How can you describe digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is the umbrella term used to describe all the marketing effort used to attract, engage, convert, and retain customers online. Digital Marketing utilizes various channels such as content marketing, social media, SEO and SEM to relate their marketing message to their potential customers.
Does Digital Marketing work for small businesses?
Digital marketing work for all business, So far your customers are online. The result you get now depends on the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategy. If digital marketing doesn’t work for your business that means there is a flaw in your strategy.
What are the prominent benefit of digital marketing over traditional marketing?
It is measurable, you can easily determine the success of each digital channel you are using. This is one of the main reason why there is a switch to the digital form of advertising.
Secondly, you can easily target your ideal customers, With digital marketing you can ensure that the right customers are viewing your content. For example SEO and SEM ensure that your contents or ads are displayed to people who their search query matches with what your business does.
social media advertising enables you to target those who are most likely to be interested in your products or services based on demographic information and general characteristics.
With digital marketer you don't have to worry that you are wasting your marketing budget on people not interested in your business
Which digital marketing channels do you think small businesses should adopt at early stage?
First of all I think every small businesses ready to use digital marketing to drive sales need a good and responsive website, because that will be your online home. Due to the technicalities of other digital marketing channels I think small businesses should start with social media marketing. This has also proven to be effective since virtually all their customers are on social media. But there is one problem I noticed is that small businesses are using the social media wrongly and that's why it has not proved to be effective for so many of them.
How long will it take to see results of digital marketing?
Digital marketing is not a magic that will get you sales instantly, marketing is all about building trust before selling, same with digital marketing, people that will buy from you online also have to trust you before they buy. The better your digital marketing strategy the faster you get the expected results.
How can small businesses with little capital do digital marketing?
They should try and discover which channel that will get them more customers and then focus on it.
What is the major challenges small businesses face with digital marketing?
The major challenge small businesses face is that they couldn't define their customers online, and if you embark on marketing to the wrong set of people your marketing will end up not getting any results.
Where should small business start when developing a digital marketing strategy?
Small businesses have to understand their target market ,know their customers behaviour so that they can use the digital channel that their customers are concentrated on rather than using channels that they think are politically right. For example if your customers are not active on facebook and you are utilizing facebook as your main digital channel, then your marketing efforts won’t drive any result.
Do you have any advice on how small businesses can better leverage social media?
Yeah, they should understand that social media has it’s own psychology, social media is to interact with people, and business should not drift far away from this. Always aim to create quality and engaging contents which will appeal and interest them. Lastly, I would say all small businesses should adopt the 80/20 rule, which means80% of your social media posts should inform, educate, and entertain your audience, while 20% should directly promote your business.
