Why Digital Marketing for Small Businesses is Essential

Digital marketing is only for large businesses with large marketing budgets. True or false?

If you guessed “false,” congratulations, you’ve won! In our increasingly online world, your business can no longer afford to abstain — choosing not to do digital marketing is really choosing to leave potential customers on the table. This is why marketing your business online, more commonly called digital marketing, has become an essential part of almost all business plans, regardless of your company’s size. Digital marketing strategies can include the utilization of:

Social media
Email marketing
Website content creation
Blogging
Video content
Digital advertising

We get it, understanding how to digitally market your small business can feel overwhelming if you’re braving the World Wide Web without guidance. How do you know if your marketing efforts are profitable? How do you know when you need to make a change?

At Baal & Spots, local businesses make up a large portion of our long-term clientele, making digital marketing for small businesses and mid-size companies our bread and butter. As a full-service digital marketing agency in Houston, let us be your guide if you’re looking to step up your online marketing game but aren’t sure where to begin.

We can help you ideate, implement, and track digital marketing campaigns that move the needle and encourage sustainable growth. Continue reading to find out how or reach out online today to get started.

Does digital marketing work for small businesses?

Many marketers and business owners tend to disregard digital marketing because they assume it requires big bucks to be effective. While online advertising is a pay-to-play market, you might be shocked at how budget-friendly digital campaigns can be (but more on that later).

Digital marketing for small businesses is an essential ingredient for success across a variety of industries — and we’re not just saying that, it’s been proven to work. If you choose not to engage with online marketing as a part of your overall business strategy, you might as well be leaving money on the table. If you want to stay competitive, especially alongside the big dogs, you need to not only be visible alongside them, but stand out among them.

With the power of digital tools like social media, search engines, and email, small businesses can establish a strong digital presence, stay competitive, and drive meaningful results that will only help their business endeavors grow. And it’s easier now than it ever has been.

Benefits of digital marketing for small businesses

Arrow hitting a highlighted target

Meet your audience where they are: online

We live in the height of the digital age, which means you are more likely to reach your ideal audience and customers online, no matter what industry you’re in. As a small business, you need to make the most of the resources available to you in order to connect with the right people.

Digital advertising services can allow you to reach a wider audience and reach your business goals through cost-effective tactics. Through online ads, social media, and data-driven insights, you can focus your efforts on people who are most likely to be interested in your products or services, improving the likelihood of conversions and sales.

A big reason that marketing is still perceived as being expensive and risky is that back in the day, connecting with customers through traditional marketing methods and print advertising proved to be time-consuming, costly, and difficult. The barrier to entry, and barrier to success, used to be much much higher. Online marketing takes care of many of these obstacles, making marketing much more accessible. While this doesn’t mean that writing any old blogs, social posts, or emails will move the needle, it does mean that doing so can be much more cost-effective, and pose less risk to your business.

Foster customer loyalty

The importance of customer loyalty is actually twofold: it helps you gain new customers and retain existing ones. It was much more difficult to foster customer loyalty before the internet, when local businesses had to rely heavily on word-of-mouth and traditional marketing to get traffic. Unless your customers had a personal connection to you or your brand, it was difficult to establish a relationship and, therefore, create a sense of loyalty.

With the rise of social media and conversations around ethical consumption, consumers crave connection with the businesses they purchase from, especially Gen Z and other younger buyers. Unlike traditional methods, digital marketing allows for real-time engagement, letting businesses like yours respond quickly to customer questions and feedback.

This access to your business inspires trust from a consumer to a business, making them more likely to use your products and services more frequently — and even tell their friends.

Cost-effective and efficient

There is a marketing phenomenon called “The Rule of 7” which states that a person needs to see or hear a marketer’s message around seven times before actually taking action. Imagine doing this with traditional marketing; creating a TV commercial, a radio ad, a billboard, a magazine ad, mailers, cold calling, and another print ad just to get one conversion…we’re exhausted just thinking about it. Getting your message in front of a potential buyer seven times using traditional marketing methods would be crazy expensive — but with digital marketing, it actually isn’t that hard.

How much does digital marketing cost for a small business? You could make a set of social media ads mixed with programmatic ad buying and SEO-driven content marketing for a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing. With social ads, email marketing, pay-per-click advertising (PPC), and other online methods, you can establish your own budgets and only pay when your ads generate results.

We understand that in times like these, budgets are tight, especially for smaller businesses. However, as experts, we can say with confidence that digital advertising essentially always gives our clientele excellent bang for their buck, and drives higher ROI.

Read more about digital marketing during a recession

Data at your fingertips

Hands leveraging technology and digital platforms to read data

One of the biggest benefits of digital marketing for small businesses is that you have the ability to know what is working and what isn’t, so that you can pivot your strategy accordingly with little to no penalty. Analytics tools made for digital channels help track campaign success and optimize strategies, helping you make sure you’re always pointed towards growth.

Digital analytics are one of the most attractive things about digital marketing because they allow companies to track exactly how customers interact with their ads, websites, or social media posts, eliminating any guesswork. Marketing analytics can be thought of as cold, hard facts that you can use to make data-driven decisions that improve performance, reduce wasteful spending, and increase overall effectiveness so you can reach your goals faster.

Baal & Spots is a digital marketing agency for small businesses that helps ambitious brands thrive online

If the message still hasn’t sunk in, digital marketing for small businesses works. As long as you have an internet connection and a strong partner on your side, you can remove many of the barriers between you and your ideal customers.

When you run a small business, your hands are already full. Let Baal & Spots take some of the weight off of your shoulders so you can focus on growing your company your way. As a digital marketing agency for small businesses as well as mid-size companies, Baal & Spots focuses on getting results by staying proactive, testing regularly, and keeping a small client load to deliver better outcomes at lower costs. We keep a tight client portfolio so that we can keep things personal, and help ensure that each account we manage receives the meticulous care and time they need to thrive.

If you’re searching for the most trustworthy, efficient, and reliable digital marketing and social media agency Houston has to offer, let’s start a conversation. We would be glad to know how we, a small business, can help you in your online marketing endeavors.

Your ideal customer could be one ad away. Let’s reach them together.