Your digital marketing strategy doesn't have to be super advanced or robust to be successful. Starting small can yield benefits too.
If you've had a digital marketing strategy in place for a while, you have an idea of how a strong digital marketing strategy can benefit your business. But if you're just starting out, it might be hard to imagine these benefits.
Over time, you can expand your digital marketing strategy, but even starting small, such as choosing just one digital marketing channel (e.g., Facebook, email, content marketing), can show results.
If you're a small-business decision-maker or head of marketing, here are five ways even a starter digital marketing strategy can set your business up for long- and short-term success.
Narrow your search for digital marketing agencies with our list of companies in the following areas:
Reach a wider audience
Whether you invest in email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), social media, or content marketing, you’ll be reaching a larger audience than before, exposing new potential customers to your brand.
Social media marketing, for example, will help you promote your business and reach existing and potential customers through engaging content on the channels that they frequent. An SEO strategy will help you reach those looking for the specific services or products your business offers by making you more visible on Google results pages.
Regardless of the digital marketing channels you choose, by expanding the reach of your brand, you are also expanding the possibility for more future customers.
Short-term benefits | Long-term benefits |
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In the short-term, this will expose your brand to more consumers, who may interact with social media posts, visit your website, or buy a product or service. | In the long-term, these consumers may turn into customers looking for the services and/or products your business provides. Even longer-term, these customers will become loyal to your brand. |
Target specific customers with a personalized experience
If you know your target audience, you can talk to them and provide them with content that will be helpful to them.
This requires the legwork of figuring out who your digital audiences are and where you can find them online. For example:
Does your target audience prefer Facebook or TikTok?
Are they based in a geographic location where your products or services would make sense?
How can they benefit from what your business has to offer?
Once you know your audience in terms of demographics such as age group, gender, interests, and general location, it will be easier to figure out how to best connect with them and give them a personalized marketing experience.
For example, if a consumer looked at a specific product on your website and then exited, you can send an email to that customer later, reminding them about the product they were looking at earlier.
This type of targeted marketing reminds consumers of products and services they expressed prior interest in and gives your business the opportunity to provide additional information to nudge them toward a purchase decision.
Short-term benefits | Long-term benefits |
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In the short-term, you'll learn both how to analyze demographic information to know more about your audience and who your target audience is now. You'll also learn how to provide personalized marketing experiences that your audience responds positively to. | In the long-term, you'll be able to apply similar strategies to learn about other target audiences or how your previous target audience changes over time. After knowing what works and what doesn't, you'll be able to continually improve your personalized marketing approach for increasingly better results. |
Automate recurring tasks
Digital marketing software can automate repetitive tasks, such as scheduling meetings, sending follow-up emails, and posting to social media channels.
Automating these types of processes can ensure these tasks get done more quickly and reduces the potential for errors, such as forgetting to send the follow-up email to a customer.
Automation also gives employees back the time they would have been spending on these redundant tasks, allowing them to focus on tasks that are more engaging and critical to your business's goals.
Instead of spending all morning sending follow-ups, your marketing team could be investing that energy into planning your next marketing campaign or creating new marketing materials.
Short-term benefits | Long-term benefits |
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In the short term, automating repetitive processes will ensure follow-up emails are sent on time and social media posts are posted consistently. Employees will get the time usually spent on these redundant tasks back and will be able to spend that time on tasks that require their expertise and critical thinking skills. | In the long term, errors will be minimized and marketing materials, such as emails and content, will be sent to consumers consistently. Managers and employees will work together to figure out how to best spend the time saved on tasks crucial to the business's long-term goals. |
Measure your marketing impact
With offline marketing strategies, it is not always possible to track the specific ways in which a campaign succeeded or fell flat. This often requires marketers to make educated guesses about the strengths and weaknesses of the marketing campaigns they dedicated time and resources to running. Digital marketing, on the other hand, removes the need for guesswork.
Whether you choose a digital marketing platform or a digital marketing agency, you can automatically collect important metrics and synthesize them into visuals that give you an instant insight into performance. This allows you to measure your marketing impact in a way not possible with offline marketing strategies.
For example, with offline marketing strategies, such as sending marketing materials through the mail, you may know how many postcards you sent out, but there is no way to track how many people actually read them or just put them directly in the trash can.
There is also no way to know which demographics (e.g., gender, age, location) resonated with the postcard, and which did not. Perhaps with a different design, fewer people would have trashed them immediately, but with this type of marketing approach, there is no way to know for sure.
However, with email marketing, you have access to this type of information: You can see who opens the email, who clicks on the links to your website, and who doesn't. You can even track who purchases a product or service from your business as a direct result of the email.
Over time, you can understand which types of marketing activities achieve the highest return on investment to inform future decisions.
Short-term benefits | Long-term benefits |
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In the short term, you'll be bringing your business into the digital sphere and learning about your customers. You'll be able to know how your first few marketing campaigns succeed and how they could be improved. | In the long term, you'll be able to use what you learn from each campaign to make your next campaign that much stronger and more useful for consumers. |
Develop brand loyalty and awareness
Many digital marketing strategies are focused on ensuring your business's longevity by building relationships with potential future customers.
For example, if you develop a really strong content marketing strategy that provides consumers with free articles that help them solve challenges related to your industry focus, you can establish yourself as a trusted source of information.
It may not be immediate, but if these consumers need a product or service your company offers in the future, it's likely they'll choose your business over your competitors because they'll already feel familiar with your brand.
You can also consider getting your customers involved, by running social media campaigns that encourage user-generated content or asking customers to post testimonials on social or leave reviews on Google, Yelp, or another review platform.
Short-term benefits | Long-term benefits |
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In the short term, you may see consumers engaging with your business on social media platforms or see increased traffic to your website's blog. | Over time, you'll establish your brand as not only a company but also a trusted source of information. In the long term, your social media followers or the consumers who visit your blog to access content may become loyal customers. |
Digital marketing is here to stay—don't let your small business fall behind
Small businesses need a digital presence to stay afloat in today's ever-evolving digital landscape. If you're just starting to build a digital marketing strategy or trying to grow your existing one, it can be overwhelming to know where to begin, but you don't have to do it alone.
Digital marketing software can help you manage and grow your strategy in-house, and our buyers guide breaks down what you need to know before getting started.
If you don't have a marketing team in-house, you can also consider hiring a digital marketing agency to help you develop, manage, and grow your strategy.