More than medium and large businesses, whose products or services are already known to people, small businesses should take help of marketing – to bring in more new customers and ultimately to survive and sustain. But cash-strapped small businesses cannot afford to invest in traditional marketing channels like television, radio and print, which are very expensive.
If you are one of those small business owners, you need a tested, tried, result oriented, and affordable marketing channel that can provide quick and long-term results. Internet marketing can be considered as one such channel that can help you.
Wide variety of marketing tools
Be it a long-term or a short-term strategy or a limited budget or an extended budget strategy, Internet marketing has many tools that can match with your requirements. The wide variety of tools provided by the Internet marketing makes it an obvious choice for small businesses. Some of the Internet marketing tools you can use are:
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Pay Per Click (PPC)
• Local site submission
• Link building
• Display advertisements
• E-mail marketing
• Content marketing
Wider reach provides better awareness
Even if you are the best product/service provider in the industry, if you are not able to reach your target audience, you will lose many potential leads. Lack of proper marketing channels deprives you of your due recognition. Hence, the purpose of marketing to generate leads and sales starts with creating awareness about your business. Awareness is the key to increase the customer base. The wider is your reach, the greater is the possibility of getting recognized and increasing your customer base.
The Internet acts as a global platform for marketing your businesses, thus ensures that you do not miss any of your potential customers from your locality or any part of the world.
Flexible to be customized as per your budget and marketing needs
Small businesses, rarely concentrate on enhancing their marketing strategies due to the budget constraints. Moreover, marketing is a continuous process, which needs to be modified on a regular basis depending on the industry trends and ROI. Interestingly, all the Internet marketing tools are less expensive, yet they are highly effective. They are also flexible enough to be changed as per the budget set, industry trends, competitors’ strategies, and customer preferences and business’ objectives.
For instance, a small business can opt for
• PPC, when it wants to generate quick sales in a limited budget, or to compete with the competitors on a specific keyword
• SEO, for long term results within a medium budget
• Display advertising, when having a good amount of budget and want to attract more customers
• Local SEO, when targeting local customers and competing with local businesses
• Website development, to get a new functional design for the website so as to engage customers and to make it look better than that of competitors’ website
Internet marketing strategies can also be periodic (can be adopted when you have need or budget).
Best way to reach targeted and local market
While traditional marketing strategies are highly generalized, Internet marketing strategies are highly specific. You can design a marketing plan so as to target your audience based on their demographics, income levels, geographies, gender, tastes, etc. This way you can increase the sales of your products or services as they are more likely to catch the attention of right people who are in need of your product.
Good returns on investment
Internet marketing strategies are characterized by their ability to reach the potential customers, to serve the business’s objective of generating leads, sales, etc., and to create brand awareness – all which leads to good returns on investment. It also facilitates direct and instant feedback from the customers which allows you to make your business more customer-friendly. Thus, we can conclude that Internet marketing is highly profitable for a small business. IM strategies are measurable and can be modified so as to maximize the returns and minimize the losses.
Internet marketing strategies are comprehensive – while they narrow down your marketing plan to a specific targeted group, they broaden your business prospects by interconnecting various interactive marketing strategies, thus, maximizing the marketing impact on the business.
