Do you own a small business? Are you operating on a fixed budget? Do you aspire to reach a global market? If you answered yes to each question, E-Marketing (online marketing) maybe perfect for your business! At the most basic level, E-Marketing enables you to build relationships with clients and prospective consumers. E-Marketing relies on low-cost niche-marketing which reflects the transition from traditional mass marketing.
How does this benefit the small business owner you ask? Let's consider a few key benefits here:
Lower Operation Cost
E-Marketing has a lower operation cost than traditional methods of marketing. It enables small businesses to have a higher frequency, reach, and affordability than traditional methods of advertising. On average, full page ads in newspapers, television, as well as ads in directories are typically very expensive. As an alternative, getting a free listing in various online business directories cost less than placing a full page ad in a newspaper. In the same manner, sending an email is more cost effective than paying postal cost for mass mailings.
Tracking Your Advertising Results
The second advantage of E-Marketing is that small businesses are able to track the results of their marketing efforts through the use of visuals and comprehensive graphics. This allows for tracking growth, leads, and sales conversions from advertising search campaigns.
Social Marketing
E-Marketing enables small businesses to benefit from the growing significance of Social Media. As a small business owner, you can benefit from this by incorporating social media networking into your online marketing campaigns. In today's market, an escalating number of customers have used or will use social media to explore information about a product on a mobile device to research product and price prior to making their final decision. According to chief executive of Tatu Digital Media Janet Fouts, "Social media allows salespeople to see what prospects are saying about their brand and competitors. You can really get to know his or her needs through social listening. It's a great way to research a market and initiate conversation leading to a sale."
Personalization
E-Marketing enables small businesses to personalize offers to clients by constructing profiles of their purchasing preferences and previous shopping patterns. By tracking specific web pages visited, small businesses may construct customized offers to targeted customers. The information made available from visited web pages will also provide data for cross-selling campaigns. These campaigns allow for cross-selling which maximizes profit.
Demographic and Psychographic Targeting
E-Marketing offers the use of demographic and psychographic platforms which targets and measure consumer responses from various backgrounds and perspectives. Also, it allows for targeting specific consumers - those who are more likely to purchase your product/ service. These platforms rely on survey research or the use of questionnaires that business owner can use to discover background information on consumers and customer service/quality improvement information.
Global Marketing
E-Marketing allows small businesses the advantage of selling to consumers 24 hours, 7 days a week, from all over the globe. With competitive SEO (search engine optimization) strategies, small business owners can secure millions of viewers to their website as well as reach a vast pool of potential consumers. SEO enables your marketing efforts to reach beyond the range of geography.
Given the benefits E-Marketing and the fact that we live in the Age of Technology, this is certainly more than a viable option. Not only does E-Marketing reduce the overall bottom-line, in many cases, it creates a competitive advantage for small businesses. Who wouldn't want a business with an competitive advantage in the market?