Every SMB knows that it is expensive to build an online business without the help of digital marketing tools. They also know that these various digital marketing tools greatly help them with their everyday tasks. Digital technologies can benefit SMBs by helping them target new customers and gain entry to a new market at a relatively affordable cost using digital tools. An analysis by Deloitte found that, SMBs that are digitally advanced have more benefits than the ones who have low levels of digital engagement.
So how do you measure these benefits? Digitally advanced SMBs earned twice as much revenue per employee. They earned 4 times higher revenue growth over the previous year. They were almost as likely 3 times creating jobs over the previous year with an average employment growth rate that was almost 6 times as high. These SMBs were also 3 times likely to have exported over the previous year.
There are some popular digital marketing channels for SMBs. More than half of SMBs market through their website (62%) and social media (61%). Email marketing (39%), SEO (25%), content marketing (20%), AR/VR (10%) While there is a perception that Google can be the ‘homepage’ for SMBs, the fact of the matter is customers trust the content on local businesses’ websites than the information posted on Google My Business or online directories. Whatever be the aim of thw SMB website (be it generating sales, raising awareness on company’s values, or telling your story) it should be aligned with the overall marketing strategy of the company.
Within social media, Facebook is still the most-used channel for SMBs. There are more than 90 million SMBs with an active presence on Facebook. With 2.4 billion monthly active users , it is just the right place for SMBs to reach out to users from different demographics. While 86% SMBs prefer Facebook, increasingly there are quite a few takers for Instagram (48%), YouTube (46%) and Twitter (44%). LinkedIn (31%) and Snapchat (25%) are still lagging behind.
SMBs can also opt for free digital marketing tools in the implementation of an effective digital marketing strategy. Learning to master these free digital marketing tools will not just enhance their sales but it will also boost their productivity. While Google Analytics tops the list of these free digital marketing tools, SMBs do have a few other interesting options.
BuzzSumo helps provide more information to digital marketers through valuable content. It is obvious that content marketing is not only essential to SEO, but to digital marketing as well. A particular topic or keyword may have done well in the past, and many people may have shared it but it may have lost its popularity. With BuzzSumo SMBs can just input the key phrase or long-tail keyword that they wish to promote and they get a list of the most popular posts (related to their niche) that are currently trending. All they now have to do is to draft a suitable marketing strategy.
Hotjar is a powerful marketing tool that has been designed specifically for SMBs to analyze and study their traffic better. It is a complete website and mobile analytics tool that enables SMB digital marketers to optimize the usability and conversion rate of their sites.
Hotjar combines both feedback and analysis tools to give SMBs understandings into how visitors interact with their website, how they could enhance that visitor experience and finally, what they can do to increase conversion rates. Hotjar adds a tracking script and integrates into the SMB website, similar to how Google Analytics does.
Wistia provides online professional video hosting services for SMBs and startups. It helps SMBs to grow their brand and business by tracking marketing performances through its built in metrics, analytics, and video marketing tools. Wistia also has tools for customizing videos, building brand awareness, increasing traffic via video SEO, and generating new leads. Video has now become an important part in optimizing the SMB content marketing strategy. SMBs can also upload their own videos to Wistia’s video hosting services and let its professional video marketing services take over. It is also very easy to upload, share, and embed videos.
Boomerang is one of the more unique and better email marketing services that allow SMBs to monitor their full-email campaigns with ease. Boomerang, an effective plugin for Gmail, schedules outgoing emails to hit consumer inboxes at an optimum time. SMBs can also set up the “boomerang” effect where they can have the outgoing email sent back to them in case of no reply from the original recipient thus making it an effective email follow-up reminder. Boomerang not only allows SMBs to create and monitor their email campaigns with ease, but is also easy to integrate with their social media accounts. It also comes with a variety of reports, help, and support options.
Not many SMBs can afford secretaries or assistants to support them in their business and Charlieapp can be their literal Man Fridays. Charlie is a must have tool as it easily organizes the SMB digital media collection. Just before a meeting, it compiles just about all the important info about the people that the SMB is scheduled to meet, and stores them in the organizer or diary. It makes sure that SMBs have all the info to project- an awesome impression of the SMB to that company or the executive that they are meeting. SMBs can have most of the personal info of their potential clients, such as common hobbies shared, personal preference and their professional history, and much more which breaks the ice in any meeting.