Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) in India contribute to about 45% of the country’s total industrial output. Being an industrial segment with 48 million members, they are struggling to exist and grow in revenue. So understanding trends across the key marketing techniques for small businesses will be crucial to the business success in 2017. As with any small business, one of the key challenges is to find cost-effective ways to reach out to more and more potential customers. A key opportunity here is the open and borderless market on the Internet. Around 3 billion people are using the internet now. Today, Facebook is a country as large as India with over 1 billion accounts. This is an important market for SMEs.
But how do we enter into this market and spread the word about what we have to offer? The answer is we can do it with the help of Digital Marketing Campaigns, it utilizes the digital media in order to reach out to customers in the market. Digital marketing campaigns make this open and borderless market accessible to you. And it comes at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods of advertising. The essential premise of digital marketing is better visibility leading to business development in the short run and brand value in the long run.
Some of the processes followed by companies in digital marketing are Search Engine optimization, Social Media Promotion, Email newsletter campaigns etc. The usability of each platform depends on the product/service you are selling.
ADVANTAGES OF DIGITAL MARKETING
Better Visibility: If a small enterprise from India produces a product for INR 1,000 and the same product is produced by a small enterprise from some other country for INR 1,500, a user from another country may buy only the one that gets listed in the top search results. So, if the product from the country other than India is listed at the top, he will buy it. It’s not because the product from India is bad, but it’s because the product is not visible to the user. So in digital marketing, we are paying for visibility and engagement. If proper digital marketing had been done for the Indian product, it would have been listed in the top search results.
Business development: Good visibility will result in lead generation, which will improve the business. Since the market is large, the factors that limit growth will be less.
Brand value: Whether it is a product or service, the Internet is the first place where people look for information. So, if a user is able to see the business he searches for, it creates an impression in his or her mind that this business is active and a reputed one. People now value a brand on the basis of their online presence.
Consistent Touch with the customer: Digital marketing campaigns have proven to greatly benefit businesses since they let you get in consistent touch with your potential customers. Thanks to their target-oriented as well as cost-effective approaches, it has become possible to promote products and services in a way like no other. Likewise, these campaigns create long-lasting as well as positive impressions on your brand as well as your potential customers.
Cost Effective: In present times, a digital marketing campaign is one of the cost-effective ways of reaching your most targeted prospects. Where traditional advertising campaigns typically cost a lot, the digital media rescued a number of enterprises around the globe by offering cost-effective marketing opportunities.
It is easy to establish an online presence by setting up a website for the business and signing up for some social media websites. But it’s just a start. As the market is large, there will be numerous competitors and in order to stand out from this massive crowd, we need to go for a digital marketing strategy that is aligned with our differentiated offering. This is enabled by the high levels of targeting that are possible in the digital world. A digital marketing strategy must make use of the varied mediums like email, search engine, and social media to exploit the opportunities presented by each media. Use email to reach to a wide audience, search engine optimization to enhance your visibility, social media for better customer engagement and building brand loyalty.
DIGITAL MARKETING CAMPAIGN TIPS
Pay attention to current trends in digital marketing by reading the current news or popular blogs. For example, with increasing amounts of people viewing videos online, marketing experts are going to make use of videos to promote and market businesses. Tracking as well as analyzing website statistics is essential since it informs you about the visitor demographics and provides helpful hints regarding the population segments of your visitors.
Additionally, be careful to not ignore the reach of mobile platforms. Mobile devices today have overcome PC users in terms of numbers. Also, major networks all over the world let mobile user’s access social media, email and websites by using their smartphone. Since that’s the case, advertisers are going to need to add such important new media in their digital marketing campaign.
