As long as there has been trading, people have used Marketing to promote their goods or services. Historically, efforts would have focused on talking directly to consumers followed later by print mediums, radio ads, television commercials, and, yes- telemarketing. However, everything we know about traditional marketing changed with the launch of the internet.

Today, marketers are not limited by geography, budget, or competition as Digital media has leveled the playing field for businesses large and small to compete on a global scale.

Let’s take a closer look at what Digital Marketing is and how it has changed the face of businesses worldwide.

What is Digital Marketing?

On the surface, digital marketing isn’t very different from traditional marketing. Marketers use popular mediums to reach their target audience to increase brand awareness and share the benefits of their products or services. What has changed are the channels that marketing teams are using.

Traditional marketing mediums like print advertising are limited in scope due to prohibitively high costs and difficulty in reaching the right consumer at the right place and time. Digital marketing has changed all that. By exploiting channels such as the internet, websites, email, and social media, marketers have been able to optimize their strategies thereby targeting the highly precise amount and type of audiences without geographical or budgetary limitations.

Digital Marketing Strategies for Businesses of All Sizes

A national or even global marketing campaign was once something that only the largest companies could contemplate undertaking but not anymore. Digital marketing has shattered barriers opening doors for businesses of all sizes.

Whether your goal is to increase brand awareness, entice a purchase, or foster brand loyalty, there is a digital marketing channel that will help you engage with your audience. Depending on your marketing strategy, your business might:

• Actively use social media to engage with new and existing users
• Create original and exciting content to position your brand as a trusted resource in its field
• Use website marketing tools to draw new traffic to your website
• Leverage the power of SEO (search engine optimization) to increase your organic search engine traffic
• Launch a PPC (pay-per-click) advertising campaign

Digital marketing is no longer simply a tool that marketers use. It is the new face and the new way of marketing. If your business isn’t currently employing a digital marketing strategy, the time to start is right now.

Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)

While digital marketing is essential for any business, it has been particularly important for SMEs. Whether trying to compete nationally or simply increase exposure in local markets, digital marketing has empowered small and medium enterprises to extend their reach, and here’s how.

1. Reach the Right Audience

One of the biggest problems with traditional marketing channels is focusing your efforts and marketing dollars on the right audience. With the power of the internet, marketers can now leverage vast amounts of data to specifically target the consumers most likely to engage with your brand or purchase a product or service with personalized messages.

A social media campaign can be designed to target users based on demographics and psychographics such as age, gender, interests, location, or browsing history. Personalized emails can be sent to consumers who have previously interacted with your brand thereby offering tailored promotional content. SEO can help increase your ranking in search engine results related to your goods or services.

2. Affordable Yet Highly Effective

Bang-for-buck, few marketing channels can compete with digital media. Therefore, this has helped to level the playing field between larger corporations and smaller businesses.

Where a radio, magazine, or billboard campaign can be extremely costly and provide little guarantee of reaching the right audience, a sleek website with professional content and SEO services can all be had for comparatively less spending. What’s more, your digital marketing message has much better odds of reaching the right consumer by increasing your exposure and brand awareness among those most likely to convert.

3. Digital Marketing is Measurable and Adaptable

Not only are traditional marketing mediums expensive, but measuring their success can be highly challenging. There are few reliable ways to measure whether a radio commercial or print ad converted a listener into a sale and even fewer ways to test different strategies and gauge their effectiveness.

Digital marketing, on the other hand, can deliver near-immediate results. You can quickly get a clear picture of your marketing message’s success by leveraging metrics such as clicks, views, shares, likes, and time spent on a page. If your campaign hasn’t delivered the desired outcomes, it can be quickly and inexpensively altered.

4. Engage Consumers at Every Stage of the Buyers Funnel

Not all targets immediately convert into buyers, but with digital marketing you can effectively reach consumers at each stage of the sales funnel, nurturing leads into sales.

A typical buyer’s journey begins with a problem or need. At this stage, your marketing strategy aims to raise awareness, attract attention, and develop a relationship. Digital marketing strategies might include SEO, blogs, and social media. As buyers journey down the funnel, the focus shifts from attracting attention to increasing engagement. Strategies here are more personalized and might include mobile, email, and other active outreach tactics. The last stage is where prospects convert into buyers. Even then, your marketing efforts are not over.

Maintaining brand loyalty is a huge focus of any successful marketing strategy. You must continue to engage and delight consumers with targeted content, emailers, personalized promotional offers, and other remarketing tactics.

Is it Time for Your Small Business to Make Big Moves?

Thanks to the internet, businesses of all sizes have the power to expand their reach, whether it’s attracting new consumers in a local market or developing new markets that would have previously been unattainable.

Without breaking the bank, digital marketing has leveled the playing field for smaller businesses to compete with larger enterprises. If your business is ready to explore the world beyond traditional marketing channels, Nirvana Canada can help develop an effective digital marketing strategy to make it happen.

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