for now) – all you need is internet access and a computer or smartphone.
Facebook ads, on the other hand, are a bit more “skilled” field to play in because it’s very easy to lose track of how much you’re spending(without monitoring). But, you can start with just $1 per day, and build from there.
Final thoughts
The key is to make marketing a priority from the beginning—and to stick with marketing once your small business has achieved some success.
Marketing your brand is something you’ll need to do for as long as your company is open for business.
Looking to learn more about marketing your small business effectively? Check out our other articles on marketing a small business the right way.