If nobody walks in a store with a product will still close down. That is the reason Digital Marketing is important. Your Digital Marketing can be the best and still lose to an one that people find first.
For a time growth meant having a good location and getting referrals. You might also put an ad in the newspaper if you had the money. This way still works,. Not as much. Now people do not walk past your store they scroll past stores on their computers before lunch. If your store is not one of them you do not even have a chance.
Most owners make a mistake here. They think of Digital Marketing as something they can turn on and off when they have money.. It is more like a pipe. If you turn it off new customers stop coming. If you turn it on you have to start all over again.
# What Digital Marketing Actually Does for a Growing Business
It used to be that the farther you wanted to reach the money you had to spend. Digital Marketing changed that. Now you can have a social media account or a website that shows up on Google and reach people in your neighborhood or in another country for almost the same price. It is not free. The price does not go up just because you are reaching more people.
Digital Marketing also changes who finds your business. Word of mouth brings people who already know someone who knows you.. Search and social media bring people who are looking for what you sell at that exact moment. This is a group of people.
You can measure how well Digital Marketing is working in a way that you could not with old advertising. A billboard just sits there. A Digital Marketing campaign tells you who clicked, what they looked at and if they bought something. You can stop what is not working in a week of waiting a whole year to find out that your money was wasted.
# The Trap: Doing Digital Marketing Without a Plan
Posting on media every now and then is not a plan. Boosting a post just because a competitor did it is not a plan either. Most businesses that say they tried Digital Marketing and it did not work actually didn’t have a plan. They just tried it for weeks without clear goal or a way to measure if it was working. That is not a failed plan that is no plan all.
A real plan starts with knowing who you are trying to reach and where they spend their time. It means choosing one or two media platforms and doing them well instead of trying to do five platforms badly. It means giving your plan time to work before you decide if it is successful.
# Where to start if you haven’t
Small business, service business, product business, doesn’t matter much at the starting point. Get your Google Business listing accurate and complete . This will help to show up when someone near you searches for what you do. Choose one social media platform where your customers post consistently for three months before you decide if it’s working. Track something even if it is how many people mention finding you online.
This is not work.. It is what separates the businesses that keep growing from the ones that stay the same and wonder why. Digital Marketing is not something you add to your business when it is already doing well. It is one of the reasons your business keeps doing. The businesses that are doing well are not necessarily better, than yours. They are just easier to find.
If you want help making a plan of guessing get in touch and we will help you figure out what makes sense for your business.