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How Attractive Is Digital Marketing to Small Businesses?

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Risager Dowd
Small businesses have many challenges to face when it comes to promoting and advertising their products and services. For one thing, they usually operate in a very competitive market. And for another, price pressures are always considerable. So when it comes to deciding where to spend their marketing budget (if such a thing exists) how do small business owners know what is likely to give them the best return on investment?
Before looking at how digital marketing can help small businesses, it's important to understand the many alternative ways for businesses to spend their money:
1. Newspaper advertising
Newspapers have been a primary source of business advertising for as long as newspapers have existed. Printed media (also including magazines, journals and trade press) have traditionally accounted for a significant proportion of the advertising budget for many companies. Newspapers are an example of the mass distribution method of advertising, attempting to send a single message out to the largest audience possible. However newspapers (and print media in general) are in decline, and dwindling readership presents a less attractive option for advertisers. In recent years this has become an irreversible, downward spiral, with publications going out of print at a record rate.
2. TV and Radio
TV and Radio have traditionally been very effective methods of increasing brand awareness. Air time is highly expensive and in many cases extremely sought after, particularly during major sporting events or at prime time. In many ways, TV is the old school equivalent of the modern YouTube generation, where consumers are engaged by and drawn towards the interactivity of bright moving pictures. Digital Visibility and radio are still viable options as an advertising channel, however small businesses generally do not compete in this space due to the prohibitive costs and lack of a targeted approach.
3. Yellow Pages
The Yellow Pages, above all other marketing channels, has suffered in the face of the internet onslaught. Companies are recognising in their thousands that yellow pages does not provide an attractive advertising platform, and the return on investment is impossible to measure. The yellow pages was always good for customer choice, but a fundamentally poor proposition for the small business advertiser. A company is listed right alongside every single one of its local competitors, therefore diluting any competitive advantage of being there.
4. Cold calling and telemarketing
Picking up the phone and talking to people directly has long been a very simple and cheap way of approaching a customer base. However, cold calling is now the bane of every homeowner and small business owner. We are so used to being cold called that we have all developed strategies for getting the person off the phone as fast as possible. Cold calling still has its place, but it will always be the low cost, but low return way of doing business,
So what about digital marketing as the alternative?
A Digital Marketing Agency is the attractive option for the modern business owner, who has long recognised the ineffectiveness of most other forms of advertising and marketing. A well planned and well managed digital marketing campaign can bring huge financial returns. It can also help with less tangible things such as brand building, increased marketing reach, and customer loyalty. Digital marketing is a broad area, covering such diverse topics as web design, search engine optimisation, paid advertising, multimedia marketing, email marketing and social media.
Finding the right digital marketing agency can turbo-charge the sales performance of business in many sectors, and costs do not have to be prohibitive.
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Risager Dowd
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