SME’s Struggles With Digital Marketing Advertising Discipline

Digital marketing is changing at a meteoric rate, making it more difficult for businesses to keep up with the latest industry standards. In fact, 76% of people think marketing has changed more in the past two years than it did over the previous fifty, which sums up the pace of change right now. Digital marketing is more of an art than a science and while some have tested the waters and gained some traction, a good number remain ‘in the dark’. The adaption of a holistic digital marketing program remains elusive.

Here are a few reasons why.

Budget:

SMEs operate on a shoestring budget. There are no guarantees when it comes to the return attributable to digital marketing, therefore, no agency can promise returns while starting a program. This may put off and eventually deter SMEs from investing in digital marketing given possible financial constraints they may be facing.

In-house expertise:

Due to varying reasons, SMEs are sometimes unable to attract the right talent. In some cases, there is no one available to coordinate with digital marketing agencies in an effective way. This puts an uneven load of delivery on the marketing agency which ultimately leads to unsatisfactory outcomes.

Costly Solutions:

Some agencies combine digital marketing with business consulting to give a clear indication of the return on investment (RoI) of a digital marketing program. Smaller firms that work with SMEs either don’t have the skill bandwidth or the desire to complicate the delivery process with RoI-based parameters.

SMEs looking for digital marketing solutions need a business fix, not a page on Facebook or Instagram. In order to come up with customized solutions, one needs to get into the nitty-gritty of business, operating models, profit margins and processes. Once the business is understood, a tailor-made solution can be developed to take care of lacking processes and marry that insight with experience of coming up with a reasonable RoI that can be expected in the medium to long term.

Bringing in Traffic and New Leads: “If you write it, they will come,”  used to be the SEO mantra, but more and more small companies struggle to watch this traffic materialize. 63 percent of marketers say this is their biggest challenge. It is advisable to improve content promotion through Bing and Google display ads. The Google Display Network (GDN) in particular can unlock huge reach when running as a targeted campaign through AdWords. Companies may also build audiences through social and email to ensure their content actually gets seen. Most importantly, make sure your content is both valuable and clickable. Give people what they want!

Tracking ROI:

Without a good way to trace the RoI, marketers in small and medium-sized companies may feel like their digital marketing spend is going down a hole. They know this probably is not the case, but without a concrete way to prove the ROI of marketing activities, it is difficult to identify which activities produce the most returns and which ones should be tweaked.

Chart out accurate customer journeys that account for all of your digital marketing touchpoints. You can then assign value to certain achievements, like a click-through, based on the final value of a customer transaction compared to the typical conversion rate.

Knowing where to focus efforts is key when it comes to identifying how best to make use of digital marketing. There are so many tools and options out there that small business owners are not sure which one will provide the most benefit. When exploring investments in tech or new campaigns, write down your exact goals. Then perform something like a SWOT Analysis to consider each option.

Outsourcing your digital marketing activities can help you rapidly bring your company’s activities up to par with your competitors. With sound digital marketing practices in place, you can improve brand recognition while growing your market share. Digital marketing services for small businesses can also be flexible, allowing you to get just the help or consulting advice you need to make your business excel. So, rather than considering adding a whole new appendage to your marketing apparatus or, worse, ignoring your company’s digital marketing needs altogether, SMEs should make an effort to explore options for partnering with an experienced digital marketing agency.

The statistics this year encouraging businesses to invest seriously in digital marketing are compelling. According to IMRG, online retail sales grew 11.1% and sales via mobile devices grew year on year by 23.7%. A report reveals that average smartphone conversion rates are up 64 percent compared to the average desktop conversion rates. There is no question about how important digital marketing is. Digital marketing allows businesses to reach their precise audience to offer their products and services. With Digital marketing you improve your brand and your income. It conjointly offers a much better return on investment than traditional marketing. The key to successful digital marketing is to generate a steady flow of traffic that becomes a potential client. The higher the traffic generated by your business, the quicker you may see your ROI.

Digital marketing for small businesses is uncharted territory for many companies, and since technology is constantly evolving, the old maps keep having to be redrawn. We suggest the Test, Learn, Adapt methodology. Most digital marketing best practices are discovered through experimentation and incremental improvements, not sudden revelations!

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