Neha owns a small candle-making business. She sells scented candles, therapy candles, tea lights, etc. using all-natural ingredients from home.
She is happy with the sale she makes through her Instagram page.
Last year, she was very excited during Christmas and expected a good rise in orders. She even hired someone to help her with the orders. However, she was shocked to find that the orders and sales dropped steeply.
What should Neha do in this situation?
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) do not have the financial resources for large advertising campaigns, endorsements and hefty discounts. They even lack knowledge of digital marketing and cannot spend heavily on digital marketing ad campaigns.
But, there are many platforms or strategies which can be leveraged to build brands and revenues for such Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises (MSMEs).
- Creating digital assets – The first step to implementing digital strategies is to create digital assets. Assets can be websites, e-commerce sites, and social media accounts. If you already have a website, then make it more SEO friendly by optimizing the content or making it mobile view optimized.
- Local listing – List your business on Google My Business or other such directories. This will narrow down the search results and chances are your website will rank higher.
- Social media marketing – The importance of social media like Instagram, Facebook (Meta), LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, etc. cannot be highlighted enough. Facebook ads give you the option to choose the area and set the target audience demography while running your ad campaigns. The CPL on such platforms is not very high compared to Google Search, which helps you bring down the cost of advertising.
- Influencer marketing – Collaborating with social media influencers will help you build brand awareness. Influencer marketing helps you reach a wide audience, is affordable, and builds brand credibility.
- Content Marketing – Not to forget the most widely and predominantly used mode of digital marketing, content marketing. Tell your story, and generate content that talks about your business, its philosophy, the products offered and their attributes. It will help the audience understand more about you and your brand. This makes your brand more relatable and authentic.
- Join or build communities – Joining virtual groups helps you reach like-minded people. They help build your brand through social media posts, shoutouts, or give you access to a highly targeted audience.
The benefits of digital marketing are –
- Measurability – With the help of Google Analytics or analytics tools, the engagement rate, website traffic, session duration, etc. can be easily measured. Through these inputs, you can frame your digital marketing strategy that is most beneficial to your business.
- Reach – Specific targeting, customized messaging and wider reach are the advantages of digital marketing. There is no geographical barrier and the companies can leverage the data to reach their desired audience.
- Costs – The companies are in charge of deciding the budget and the costs to be incurred for any marketing campaign. There is no minimum cost and the spending can be directly mapped to the returns.
- Customization & localization – Customizing the messaging strategy to suit each target group is possible. Similarly, localization helps in appealing to the target audience productively.
- Analytics – Due to digital mediums measuring and monitoring become easy. The data generated can be analyzed to optimize the existing activities, predict future trends, map the spending, carefully plan budgets, understand the correct mix of mediums for its audience and take corrective actions. It also helps to build a buyer persona.
- Evolution – Since the digital world is constantly evolving, marketing strategies must evolve with it. This helps the company, develop multiple strategies and continually update itself to stay relevant. The constantly changing environment curbs the ill effects of monopoly, market aggressors, and unfair practices.
Digital marketing is an effective way for small-scale businesses to increase their revenue expand without having to spend much. Hence as an entrepreneur, you must learn digital marketing to leverage the digital channels to sell your products or services.
MITSDE Advantage –
MIT School of Distance Education (MITSDE) is a distance learning institute approved by AICTE. It is an institute that understands the current skills gap in the market and strives hard to reduce it.
For this purpose, MITSDE brings to you PG Certification in Digital Marketing (PGCM Digital Marketing). The online digital marketing course covers the basics & the latest concepts, orients on the latest tools, and enables you to create a brand, analyze market trends, and design marketing campaigns.