So, you own a small business. That means, you’ll have to face a lot of challenges. Building your website, invoicing, collecting payments, accounting, etc. These are just a few of the critical aspects of any small business.

Yet another challenge you will face is how to get your brand/business out in front of potential buyers, a.k.a. marketing. And in today’s technology climate, your digital marketing strategy will be another critical piece to your business's success.


With the right digital marketing strategy, you can be successful and make a name for yourself in your market. Your website design, marketing efforts, social media presence, communication style, and many other factors all depend and revolve around your digital marketing strategy. So, why is this important? Well, let’s find out.

1. Direction & Focus

 


You established your business because you know your product or service can help people in your market. However, you need to have a clear sense of direction and a brand focus around how you can reach potential buyers and effectively explain the value of your product or service.


A digital marketing strategy helps you accomplish your customers’ goals in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible, given your business’s capabilities, resources, and limitations.

Your strategy may include daily monitoring of your social media accounts so you won’t miss out replying to inquiries. Or perhaps you may regularly send newsletters about your new products, services, and promos to loyal/existing customers. Or you might strategically structure your website design in such a way that appeals to your specific target market.

2. Understanding Your Market

 



In most cases, you share the market with both big businesses and numerous other small businesses like yours. Yes, it’s tough to stand out in the digital battleground. Thus, as part of a digital marketing strategy, it is important to do your research and identify your space in the market. You need to understand your customers' behaviors, profiles, and demographics. The more you know about your customers, the better you can communicate and service them effectively.


Let’s say you’re running a shop that specializes in tailored suits. Who is your market? By understanding your market, you might find that gentlemen who love fashion are more interested in your suits. Perhaps they can be entrepreneurs, sales people, speakers, and professionals who need to look great in front of an audience. Perhaps they are high wealth individuals who require everything tailored specifically for them.


As you can see from the customer profiles above, your business is most helpful to a certain kind of market.


In addition, you should factor in your competitors---how they use social media, their latest updates and promos, their strategies, what makes their products and services unique, their client base----in your digital marketing strategy. You will know your “angle of attack” and lay off a better marketing effort if you have an excellent grasp of the dynamics of your industry.

3. Increase Your Online Presence

 



It is a no-brainer that a large online presence can do wonders for your business. With a strong online presence, it makes it easier for people to search and find your website.


A digital marketing strategy helps you improve your online presence. Techniques such as search engine optimization, social media marketing, pay-per-click campaigns, affiliate marketing, and many others---all part of a digital marketing strategy---help expand your reach.

Even updating your web design can make an impact; a well-designed, market-centric, custom designed site can help convert web traffic into leads and paying customers.

4. Value for your money

 



Your financial goals and situations greatly affect all aspects of your business. It is a universal truth that in order to successfully run your business, you need to manage your financial resources well.


A digital marketing strategy helps you determine your monthly and yearly financial goals. Such goals often involve your expense budget and sales targets. With a great strategy, you can identify and drop off an expense that is not working, allocate money to a strategy item that works, spend extra on experimental technologies and methodologies that can possibly benefit your business, and so on.


For easier handling and monitoring of your finances, start out with a series of small financial goals. Then plan and work your strategy towards achieving these goals. As each goal is met, you can easily check your finances and ensure that you are still on budget.

5. No More Redundancy


Small businesses cannot afford to waste financial resources. Without a proper plan, a business could be spending a lot on redundant marketing efforts. For instance, you may be spending money on an ineffective pay-per-click campaign when in actuality, a paid post from your Facebook page is doing much better at increasing engagement and driving traffic to your website. If this is the case, why not drop the pay-per-click campaign and spend more time, effort and money focusing on your social media marketing campaigns?


It is important to note that paid marketing needs to results driven. If you are not tracking your results and conversions from your marketing campaign (or if you’re just not willing to take the time/effort to do this), then you’ll have a very hard time justifying the cost of running an effective marketing campaign.


A digital marketing strategy identifies which of your present efforts and methods are duplicated and therefore eating up your budget. With the redundancies out of the way, every marketing effort that you use is unique, targeting different aspects of your business.


The key to a successful implementation of a digital marketing strategy is to start it as soon as possible and constantly monitor the results of your efforts whether they are paid or free. It is probably best to do a marketing audit first so you can evaluate your efforts, identify SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) factors, and see which part of your strategy is working or not. The audit will also help you adjust your strategy so you are getting the most value for your time, money, and effort that you’re spending on marketing your brand.