The way to succeed in today’s competitive market is by reaching your prospective customers quickly. The majority of the buyers are looking for products online. This presents a huge opportunity for SMEs’ to focus their marketing efforts towards investing in a wide range of digital methods that they can adapt to suit their objective, budget, and industry. Digital marketing has transformed the way SMEs connect and engage with their customers. SMEs can use digital marketing to effectively put their brand in front of the target audience at the right place and at the right time.

What is Digital Marketing and why is it important?

• Digital marketing is the form of marketing that relies on electronic media to spread the message across. This mainly includes websites, emails, search engines, social media platforms as well as TV and radio commercials. Investing in digital marketing is crucial for SMEs as both the consumers and the competitors are online. If the prospective consumer is not able to find you online, they are most likely to switch to other brands for fulfilling their needs. The consumer expectation has changed in the digital world of today. They search for products and services online, and if you do not have social media presence or a website, you can’t compete.
• It helps in measuring the effectiveness and performance of the campaigns- It is possible to monitor the performance of the campaigns in real-time. There is timely data available through various tools like Google Analytics to review the effectiveness and performance of the current strategies and make changes accordingly to refine them to focus on the customers’ requirements. Metrics like engagement and conversions help in measuring the success of the campaign.
• Drives new inquiries to grow any business – The customer base needs to grow for higher revenue and profit. Customers can be reached through social media channels, websites as well as video marketing. Mobile customers are a rapidly growing market and the above efforts help in attracting these users to ensure you can generate more traffic and capitalize on it.
• Websites serve as a 24/7 sales representative- For SMEs, having a strong online presence can help in boosting and generating sales and reach the audience more efficiently. A well planned and designed website works round the clock for you to attract potential customers by providing information related to the products and services.
• It is cost-effective- SMEs sometimes do not have the budget to focus on traditional marketing such as print ads, TV, etc. This can be a disadvantage for them. Digital marketing is far more cost-effective. A well-crafted digital marketing strategy can help reach prospective customers at a much lower cost than traditional marketing methods. Attention should be paid to understanding the results of the data generated by digital marketing tools to increase revenue without spending a lot of money.
• Maximize ROI- High ROI is the ultimate goal of any business investing money in the marketing campaigns. With digital marketing being far more cost-effective than traditional marketing, it has been more successful in generating higher ROI. Analytics tools help in understanding what is working and what is not to make necessary adjustments ensuring effective utilization of marketing budget.
• Helps build brand awareness- Digital marketing has revamped the way businesses engage with potential as well as current customers. It has served as an effective tool for building trust and fostering long-term relationships. Social media has helped businesses reach the target audience and connect with them. Content created to target the prospective customers can ensure brand visibility and develop trust by addressing the interest and their pain points.

After getting an understanding of what digital marketing is and why it is so essential in today’s day and age, let us look at some digital marketing strategies that SMEs should implement.

1. Optimization – It is one of the most important steps that any SME should take before going ahead with spending on online advertising. If the customers visit your website and they do not like what they see, chances are that they will never return. There are many aspects to website optimization, with SEO playing an important role in the ranking of the website on search engines. Optimizing helps in online visibility which can be attributed to website design, accessibility, user experience, content, and speed. Minimal designs are known to capture the attention of the audience. With the use of colours and visual content, you can establish your brand and its image. Websites should be designed keeping in mind the functionality to guide users to take action and look for products and services. It should be easy for a user to fill out forms, use drop-down menus, etc. With more and more traffic being generated from smartphones, the websites should be optimized for all different devices. Research has shown that when a website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, the bounce rate goes up thereby losing half the potential customers. Optimizing the size of files, photos, and graphic content will ensure faster loading time. Last but not the least, the content of the website needs to be good in quality and should be informative to encourage a visitor to stay and come back for more. It should relevant to the target audience. Using keywords in the text content, image tags, links, etc will help when people search for your content online as search engines will index the website.
2. Social Media Marketing – Social media is a great tool for online marketing. It is the best way to reach people who are active on social media channels. Marketing on social media helps in many ways for SMEs to get noticed. Ads and posts can be created keeping in mind the target audience to reach the users who are likely to buy the product and services. Social media offers great ways to engage with the target audience and build strong relationships. Emphasis should be on interacting regularly on social media through posts. This not only helps increase the reach but Google also ranks organically as the brand is seen to be popular and worthy of organic ranking.
3. Backlinks – Linking websites on high ranking websites and online directories are referred to as backlinks. Sites with quality backlinks are ranked higher by Google. Backlinks should be added naturally over time. This helps Google in perceiving that the website is gaining popularity and is worthy of indexing for its quality content.
4. Google My Business – SMEs should get their business listed on Google. The profile should carry pictures and up to date information and encourage customers to review and rate the small business on Google. These ratings greatly impact in attracting customers to increase sales and grow the business.

To make digital marketing work for your business, you need to have a strategy in place to optimize and utilize all the resources available. An efficient digital marketing strategy means using all digital channels and creating a wholesome campaign. Integrating all the platforms goes a long way in achieving the objectives.