About 70 percent of small businesses use digital marketing. Although the average annual expenditure on digital is less than $10,000, the vast majority have plans to keep increasing their budget.

If you’re a new business or an existing business that has never used online marketing, you might be wondering whether it’s worth the investment. Perhaps you’ve always used traditional marketing methods such as print advertising, and they have always worked.

Well, you’re missing out on a lot, but it’s not too late to join the party.

These are the benefits of digital marketing for small businesses like yours.

1. Puts Your Business Where the Customer Is — Online

80 percent of consumers in the U.S. are regularly shopping online. Although brick-and-mortar stores aren’t going anywhere, the shift to online shopping is unstoppable.

A general rule of thumb in business is to be where your customers are. If the customers are online, you have no choice but to take your business online; otherwise, it’s only a matter of time before your sales slump.

This is where digital marketing comes in. It puts your business on the web, where your customers can find it.

There are various strategies you can employ to help you achieve this goal. They include search engine optimization, email marketing, social media marketing, and pay-per-click advertising. A digital marketing agency can design a custom strategy for your small business.

2. Level Playing Field

As a small business owner, you know too well how uneven the playing field is. Large companies control most of the market and they have the financial capacity to splurge on TV and newspaper advertising campaigns, platforms that are out of the financial reach of the average small enterprise.

Online, and as far as digital marketing is concerned, every business, big or small, has equal opportunity.

Take search engine optimization, for example. As long as you have an effective strategy, your website has as much chance of showing up top on search engine results as the website of a multi-billion-dollar corporation.

Although large companies can use their resources to hire the best online marketing specialists, small businesses certainly aren’t priced out. At the end of the day, what matters is who has the best strategy.

3. Cost Savings

A 30-second commercial on national television will set you back about $300,000! To put this in context, the average small business generates about $50,000 in revenue a year.

Small businesses have no choice but to settle for local newspapers with little reach, brochures, newsletters, and other affordable traditional marketing methods.

What if we told you that with digital marketing, you can run a campaign that has better reach than a commercial on a national TV, at a fraction of the cost?

It’s true. Digital marketing platforms give advertisers the ability to set budgets for the ad campaigns, and the ads are pay-per-click or pay-per-view.

As an example, you can run your ads on YouTube, a network that receives over 1 billion views daily. On average, you’ll pay between $0.10 and $0.30 every time your ad gets a view or a click.

For 100,000 views, you’ll spend about $20,000. Research shows YouTube advertising delivers 80% higher ROI than TV advertising. It’s easy to see where your money is well-spent.

What’s more, digital marketing can be even cheaper or free if you decide to do everything on your own. Setting up a DIY website and optimizing for SEO won’t cost you more than 100 bucks. As the website starts to climb up the search engine result pages, it will get more organic traffic, and with it, generate more sales.

4. Easy to DIY

Make no mistake. Hiring a digital marketing agency to handle all your digital marketing needs is the right move.

However, there might be times when your budget simply doesn’t allow. The good news is you won’t need to give up on digital marketing until you have the finances. You can take the DIY approach and still achieve meaningful results.

Search engines, social media networks, email service providers, and other digital marketing platforms provide tools that make it easy for anyone to run ad campaigns. Whether you want to build a website or blog, create a PPC ad campaign, or run sponsored posts on social media, you can do it without needing any specialized training.

5. Results You Can Measure

When you run a newspaper advert, it’s difficult to measure the ad’s exact performance. At best, you’ll only get an estimate of the size of the newspaper’s readership and hope that a sizeable chunk of that audience will see your ad and take action. The same applies to all other traditional marketing methods.

With digital marketing, though, you can accurately measure the performance of your campaigns. If you’re running Facebook ads, you can monitor the number of clicks generated, the number of visitors who made a purchase, and those who visited but left without buying.

With this kind of data, you’re in a better position to design effective campaigns. If a campaign is not performing as expected, you can quickly make some changes for better optimization.

Reap the Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses

The internet has revolutionized how businesses owner market their products and service to consumers. Although the basic marketing principles remain unchanged, digital marketing gives you the power to reach a larger audience without spending an arm and a leg. It has leveled the playing field, giving small businesses the power to compete with the big dogs.

It’s time to start enjoying the benefits of digital marketing for small businesses. Develop your strategy and execute it with ruthless precision.

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