Ultimate Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses and Start-ups

Updated on: Feb 12, 2024

In 2022, we had over 60,000 startups and small businesses in India and this number is going to grow rapidly in 2023! Ever since the pandemic, Indians have realized the power of the internet and started selling online. Now, if you are selling online, then you will also market online. Here’s where digital marketing comes into the picture!

Digital Marketing has completely changed the way businesses operate. It has reached the core of every business’s marketing goals. It is the benefits of digital marketing that have given a great opportunity for small businesses to expand their establishments and grow their reach to the global market.

So, if you have a small business or a startup, then “Digital Marketing” is one of the best options for you. 

In this blog, we will specifically discuss the meaning of digital marketing and the benefits of digital marketing for small businesses and start-ups. 

So, without any delay let’s start by knowing what digital marketing means.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing is a process through which you can promote your products and services to your target audience through the use of the internet and various digital channels such as websites, social media, email, messengers, etc. 

You can reach them by sending emails, appearing on top of Google, engaging through Instagram and Facebook, etc. 

There are many different types of digital marketing strategies that you can use to do the same and promote your business. Some of them are – 

  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • Content Marketing
  • Social Media Marketing (SMM)
  • Email Marketing 
  • Google Ads
  • Online Reputation Management 

There are many more strategies like Search engine marketing, google analytics, etc. 

To make use of all these digital marketing skills, you must know them in detail to pick the optimum parts of each and form a strong digital marketing strategy. 

Hence, to equip yourself with these digital skills, we recommend you to check our online digital marketing course, which is led by industry experts and professionals who are practicing it in the corporate world themselves. It’s a great way to learn how they have fuelled other start-ups and apply the same to yours. 

Bonus: One of the best and most effective tools that you can use to increase your ROI is lead generation. It is a process of converting your target audience into your potential customer. If you want to gain more insights into lead generation, then check out our detailed guide on the Benefits of Lead Generation for your Business.

Let’s now look at how digital marketing benefits small businesses and is helping them establish themselves.

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Top 10 Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses & Start-Ups

Many of you must have some doubts that “How does digital marketing benefit a business?”, “Why digital marketing is important for small businesses?”. These benefits are the answers to all your questions.  

1. Achieving More Targeted Customers

The main objective of any business is to accomplish the marketing goals & objectives and to reach out to the target audience. And digital marketing makes it easy to reach out to your potential customers through online mode.

Especially in the initial stages of your business, if you get a chance to channel your money and advertise to only those, who are most likely to convert into customers, it’s like a dream come true. With the right strategy and at the right time, you can do just that with digital marketing. 

Must Check Out: Top Digital Marketing Strategies for Startups 

2. High Conversion Rate 

The conversion rate means the percentage of visitors to your website who take the desired action. And using digital marketing for your small business will increase your conversion rate. Through Conversion Rate Optimization, your small-scale business will reach out to a higher number of visitors completing your desired goal out of the total number of visitors. 

A pay-per-click strategy, for example, will help you to achieve such objectives. It’s a method of charging a fee for each click your ad receives. Hence, you can expand your small business through this process, and increase the number of customers, by increasing your conversion rate. 

Also Read: Increase Your Conversion Rate with These Techniques

3. Higher ROI at Lower Cost

As a small business or a start-up, your main aim is to market your product or service with minimal cost and get higher revenue. Larger organizations can afford higher marketing costs, whereas startups and small businesses try to work hard to keep costs low and increase profits.

At that moment, digital marketing assists organizations in reducing costs associated with product or service promotion. And it has been seen that the cost of traditional marketing is comparatively higher than that of digital marketing. 

If you hire a digital marketing agency, it can get expensive in the beginning. So to kick-start, you can conduct digital marketing in-house. It is easy to learn digital marketing skills when you go to the right mentors and trainers who are practicing these skills in real-life like at IIDE.

4. Enables Outdoing Competitors

The main problem with small businesses is the funds. They are not able to compete with big brands and companies due to a lack of funds and resources. 

But if you use digital marketing tactics smartly,  then it will help to assist you in this endeavor. Creativity is the big factor in this happening. If you have innovative content for your business or if you are creative enough, then you can knock off anything in this digital industry. 

You can easily compete with any form of business whether it’s a large scale or small scale and grab eyeballs from their audience as well. 

Creativity is the major factor in the digital marketing industry. 

5. Helps you Enhance Your CRM

The business feeds on customer satisfaction. And this can only happen when you develop good bondage or relationship with your customers. Previously, it was kind of arduous to cope with this element, due to the lack of sources and mediums. 

But with the advancement in digital marketing, all kinds and sizes of companies can build their CRM seamlessly and in fact, it is very important even as a small business. This helps you build goodwill and customer loyalty in the long run. 

Thus, even small businesses can now operate their CRM as strongly as large companies do with the help of digital marketing. 

Given below is the list of some of the best CRM Softwares that aid you in CRM activities. Softwares like these make it simpler for small businesses to manage their CRM.

  • Freshworks CRM
  • Less Annoying CRM
  • Keap 
  • Really Simple Systems
  • Zoho CRM
  • eWay-CRM
  • Engagebay

The best part about these softwares is that some of them are completely FREE

And by using the strategy of Online Reputation Management, you can build a better relationship with your customers as well as a positive brand image in front of them. Sign up for this online reputation management course if you wish to gain insights about the same. 

6. Allows For Efficient Tracking of Future Campaigns 

Let us assume that you own a departmental store. Can you tell how many footfalls happened in one day? how many customers visited your store? how many purchases were made? and how many people showed interest in your product? 

Perhaps you could provide some information. But you won’t be able to measure which traditional marketing strategy has brought you more audience, whether it’s newspaper, billboards, radio, etc. This is something you’ll never know!

But, through digital marketing, you can find out which strategy and campaign have brought you the highest ROI. And through the use of the Analytics tool, you can do so. Also if you own a website, then you can even know all about your customers, like their demographics, geographical locations, how much time they spent on your website, etc. 

This is especially beneficial for small businesses as you have a tight budget in hand and tracking will help you spend your money only on those campaigns that work for you and not keep pumping money blindly into channels that might bring no results. 

Google Analytics is one of the most effective and free tools to track campaigns. Learn how to leverage it with this Online Google Analytics Course

7. You Can Reach Global Being Local

One of the most common disadvantages of small businesses is that it is meant to be local. 

But digital marketing helps you break these stereotypes & geographical barriers and allows you to expand your business and reach a global audience. And you can do all this by just sitting in your office within your city. 

By global audience, we do not mean reaching everyone in the world. It means only focusing on the potential target audience, instead of targeting the mass audience. Thus you will be reaching interested consumers all over the world. 

8. Provide Highly- Personalised Customer Experience

“WhatsApp” is the most common application which is there on almost everyone’s phone. And What if we say that through the use of a digital marketing strategy you can reach out to your potential customers through WhatsApp. 

YES, it is now possible to reach out to your customers and sell your products & services through WhatsApp, without disturbing the privacy of your audience, here’s how. 

There is a unique feature in WhatsApp, called “WhatsApp Business”, which you can use specifically for your business to reach out to your customers. This way you reach consumers directly on a messenger which is highly used by them while also maintaining a formal decorum. 

And the best part is that it is completely FREE!

You can go through our detailed blog on WhatsApp Marketing, to gain more insights about the WhatsApp business account and how to implement that in your business. 

Recommended: Here are detailed case studies on small and large companies for you to analyze and take ideas on how to form successful digital marketing strategies. 

You May Also Like: How To Start an Online Business in India

9. Let customers come to you

In this competitive scenario, where everyone is trying to gain the precious attention span of their target group, it is crucial to have two-way communication with your audience. Implementing a digital marketing strategy for your business can mark your presence online, making it easier for customers to reach you. 

Think of it as a way where you’re making your business accessible to your target group. An online presence of your business removes the “opening hours” concept, where your audience would be able to access information related to your business or just scroll through your website, social handles, or app to know more about you.

Having a robust online marketing plan will expand your geographical limits, making your business accessible to anyone, anywhere and anytime.

10. Provides flexibility:

Unlike traditional marketing mediums, digital marketing is quite agile. You can make small or big tweaks with ease in your online marketing strategies. 

As per the reports, about 71% of marketers believe that reports from ad dashboards help them understand what is working for them and what’s not. Not just this, it’s super easy to add a new set of keywords to their PPC and SEO campaigns.

Paid campaigns have a feature of A/B testing that can be used to test different marketing tactics without spending a fortune on it.  With the A/B test results, it is convenient for marketers to restrategize digital marketing campaigns and implement them with just a few clicks.  

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How Can You Integrate Digital Marketing In Your Business? 

That’s about it! Those were some of the proven benefits of digital marketing for small businesses and start-ups.  

Digital Marketing has an impact on every type of business and almost every type of business has adapted digital marketing to expand their business. It has become more of a necessity. 

Hiring a digital marketing agency may not be very good for your pockets and hence we recommend you to do in-house digital marketing at the start. Here’s a video that can help you kickstart your digital marketing strategy – 

 

However, if you want a more professional and solution-based approach, then there’s another option. 

IIDE provides customized digital marketing corporate training for every form of business, which is designed by industry professionals and tailored to your needs and requirements. Our program has helped various companies like Asian Paints, Abbott, Mahindra & Mahindra, Social Kinnect, and many more to form their digital marketing strategy, to achieve their marketing objectives. 

Although we do understand if you don’t want to go down this road and want to hire digital marketing specialists to do the job. You can hire from us from our pool of highly-trained professional candidates. Lastly, we have tried answering a very common question posed by small businesses. 

How much should a small business spend on digital marketing?

You may believe that implementing a digital marketing strategy will be expensive, but let’s break down the cost of such a strategy. This video will help you get an idea about how much budget should be allotted for digital marketing.

Ideally, a small business must allocate around 6-9% of its overall revenue to marketing to stay put and consistent. If you can push it to 11-14% then it will help you in expanding even further. From this marketing budget, allocate more than 50% to digital marketing if you’re planning to practice other forms of marketing. 

Conclusion

If digital is the future then you must market on digital platforms. With newer technologies such as AR/VR being created and used at a mass scale, exploring digital mediums for your small business is the need of the hour. Let us know about your views/questions in the comments section below. 

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Karan Shah

Founder and CEO at IIDE

He is a passionate public speaker and teacher for over 10 years. He has trained over 60,000+ students and 25+ corporates in Digital Marketing via online and offline channels. He is a Harvard alumnus specialising in E-commerce......[Read full bio]

4 Comments

  1. saikiran bayya

    thanks for sharing the information ABOUT Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses and Start-ups

    Reply
  2. Synwolf

    Hi, I found this blog to be very informative and useful.

    Reply
  3. Rushma Shakya

    I got to know so many benefits of digital marketing for small businesses through this blog. Will definitely apply on my business as well.

    Reply
  4. Parth Chavan

    The benefits of digital marketing for small businesses are explained well. Motivates me to keep improving my own business.

    Reply

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