WHILE MANY PEOPLE LOOK AT DIGITAL MARKETING AS A TOOL FOR LARGE BUSINESSES, LET’S TAKE A LOOK AT HOW SMALL AND GROWING BUSINESSES CAN BENEFIT FROM IT.
What is Digital Marketing and How Is It Different from Social Media Marketing?
In simple words, Digital Marketing can be defined as promotion done for a product or service through a digital channel, ie. Social Media, Web Marketing,Email, Banner Ads, etc.
Despite popular belief, Digital and Social Media Marketing are two different things. Social Media Marketing is just one part of Digital Marketing. It is Digital Marketing done through the Social Media channel.
While it is just one of the channels of Digital Marketing, it can be argued that Social Media has emerged as the most important and the most effective in today’s day and age.
More people than ever are using Social Media owing to smart phones and internet plans becoming affordable to even the poorer demographics. This change in the consumer behavior can prove to be extremely beneficial, especially to developing businesses operating within tier-2 cities, here’s how:
Creating a presence:
Digital Marketing has made it easier than ever for even small businesses to reach a wide spectrum of people. Before the boom in social media, this type of reach was only possible for large companies that could afford expensive mediums of advertising. But, the sharp increase in social media use in every corner of the world has enabled even small businesses operating on limited capital to drastically widen their reach and spread their brand to more and more prospective customers at a comparatively minimal cost.
Targeting Audience:
Digital Media, Google Adwords, Social Media provides an equal playing field for both big, established brands as well as new and growing brands. While it is true that established, large companies can afford more aggressive methods, smaller and growing businesses can target small and specific demographics and locations, which allow them to market their product as efficiently as their larger counterparts do.
Devising Trending Offers:
Local Businesses can save a lot of expenditure by letting the public promote their product rather than buying paid spots on the digital marketing channels. The businesses can publicize their product through word of mouth by introducing clever offers that massively increase their reach at a minimal cost.
For example, a local restaurant may offer certain discounts or other benefits to customers who post a picture of their food with a certain hashtag or the ones who tag a certain number of accounts. This allows their product to spread widely at the most minimal of costs.
Before social media, this ratio of reach to cost was not possible even for larger brands, let alone local and small businesses.
Building interactions:
Through digital channels, especially social media, small and local business can now connect and interact with their customers more than ever before. Building these interactions and connections helps the businesses to humanize their brand and create close relationships with customers which were not possible otherwise. These relations help the businesses to establish a sense of trust and security with the customers.
Ease in after sales communication:
Creating a customer service cell is extremely beneficial for all businesses for obvious reasons. It maintains a link between the business and customer even after the sale is made and strengthens the trust between the customer and the business.
Earlier maintaining this customer service cell was a cumbersome task which only the larger businesses could handle. But, with the advent of social media, it has become possible for even smaller companies to service their customers.
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The businesses and customers can now communicate through multiple mediums and maintaining an after-sale link has now become easier than ever. This allows the businesses to maintain long term and trustful relations with their customers and allows them to collect valuable consumer feedback at a little to no cost.
