Why digital marketing is essential to business owners and entrepreneurs – and how to master it!

The most important aspect of a business owners and entrepreneurs to do list is building a business by attracting new customers.

Whilst they may use a variety of traditional forms of marketing including advertising, direct mail events and sponsorship, digital channels are the fastest and most accessible way to build brand, generate leads and convert interest into customers.

In this post, we’re sharing why digital marketing is essential to business owners and entrepreneurs and how to make the most of the most popular tools to grow demand.

What are the benefits of digital marketing to business owners and entrepreneurs?

Marketing online offers more opportunities to influence and attract a much larger group of prospects than you’ll ever be able to attract locally or offline. Digital marketing techniques can help you to reach a truly global audience (if you want to) in very cost-effective and scalable ways.

Digital marketing offers business owners and entrepreneurs the following benefits:

To interact with your prospects and learn exactly what they are looking for
To find and engage anyone, anywhere
To target the right audience at the right time using personalisation
To communicate with your prospects at every stage of the buying process
To market cost effectively, reducing cost per acquisition/order
To create brand loyalty through consistent communication and positioning
To track and monitor the effectiveness of marketing efforts in real-time.

Making digital marketing work for business owners and entrepreneurs

The world of digital marketing can be overwhelming to business owners and entrepreneurs perhaps entering for the first time. There are lots of options – from SEO to social media, content to conversion rate optimisation.

Business owners and entrepreneurs are already time starved because of the many and varied things they have to do on a daily basis. And they can believe, incorrectly, that they need lots of time and big budgets to compete online.

As a result, many choose to build cautiously hoping their business will evolve as time passes.

But with over 4.6bn people connected to the Internet (Digital 2021: Global Overview Report), you can’t afford to delay. Your ideal customers are out there… and they are probably looking for providers just like you.

So how do you make the most of the opportunity digital presents?

Here’s five ways to make a strong start.

1. Recognise your ideal customers ARE online

When someone is looking for a solution to a problem or specifically want to learn more about you, the first thing they will do is research online and see what they can find out about you.

In today’s “always on” digital age, your prospective customers will be running Google searches and visiting supplier and media websites for information to help them make decisions.

So, it’s a good idea to have a customer focused website and active social media presence.

Why? They may be looking for information, case studies or reviews to help them benchmark and seeking to evaluate competitors on their reputation.

If a potential customer can’t find you online – or the experience is not optimal – they may decide to go elsewhere.

2. See what your competitors are doing online

Smart business owners and entrepreneurs use digital marketing to see what the competition is doing.

The good thing about online is that it is all in the open. You’ll get a feel for positioning, offers and on some occasions, indicative pricing. You’ll be able to see who appears in search results and what kind of content they are using.

You can learn and refine your own efforts as a result. There are a number of tools you can use to help provide deeper insights including:-

Google Alerts – a free tool for tracking mentions of any competitor you want to track
Semrush and Moz – a paid tool that provides keyword ranking and keyword traffic insights
Ahrefs – a paid tool for understanding competitors’ most linked content
BuzzSumo – a tool that helps track influencers and what makes for popular content
Ontolo – a great tool for backlinks and content marketing.

Check out DMI CERTIFIED SEARCH MARKETING SPECIALIST now!

3. Be open to do business online

If you have no online presence you won’t be found and you won’t be able to win new business.

Even if you have an online presence but your competitors are easier to find as they rank higher in search, you still might not be found. Along with creating a website, learning what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is and why it’s important will help you outrank competitors by being the first name that a prospect finds on a Google search.

The most successful business owners and entrepreneurs use a variety of Google tools including Google Search Console (Webmaster), Google Trends, Alerts and the Adwords keyword planning tool to inform their search strategies.

Make sure your website, social media and Google business listing include answers to simple questions such as where you are located, your opening hours, and details of your products and services. By comparing you against other organisations, your prospects can make better decisions.

Check out DMI CERTIFIED DIGITAL MARKETING PROFESSIONAL now!

4. Set up your business to be able to operate 24-7

Through developing a comprehensive web presence, your business is open for business even when you’re not! You can create an environment where your customers can contact you day or night and they can be serviced with very clever automation that enables enquiries, follow up and transaction to seamlessly take place.

This means that customers and prospects can send you emails with questions, make purchases and browse your inventory in a few simple clicks.

Many digital technologies now include the opportunity to integrate and share data with other applications – this might mean sending enquiry data to email inboxes, CRM databases and event-triggered email so they can receive information requested and be placed in an appropriate email nurture sequence.

Where integrations don’t exist, use Zapier to make data management for marketing easier.

Smart business owners and entrepreneurs gather as many contact points as they can as prospects show progressively more interest. This might then allow you to send SMS updates and reminders and use tools like Zendesk and Many Chat to create automated chat tools on social media.

Certainly for moving people through the early stages of interest, presenting different types of information and warming them up before moving to calls and demonstrations is a great way to build interest and work more efficiently.

5. Dial in to your target audience

Take the time to show an interest in your target audience. Interact with them and within the communities where they congregate.

The beauty of operating online is that you can build reputation and relationships directly and publicly. It can be very rewarding answering questions your target audience has in public forums or on their posts as more people see you sharing your expertise – and it may stimulate opportunities for you too.

Embracing social media and consciously building a reputation in this way helps to build a positioning as a trusted partner. Remember, people are also more likely to buy from businesses that they have already bought from and had a good experience with.

Check out DMI CERTIFIED SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING SPECIALIST now!