Blog: Digital Marketing For Smbs

When small North Carolina businesses get started, they typically focus on how to land their first clients. Often they will rely on traditional forms of advertising, such as coupon mailers, billboards, out-of-home, or print ads. While many small businesses think that because they provide a superior product or service, it is only a matter of time before prospective clients will find their way to them.

While this strategy may bring in a small amount of revenue, there is a better and easier way. Small businesses should think about leveraging the power of the internet to reach prospects online and reap the benefits of combining traditional and digital marketing. No small business, no matter how new, should disregard digital channels as a source of leads and the conversion of interest into clients.

Still not convinced? Think about this over 94% of business-to-business (B2B) buyers do research online, whereas your business-to-consumer (B2C) buyers research online 97% of the time before making a decision.

Unfortunately, if you rely only on traditional methods, you miss out on a significant portion of your potential clientele.

Digital marketing is the process of reaching out to potential and current clients online. It encompasses all marketing activities used to target these individuals, such as search engine optimization (SEO), blogging, email newsletters, Google Ads, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing (SMM), online brochures, videos, and linking to and from other websites.

Let's break this down to make it more understandable.

As a small business owner, you already know how critical it is to get the word out about your product and services. It's essential if you want to reach the general public, and people have to know to visit your storefront or call you to engage your services. The problem is if it isn’t on their radar, then it’s a done deal. In today's world, digital marketing is the ultimate promotional tool, and it has helped many local companies rise to the top. 

Here are a few more compelling arguments and statistics for why digital marketing is so critical for small businesses today:

• 87% of buyers start searching for products to buy online (Source: RetailDive)
• 60% of smartphone users have contacted a business directly using the search results such as the "click to call” option. (Think with Google)
• SEO drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media. (Source: HubSpot)
• 96% of the most successful content marketers agree their audience views their organization as a credible and trusted resource. (Source: CMI)
• Text will always be the foundation of search, so making sure the text around your website's assets is descriptive will help them rank well in search. (Source: HubSpot)
• “Where to buy” and “near me” mobile queries have grown by over 200% in the past two years. (Source: Think with Google)
• As of January 2021, there were 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide - 59.5 percent of the global population. Of this total, 92.6 percent (4.32 billion) accessed the internet via mobile devices. (Source: Statista)