Every small and medium-sized business owner is aware that their competition is not only limited to similar competitors but also with larger organisations with higher market visibility. Apart from the local competition, they must confront these large organisations that possess bigger marketing budgets and higher recognition.
However, digital marketing tools emerged during the past decade and have deeply transformed the business landscape, offering exceptionally cost-effective opportunities for small entrepreneurs to compete on equal grounds. Unlike the conventional print, radio, and television marketing channels that need substantial capital, digital platforms provide equal opportunities for small businesses.
As technology has evolved, digital platforms have offered substantially increased leverage for small business operations. Now, they can adopt new types of digital marketing tools to ensure equal openings or breaks.
Now is the best time for small businesses to understand the impact of their digital presence. Digital marketing is basically the efforts of an organisation to create awareness of a product or service through internet-based digital platforms. This can include multiple channels such as websites, social media, email content, and so forth.
The most important benefit of digital marketing is the substantially lower marketing costs compared to conventional methods. When competing with larger organisations, digital platforms can be a game-changer where small businesses can reach a wider audience, leading to better customer engagement.
Reach is the size of the audience a business can send out a message about its products or services, special rewards, promotions, and new information. It measures the actual number of potential customers who can read or see the contents of the message. Marketing reach is one of the most crucial criteria of business success that brings in revenue.
Reach in marketing is the measurement of the size of the audience that has seen your ads or campaign content. Reach measures your actual audience, and it measures the precise number of potential customers a campaign could reach. These can refer to specific audience segments or to a broader percentage of the population.
With appropriate and planned strategies, even the smallest business, if applied properly, can reach an unlimited number of prospects, achieve the highest market visibility, and compete with any type of competitor.
Social media is perhaps the best mode of communication currently available for small business ventures. In Sri Lanka, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn provide opportunities for small businesses to connect with potential customers locally and globally.
These platforms provide various methods of targeted advertising that can reach specific demographics, locations, and interest groups. A well-crafted social media campaign can generate adequate awareness for small businesses to attract customers.
According to reliable sources, in Sri Lanka, the number of internet users is over 12.34 million, with a countrywide penetration of 56.3 percent. Therefore, even for a small, localised business, creating a web site is paramount in this extremely competitive business landscape. Most customers look for information about their purchases by searching the internet, primarily going through the website.
Hence, search engine optimisation (SEO) has become an important element for businesses. SEO involves creating tailored content that has one underlying aim: to answer questions that your customers are asking and provide valuable feedback from customers. By optimising their website content for relevant keywords, small businesses can attract customers who are actively searching for their products or services.
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an effective cost-saving exercise for small businesses. Unlike the traditional method of paying a flat fee, PPC advertising provides the facility of paying only when a customer opens the online advertisement. Most often, a viewer clicks on a post only if he has genuine interest in a product or service.
This model is highly efficient because it ensures that marketing budgets are spent only on users who have shown an interest in the products advertised. Digital platforms such as Google Ads and social media services provide accurate customer segment targeting, enhancing the impact on the most relevant audience.
Creating and sharing valuable content can be a highly cost-effective way for small businesses to attract and engage customers. It can help small businesses build their credibility, demonstrate expertise, and attract customers without the need for significant upfront investment.
Reaching out to prospects is an important first step that cannot be avoided. The interaction generated through effective reach can start a sense of loyalty in customers. However, turning the interest created through reach is more important. Although content, flashy advertising campaigns, and creatively designed posts draw customers’ attention, influencing them to purchase is an important but different criterion.
Therefore, businesses must consider a proper “call to action” (CTA) image or text that can encourage customers to start an actual purchasing process. Calling to action or inviting customers to purchase a product is an extremely essential part of the sales process. Due to the prevailing fierce competition, it is important to make it easy for customers to react instantly. In order to create interest, companies can offer exclusive offers, comprehensive guides, or other attractive promotional content on the landing page.
However, small businesses, with their limited exposure, must make sure that the call-to-action messages are highly customised for the audience. Invariably, a generalised call to action statement can be lacklustre and no better than oversimplified copy, photos, and descriptions of products or services.
For small and local companies, monitoring digital performance closely and meticulously is essential. With the currently available technology, monitoring the actual performance is relatively easy. However, such AI-based monitoring must also be supervised closely by human expertise, whenever possible, to derive the best results.
Tracking the performance across all utilised channels allows small businesses to make informed decisions not only on advertising effectiveness but also on other areas such as product development and after-sales efficiencies. This can maximise the overall performance.
While use of AI-based digital marketing is compulsory for small businesses, it has a few downsides as well. First among them is the lack of emotional elements in digital media where a mechanical feeling can kick in. The absence of human involvement can create a negative effect on some customer segments.
Despite many advantages, high competition is a strong drawback of digital marketing. Competition is intense in marketing today for any product or service. From small businesses to conglomerates, maximum market visibility is essential today. Therefore, to compete with large organisations with high spending capacity, small businesses with smaller budgets must be more tactful in their digital presence.
Also, no business can evade occasional negative feedback that can appear instantly on digital platforms. The reach of these negative comments could be as large as the advertisement itself. Hence, such feedback can heavily influence customers and damage the reputation of a business.
In today’s dynamic business arena, digital marketing has an intense impact on small businesses, offering them the paths and opportunities to compete on a level playing field with larger companies. The reach and the visibility through digital platforms offer cost-effective marketing solutions, enhance customer engagement, provide measurable results, and empower small businesses to grow and thrive.
