Digital marketing was already a competitive edge for local businesses, helping drive customers, brand awareness, and profits. Come 2020, it became existentially useful. No local business can sustain the pandemic-induced slowdown without a well-executed digital marketing strategy.
About 80% of buyers perform online research before purchasing. Over 60% of shoppers search products on a search engine before landing at a given website. 75% of local searchers head to the offline store within 24 hours of searching. Over 41% of offline shoppers go through reviews before purchasing. A buyer with prior online research is likely to spend 13% higher in a store.
That screams opportunity, whether you sell through a website, social platforms or brick-and-mortar store. While a reliable digital marketing company in Chennai can help, it’s worthwhile knowing how to leverage digital marketing for business gains. Read on, here’s your rundown.
- Mobile optimization:
With buyers increasingly using mobiles for searches, reviews and buying, a mobile-optimized website becomes indispensable. Statically speaking, over 61% of shoppers get in touch with a local business through a mobile-optimized website. Come 2022, smartphones would generate a staggering $1.4 trillion in location-specific sales. 50% of the modern-day buyers won’t mind heading to your more prepared competitor if your mobile website fails to hold their interest.
Crating a mobile-specific website from scratch is expensive. It’s beyond the means of most local businesses. The hack is to optimize the existing site for mobile. Luckily, virtually all site builders and e-commerce platforms offer mobile-friendly themes and templates, some free and some paid. When incorporating them into your site, check how things pan out. Ensure the site is primed for all screen sizes and affords a user-friendly, uncluttered and professional interface.
- Local listing:
Your presence in local listings makes you accessible to buyers seeking your offerings. Think of these listing as the digital version of yellow pages that feature info on your business, location, hours, contact, website link, and more. If you haven’t already, get your act together and get listed on Yelp, Google, Bing, and other popular listing platforms. It’s easy, quick, and free.
Optimizing your listings is equally important. Fill every column of the profile accurately, add images, post testimonials, and update the profile as soon as any business info changes. If you find it hard, let your web development company delhi do it for you. Ensure the info in the profile is consistent with the info on your site. Or else, Google may punish you for that.
- Social media optimization:
Not incorporating social media in your overall digital marketing effort means leaving money on the table. Over 3.6 billion users are presently on different platforms globally. Come 2025, the numbers will shoot to 4.41 billion. With 2.7 billion users, Facebook is leading the way, followed by YouTube (2 Billion), Instagram (1.15 billion), Twitter (353 million), and LinkedIn (310 Million). Also, 41% of local businesses count on social media to generate leads, sales, and revenue.
Is the variety of the options intimidating you? Not when you choose the platform based on your target audience and marketing objectives. When branding via community building is a priority, Facebook will exceed your expectations. Twitter makes sense if you are keen to drive customer engagement and qualified leads. When catering to B2B audiences, LinkedIn is handy. Instagram Reels and YouTube can be leveraged to unleash the power of video for business gains.
Regardless of the platform, your social media content should be sharable with the potential to go viral. Make sure the content is authentic, well structured, informative, engaging, adds value to the audiences’ lives, focused on local issues, and triggers emotions. To this end, investing time and effort in researching your audiences and content creation is vital. If that isn’t your cup of tea, ask your digital marketing company in Chennai for help. It’s all in their day’s job, after all.
- Influencer Marketing:
In influencer marketing, you rope in a social influencer to send a word about your brand. It’s an effective and economical way to up the traffic, sales and allegiance. Over 49% of shoppers base their purchasing decisions on influencer recommendations. More than 70% of teenagers and 86% of women count on influencers over celebrities for buying suggestions. The global influencer marketing industry is rising phenomenally. On the last count, it hit the $10 billion mark.
The influencer could be a YouTuber, blogger or anyone with a dedicated social media following. He/she is likely to promote your brand through their channels. The campaign is content-driven, woven around the influencer. Influencer marketing need not be done in isolation. Instead, a successful influencer campaign incorporates content marketing and social media marketing. Be careful when choosing an influencer for your campaign. He/she should influence your audience and skills to send the word out. Prefer a specialist influencer over a generic one. Seeking suggestions from the digital marketing company in Bangalore is always advisable.
The bottom line:
Digital marketing is an evolving world where changes happen instantaneously. A local business must adapt to the dynamics. With little tweaks in their overall marketing strategies, they can endure the testing time, and stay competitive and progressive in 2022.