Given that we live in a fast-paced world, where industries can rise and fall within several months, it seems that no business is safe. The statement is especially true for smaller brands that don’t have enough money to stave off incoming global threats.
Devising an optimal promotional strategy is one thing on the long list of concerns. Specifically, large businesses can simply throw their money at the advertisers, squeezing mom-and-pop stores from the market. Even if you know everything about digital marketing, other enterprises can use their enormous budgets to undercut your brand or spam popular promotional channels.
However, things might not be as gloomy as they seem at first glance. Despite these seemingly impregnable barriers, small companies can still find their place under the sun. By properly allocating your resources and providing top-notch service, you can survive in any turbulent economy.
Best digital marketing strategies for small businesses
Your success with digital marketing strategies is heavily dependent on the specific tactics you’ve chosen. Even if you’re great at a particular field, your enterprise might require a different approach. This is especially noticeable among smaller companies that must be extremely cautious during marketing planning phases.
These are the marketing tactics that can provide the most value for your small business:
- Local SEO
- Affiliate marketing
- Social media
Here’s a short breakdown of every tactic.
Local SEO
Small businesses can use local optimization to put their company on the map and benefit from user reviews. Unlike regular SEO, the Google search engine uses human feedback to determine the best brands in the city and showcase them accordingly. That way, just about anyone can be featured with minimal investment.
Local SEO is especially fantastic for small bars, restaurants, fashion shops, and just about any type of maintenance and repair brand. Even better, anyone can set up a Google My Business account and benefit from positive user reviews.
Affiliate marketing
The great thing about affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to invest much to get things off the ground. After creating a proprietary platform, you can connect with influencers who can sell your products and services for a commission. In other words, you only have to pay after a sale.
Social media
Handling a social media account is one of the most arduous digital marketing procedures. Not only should you pump out content every day, but you also have to interact with all your fans. Nevertheless, these platforms allow you to create viral messages with minimal investment.
You must create posts that resonate with global audiences to get the most from Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. The best thing yet is that you can mess around with all sorts of concepts until you find the one that works. Furthermore, no matter what business you’re in, you can always find a suitable channel.
Digital marketing opportunities
Although lack of money is always an issue, especially in marketing, there are ways to attract attention with limited resources. Ultimately, the internet is all about innovative, eye-catching solutions and funky content. Small brands can do wonders on limited budgets by understanding their target audience and what people look for online.
In other cases, you can overcome the competitors by being better at a specific job. For example, local SEO ranks top companies in a city based on the number and quality of positive reviews. If you just look at digital marketing for home service professionals, you’ll notice that most of these companies are relatively small, yet they generate enormous amounts of leads.
Social media can also be cheap because it doesn’t cost that much to create an amateur video on your phone or camera. Even if your content is awful, there’s always a chance it will go viral and generate enormous exposure for your brand.
In fact, many companies don’t have any issues creating controversial videos and experimenting with various concepts, which makes the world of small business digital marketing so exciting.
Digital marketing threats
Although all of this sounds well and nice, the truth is that small companies still can’t compete in certain areas. Among others, they struggle using pay-per-click ads in search engines, as larger companies can always overcome their bids. They also have trouble competing for any other prominent but limited ad space.
Young industries are perhaps the hardest ones to penetrate. There are many cases where large conglomerates step on the market with seemingly inexhaustible resources and take all ad space. What’s worse is that these companies often spend money on complex marketing strategies like SEO, PPC, and social media. In other words, they don’t leave any breathing room for other brands.
In many cases, these minor brands create a marketing budget on the fly. As a result, they usually take a major blow to their cash flow, not being able to fund their daily operations. After hiring a marketing expert for a month or two, they call off the operation without anything to show. With that in mind, careful budgeting is crucial for achieving tangible results.
The saving grace is that all these things depend on industry and location. In some countries, businesses can establish complete hegemony on a minimal marketing budget simply due to a lack of competition. Similarly, there are cases where small companies are more suitable for specific promotional channels (the best example is local SEO).
Read More: Boost Your Business: Navigate the Digital Landscape with ChannelPro Communications
