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Digital Advertising and marketing In 2020 | 7 Causes Why Small Companies Want It

digital marketing in 2020

Let's start with a statistic that should be enough for every small business owner to invest in digital marketing. According to RetailDive, 87% of buyers are looking for products to buy online. Eighty-seven. It is a huge market size not to be part of digital marketing and definitely the main reason why you should invest in digital marketing. Nevertheless, there are 7 more reasons and tips on how to do it exactly.

1. Digital marketing helps small businesses build lasting customer relationships

Over 1,190 U.S. residents Small business respondents said Keap The third biggest challenge in 2019 was to retain and retain customers. It can be assumed that most of them are online every day and use the Internet. Therefore, increased efforts for digital marketing in 2020 will definitely help.

Graphics source: Keap report

There are over Half a million new companies were founded every month In the United States, it is much easier to "lose" customers today than it was 20 or 30 years ago. But if you know your target customers well and your product is even better, digital marketing is a fantastic tool to get them to do more and fight off your competition.

Unlike many in-store shopping experiences, digital marketing doesn't stop at the checkout. It goes beyond ensuring that a buyer becomes a brand ambassador.

Some ways that digital marketing improves “traditional” customer retention methods are:

  1. Use digital testimonials from satisfied customers instead of the old word of mouth. These testimonials should be published on your website and also used in social media campaigns.
  2. Automated but personalized thank you and follow-up email campaigns instead of physical letters or brochures. You can reach a larger audience for much less money and email the right people at the right moment.
  3. Engage customers in social media as soon as they leave your store or buy your product online to keep your product in mind and get them back next time.
  4. Remarketing and retargeting They should try “this other product” that complements what they have already bought.

2. You learn more about the needs of your customers so that you can meet them profitably

Another challenge for small businesses (see figure above) was to gain leads, capture them and convert them into customers. To do that successfully, a small business needs to find out what it is target customer needs so that it can meet these requirements.

Effective digital marketing helps small businesses learn customers' online habits to better target ideal customers. It relies on solid market research to inform about the next steps.

Smart small businesses make no assumptions. they use digital tools to find out what their target customers are looking for and need.

Using digital tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SEMRush and SurveyMonkey, you can determine what interests your ideal customers have, what keeps them up to date at night and how you can address them with a highly personalized, warm offer. finally convert them into buying customers. Don't forget to also use social media and your existing audience there to see what they like, what kind of posts they respond to most and what questions they have had in the past.

Once you've completed the research, it's best to create one or more customers personalities, With them, you can create personalized and very targeted marketing campaigns for certain types of people and ultimately make them buyers.

3. Digital marketing offers a multichannel approach to increase conversion

Your potential customers can be online anywhere.

Imagine this:

  • 41% of US buyers Search and buy on Amazon, while 28% search on Google and then buy on Amazon. Therefore, SEO is still vital for small businesses
  • 3.2 billion people, or 42% of the world's population, use social media today (Emersys, 2019)
  • Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and LinkedIn are the market leaders, LinkedIn deals 80% of B2B leads on social media, for example
  • On average, these people spend 2 hours and 22 minutes a day on social networks. 80% of the time is mobile
  • 54% of consumers Browse social media for product research purposes
  • 73% of marketers believe Your social media marketing efforts are having an impact on your business
  • 83% of marketers used video marketing In 2019, 87% said the video gave them “good ROI”.
  • A customer response can be delayed by as much as 10 minutes 400% reduction in sales opportunityUse chatbots to improve your digital customer service

Email marketing. Facebook and Google ads. Social media marketing. SEO. And so on. There are many digital marketing channels that a small business can use to reach their audience and ultimately persuade them to buy their product or service. Of course, each channel asks for a different approach, but once a strategy is made and preparations are made in general, it's easy to tailor the news to different audiences and increase conversions.

Some potential customers are more receptive to personalized email marketing campaigns Others prefer blogs and a combination of targeted ads feel committed enough to buy customers.

By using the multichannel approach of digital marketing, you can find and address potential customers wherever they are online and which platform they prefer.

4. With digital marketing, small businesses can compete with large companies and actually win

Digital marketing does not require small businesses to have an arsenal of expensive tools and huge budgets to stand out, make sales, and grow. Of course, some tools are needed, but many things depend on the knowledge and experience of the owner. Knowing your target group and your product exactly means more than just unusual 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 big marketing budgets."

..and there is no greater truth than this. Sometimes even the fact that you are a “small business” can do more for your campaigns than investing millions of dollars in video production. Example? A viral Christmas commercial made by a small hardware store in Wales and filmed by the owner that has recently starred in his son. Over 2 million views were collected on YouTube, and many of the comments were in the same tone: "I want to buy from this small business after seeing this ad."

5. Digital marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing

Many small businesses cannot afford a radio, television, or poster advertising campaign. But many can afford digital marketing techniques to target an ideal audience.

How cheap is digital marketing compared to conventional marketing methods?

Take email and social media marketing as examples. In 2015, you were only asked by email to invest $ 1 to recover $ 38. In 2018 Average cost per lead for email marketing (CPL) was $ 53. This is just the second after online retargeting ($ 31). Compare this to events / fairs ($ 811) and TV / radio advertising ($ 611).

Forward-looking, organic search continues to dominate web traffic, ahead of traffic triggered by paid campaigns. Take, for example, claiming and optimizing a free Google My Business profile. That will be:

  • Increase yours Visibility of local SEO search
  • Increase pedestrian traffic if you are a local company, especially from smartphone users
  • Positive GMB ratings help improve a company's online reputation for free

And yes, it's free (well, for now) – You only need Internet access and a computer or smartphone.

On the other hand, Facebook ads are a little "more dangerous" because it is very easy to lose track of your spending. But you can only start with $ 1 a dayand build from there.

6. Digital marketing offers measurable ROI

Unlike traditional marketing techniques, digital marketing is not only targeted, but also provides credible ways to measure what works, what doesn't, and how.

That means a small business can easily invest in online marketing and see the results first before they do anything to invest more.

Having trouble linking your digital marketing expenses to sales? TrackMaven found many SMEs are,

digital marketing in 2020

Start by setting up a special landing page. The goal is to capture the incoming traffic from a specific campaign.

From there, monitor how many people land on the landing page. You can also see how many views (and where on the page), how many views were viewed across the entire page, and how many views were switched to buyers. All of these are ROI metrics that can be captured in Google Analytics.

You can also use A / B testing to determine the most common online marketing techniques, copy, call to action, and page layouts based on real online customer interactions.

The tests will help you understand whether you need to be more targeted. Or is it better to shorten the content of your landing page to get more conversions? Or whether adding more call-to-action buttons above the fold can help increase conversions.

7. Your competition is already using digital marketing to drive development

About half of the small business owners who responded to the above survey They planned to do more business with online marketing strategies in 2019 and beyond – many are already. A logical conclusion would be that most of your competitors are too.

How do you ensure which digital marketing strategies you use? Just start by checking the website and social media. Do you have regularly updated blogs on your website? Do you post updates on Facebook or share pictures on Instagram? On Facebook you can also see what kind of (if applicable) ads your competitors are running. Just click on page information and check the ad library.

Then do a Google search for their brand name and check if they are mentioned on other websites or if they are linked to them. You can also use tools like Ahref's Site Explorer to see which websites are linked to your competitors. With another tool, SimilarWebYou can see which sources of traffic are coming from your competitors and whether they are using paid search ads (and for which keywords). For more information, see Ad Tracking and the tools you can use Here,

The most important thing to remember is to write down all of your results, from the number of social media followers to the keywords you're targeting. All of this data is useful for any type of digital marketing campaign you start – SEO, paid search, social media ads, everything down to content creation and email reach. There are several templates and tools for researching competitors, but in most cases, good old Excel spreadsheets are the best choice.

So what are you waiting for? 2020 is probably the last digital marketing move you can catch. Fortunately, there are thousands of tools available today for small businesses that are either free or affordable. A small fraction of the traditional advertising budget, some free time and a lot of willingness to learn are all you need to achieve positive results.