Why SMBs should Leverage the Power of Digital Advertising

Digital advertising is yet to unleash its full potential to many businesses, if not all. Small and medium scale businesses (SMBs) eventually have become the primary targets for this.

Companies, who are yet to enter into the mainstream of online marketing world and missed the bus in 2017, can still start afresh. It is the beginning of 2018 and perhaps the best time to plan for the year ahead.

Still, in dilemma; yet to be convinced on the marketing ROI?

Let us present some powerful insights and statistics that would encourage you to leverage the benefits of digital marketing initiatives.

9 Reasons Why SMBs should Leverage the Power of Digital Advertising

1. Digital Marketing Goals and Priorities

The expectations from digital marketing ventures, so far, have been unlimited for advertisers. Since mobile has become the new desktop for online buyers, mobile-friendly advertisements are the key to beat the competition. Customers constantly search for the best deals online and digital marketing is the only way to make your offerings visible to them.

If your marketing plan does not include mobile-first design for websites and cross-channel selling through online retail stores, you are way behind in the queue.

2. Advertising on Social Networks is More Affordable

SMBs can take advantage of low-cost advertisement solutions on alternative platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn. Statistics say that 90% of SMBs now believe that having a presence on social media is necessary. 75% of them actually spend on social media advertising. This growth has surpassed 44% of SMBs who used to spend on search engines.

90% of SMBs say that they are satisfied with the effectiveness of Facebook ads. 36% of SMBs say they are extremely satisfied with the results.

3. Customer Choices Driven by Online Reviews

According to The Guardian and Cisco, in 2017, 69% of online consumers preferred watching video content. Among buyers, there is a growing trend of reading product reviews before making any purchase. Thus, Facebook and YouTube are gaining more popularity these days. New technology and apps are also changing the buying behavior of customers across demography.

The interesting fact is that companies such as Yellow pages and Yelp, helping small businesses, have experienced 22.4% and 32% growth in their revenue.

4. Google Business for SMBs Wins Local Customers

Digital channels are now easily available for local vendors to advertise on. Creating a business page on Google through Google My Business is such a low-cost digital marketing solution.

With the local appearance on Google search results, small businesses have been able to target a volume of customers. Even listing your business to online directories and sites like Yelp, Foursquare, Yellow Pages can bring higher ROI. Local business listings help SMBs share their business contacts and product information in a much easier way and faster than brick-and-mortar model. Here is an infographic on the survey of local advertisers.

5. Digital Marketing Techniques are Popularizing

According to Smart Insights report, in 2017, there has been an exponential growth in how marketers bang on different online marketing techniques for their advertisers. Digital marketing agencies and consultants have used top-rated techniques such as Content Marketing, Big Data analytics, Conversion Rate Optimization, Internet of Things (IoT), Paid Search Marketing, Online PR, Wearables, and so on.

Customer insights and predictive analytics have also become a major feed for marketers and this trend is only upwards. This prediction clearly shows that more powerful tools and techniques are on the way and advertisers look forward to using them in recent future.

6. Growth in Marketing Automation for Businesses

Marketing automation tools had a major market share in the last 3 to 5 years. This is because many businesses have been trying to improve their marketing automation capabilities to cut down on cost and optimize resources.

Today, email marketing and marketing automation toolkits have become more affordable for advertisers seeking to lower down costs. Tools providing predictive analysis data are also quite popular for the reason that they save you a huge marketing R&D cost. In fact, it is easy and quick to deploy a set of marketing automation tools and kick-start your first campaign in days. The tools are even customizable in terms of key features, pricing options, complexity level, and scalability.

Such endless marketing possibilities and result-driven solutions made advertisers optimistic and encouraged them to add digital marketing to their annual marketing budget.

7. IoT Based Marketing Applications are on Radar

It is expected that by 2020, 75 billion devices would be connected to each other. That means at least ten times as many devices will be able to communicate with each other considering people will use at least ten devices each for personal and work purpose. The impact is far-reaching. This data sharing trend will drive how product advertisers would market their solutions. Digital marketing applications are gearing up to cater the potential of Internet of Things (IoT).

8. Website Building Costs Dropped Significantly

Today you won’t hear the excuse of not having a website from SMB advertisers. The cost of owning and managing a website has significantly come down. Thanks to GoDaddy, and similar low-cost subscription-based domain hosting solution providers. Many web development companies have also forayed into the market for cheaper website building applications. They are selling easily configurable, ready-to-market business websites which require almost no technical expertize to manage. Such pre-built applications save time and cost for SMBs and enable them to run effective online marketing programs with minimum investment.

Here are the insights from local advertiser survey made by Borrell Associates:

The survey also witnessed a whopping 75% growth in advertisers’ spending on digital media. 15% of smaller businesses even moved from traditional advertising, and are warming up to take on the modern forms of digital advertising.

9. Digital Marketing Avenues Follow Best Practices

A survey made by LSA (Local Search Association) shows that SMB advertisers find challenges in searching suitable marketing providers, offline. Cost and customized offerings are the major concerns for most of them.

As per the LSA survey:

“Eighty percent of small and medium-sized businesses stated that they would be likely or highly influenced in their choice of digital marketing provider if a provider demonstrated that it adopted these standards.”

Today service providers are incorporating best practices into their operations and service models to conform to the SLAs (Service Level Agreements – a mutual agreement between a service provider and a consumer). They put standards in place to follow the suit. With fierce competition among providers to win customers, today, the advertisers end up getting better and cheaper deals from the market. This is an optimistic sign for SMBs who are still reluctant to advertise online.

The service standards are also becoming more customer-centric. They are aligned with the sales process that SMBs usually look for. For example,

• Costs and service agreements are more transparent Practices of sales are pull-based, not push-based
• Representations of deliverables are clear and truthful
• Sales and customer representatives are better trained to serve queries Services and products are more customizable and requirements-specific
• Performance monitoring reports are tool-based for accuracy and easy accessibility

• Expectations are set reasonably and by mutual agreement

Conclusion

All these developments at providers’ end are aimed at delivering higher values to online advertisers. Better business practices tend to grab the attention of small business owners. With standard business policies and cost-effective marketing programs, digital marketing sellers and agencies can set up a win-win deal for both.

Today, the stage for online advertisers and digital marketers is already set. More and more advanced and targeted advertising options are being researched and added to the portfolio by experts. So, it is time for SMBs to try out these affordable and customized online advertisement solutions and then closely monitor the ROI.

Anyway, we are in 2018, and it is better late than never.