PSA: If you own or manage a small business, you need to read this!
Digital marketing is essential to a small business! It allows you to spread brand awareness, connect with contacts, build a brand, and so much more.
That may sound like a lot, especially for a small business who is worried about staying open and running, but that’s when digital marketing needs to come into play. And, having a digital marketing platform makes your life, and keeping your doors open, much more manageable. Let's learn why!
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing has never been as crucial as it is right now. But what is it? Marketing digitally, right? Yes, but so much more!
Digital marketing is any form of marketing products or services that involves electronic devices. It is your brand delivered through digital channels. Social media, mobile and web applications, email, search engines and websites are just a few of the most popular channels.
Why is Digital Marketing Important?
Because the internet has thrust itself into everything we do, digital marketing is more powerful than ever, for both big and small businesses alike. In the United States alone, we can access about 79% of the population through social media. That’s the percentage of people that have at least one social media profile. Each day, marketers need to find new and creative ways to attract their audience. Since digital is such an integral part of our everyday lives, it’s the perfect place to meet your current and potential customers.
In this blog, we aren’t going to go into ways to use digital marketing at your small business. Instead, we’re talking about the best ways to execute your strategies. And, to execute your strategy, you need a digital marketing platform.
What is a Digital Marketing Platform?
Now that you understand what digital marketing is, a digital marketing platform is any type of software platform that helps you execute digital marketing.
For example, if you are sending bulk emails to a contact list, the tool you are using to create and send those emails is a digital marketing platform. Then, you are using a digital marketing platform in this case, too!
A digital marketing platform helps you execute your marketing strategy and enables you to reach more customers. There are many different types of digital marketing platforms, but this blog discusses the benefits of an all-in-one platform.
An all-in-one platform brings your essential sales and marketing tools in one place. With your tools like email marketing, social media management, reports and insights, CRM, and so much more, you can propel your business forward.
What are the benefits of a digital marketing platform?
There aren’t only one or two benefits; there are many benefits. A digital marketing platform allows you to achieve and exceed sales and marketing goals by helping you build your brand, reach more people, organize your team, and more. Once you invest in a digital marketing platform, I can promise that you’ll never look back at your old processes and regret the decision.
Let’s dive into some of the top benefits of having a digital marketing platform!
1. Boosts Efficiency
At a small business, you are always moving quickly and wearing multiple hats. A digital marketing platform helps you get things done faster and more effectively. It allows your team to work and perform more efficiently.
You may have a small team and not enough manpower to continually be creating, analyzing, and posting content each day. A digital marketing platform provides you with the ability to prepare, and schedule ahead, on multiple channels at once.
An example of boosting efficiency is by planning social media posts ahead of time, across channels. Take a look at the image below. With a digital marketing platform, you can schedule your content a day, week, or month ahead! And while you are doing this, you can select to send that message across multiple channels, instead of manually posting on each channel. Take advantage when you have time to sit down and focus on your content by scheduling ahead.
2. Increased Personalization
Pro tip - Your audience appreciates (even expects) content to be personalized to their likes and preferences. I know I do, don’t you?
Personalized marketing is creating customized content for your buyer personas to build a strong relationship based on their needs and interests. Having access to data like purchase history, emails opened, and engagement activity will help you create content that will attract your audience.
Think about how Netflix personalizes each user's experience. Netflix has the "Top Picks for {Name}" section. They present you with shows, movies, etc. that are similar to what you have watched in the past and believe you would like.
You can create a similar experience for your customers by using a CRM. CRM within a digital marketing platform provides you with the ability to track and record your customer’s journey through the buying process and beyond. Not only do you see where your customers are in their journey, but you can record all communications and engagements with every contact –emails opened, links clicked, calls with sales, overall engagement, and more.
For instance, by being able to track all of your interactions, you can personalize emails based on if they left something in their cart, clicked on a link, read your latest e-book, signed up for a webinar, and so on.
Yesterday, I received an email from Fashion Nova about a shirt I abandoned in my shopping cart. They used my data to persuade me to continue my purchase and/or re-engage with their site. By capturing the right information and using it wisely, your small business can benefit significantly from personalization and build strong relationships with your contacts.
An example of a small business who put forth personalization in emails is Smak Parlour. Smak Parlour started getting more personalized with their contacts that visited their store, and it worked! They more than doubled traffic to their website and increased their online revenue by more than 600%. Now that’s impressive!
3. Save Time
As a small team or marketer of 1, you are continually working on multiple projects at once. Time is precious! So, wouldn't you want to get back some of that time in your day? A digital marketing platform is the answer to help you save time.
When it comes to emails, aren't you tired of creating a generic, mass email in Outlook and having to copy and paste it to send individually? It gets draining and takes up so much time. On top of that, you can’t calculate who opened it or who clicked on links. Just thinking about that makes me tired and frustrated.
Thank goodness, with a digital marketing platform, you get a generated report after each email is sent. The report provides you with information like the number of people who received the email, who opened it, who clicked, which links they clicked, and more — no need to check each contact individually. A digital marketing platform is all about helping you save time and grow your business instead of worrying about all the little things that could generate automatically.
4. Schedule Ahead
Instead of holding that content calendar in an Excel doc or creating content on the fly, you can easily open up your digital marketing platform and start scheduling content ahead of time. This works for social media, tasks, and emails. Take an hour at the beginning of your week and schedule all of your content. This way, it doesn't get lost, forgotten, or not done at all.
Scheduling social media:
For instance, I like to plan our social media out ahead of time, so I input all the content that I have drafted in our digital marketing platform. The best part is when the publish date arrives, no need to lift a finger; the piece publishes itself. You can go in after it publishes and see all of your results.
Scheduling email marketing:
Email is similar. Assess your emails and see if there is anything you can schedule ahead of time. Not only can you schedule bulk emails, but you can also create email automation. Once created and launched, automation will run for you without any additional effort. And don't worry, you can always go back and edit the content after it is created. Below is a picture of emails that have been created, drafted, and scheduled.
Scheduling tasks:
Let's face it; we all forget things. Or maybe, we have a long to-do list written on a notepad next to our computer. When it comes to creating tasks, it’s good to keep them in one place that you can access from anywhere. Some digital marketing platforms allow you to create, assign, and manage tasks for yourself and your teammates. You can also tag them to different business contacts or organizations. This can help schedule follow-ups with people and stay on track of customer relationships.
5. Communicate Effectively
The ability to communicate effectively internally and externally is so important for your organization and your brand. A digital marketing platform can help you stay on top of both.
More effective internal communication
Your sales and marketing team needs to be in sync at all times. With a digital marketing platform, your team members gain visibility into what content is scheduled – emails, social posts, sales proposals, calls – and act accordingly.
For instance, if you have an email going out for an exclusive promo and your salesperson is going to visit that prospect a day later, they can mention the promotion and close the sale.
More effective external communication
Let’s not forget about customers. We mentioned earlier that a CRM helps you connect on a more personalized level and communicate on a one-on-one basis with your customers. Since you can track all emails, calls, and interactions, you can have educated conversations with them. Even if someone in your organization leaves, you still have a record of all their communications.
A CRM helps increase your chances to upsell current customers and convert new ones. On average, anywhere between 70 to 95% of revenue generated at B2B companies in a given year comes from upsells and renewals. For e-commerce and B2C companies, there's a 30% chance a customer will make a second purchase. Now, who doesn't love that? But how do you track those opportunities without the right platform?
6. Actionable Insights
Reports are crucial when it comes to your marketing and sales efforts. All your efforts need to be tracked to see if they were effective or not. By having an understanding of what is working and what is not, it allows marketers to make adjustments to their strategy. These insights make a significant impact on your business and hitting those goals! 🎖
Most digital marketing platforms give you in-depth insights into the channels they manage. We built DirectLync to bring together all the essential sales and marketing tools to save time and provide more actionable insights into your efforts. This means no more split screens or multiple reports!
My favorite part about DirectLync is that there is no need to connect another platform to track your emails, social posts, and CRM updates; it is all within the one platform. Your reports and insights pull from all your modules and automatically generate reports that help your business see what is working and what is not working within marketing and sales. You'll get those insights as well as detailed reports on contacts, social posts, email content, and more.
It's never-ending actionable insights! Below is a picture of one of the many reports you can run in DirectLync. This report allows you to see how many contacts you are reaching by channel.
7. Complete View of Your Customer
Not being able to see a full view of your customers can be a struggle. I’ve been there – needing three different windows open to track a customers' activity across various channels. It's annoying and a time suck.
Whether you use multiple platforms or don’t use a platform at all, seeing a complete view of your customers in one platform is going to make a whirlwind of a difference when it comes to marketing and communicating to a customer.
The key to knowing your customers and connecting with them on a different level is understanding their pains and interactions. Track each interaction a customer has with your company – website visits, email, sales meeting, demo, phone calls, social – to capture a comprehensive view of your customer journey. This allows you to walk in their shoes. See how they view your business, not just how you want them to view you.
For a small business, a digital marketing platform can help provide a supportive, real relationship with a contact. Never miss an opportunity to understand your customers, their journey, and their decision-making process.
8. Enhanced Testing
Want to get a 127% increase in click-throughs? Let me tell you how!
Most digital marketing platforms host an email marketing module, and within that module, you sometimes (no promises), get the option of A/B testing emails. A/B testing is when you can test subject lines, content, sender name, or send date and time.
The great thing about A/B testing is the flexibility you have to test different ideas or strategies to see how they perform once they reach your contacts.
Marketers are huge fans of testing! Testing ads, emails, content, and so much more, gives you a unique look at what performs well and what doesn’t.
9. No Integration Hassles
Integrating platforms can be a hassle, especially when they don't seamlessly connect. You also have to manage multiple subscriptions, bills, and oh, what if the companies cancel their partnership? You have to find a new solution quickly!
With an all-in-one digital marketing platform like DirectLync, you don't need to worry about integrating with other platforms. We built DirectLync from the ground up as a fully integrated solution. So, instead of paying for multiple platforms and hoping they integrate, you pay for one platform that is built together. Get an all-inclusive digital marketing platform, like DirectLync.
10. Single View into Your Business
Last, but not least, with a digital marketing platform, you have one single view of your business.
We have worked with many small businesses and have regularly heard that they want to get a single view of their business. This is, of course, before working with DirectLync. 😉
These small businesses are running full force to stay afloat and get new customers, but their tracking is fully built out. The lack of a single view of their business makes decision-making and connecting with customers a challenge. With one picture of your business, you can see where all your contacts are in the buyer’s journey and your sales and marketing ROI (return on investment) just in your pipeline. For a small business, this is a great place to see your business in one glance.
An all-in-one digital marketing platform is a must-have!
Hopefully, I have helped you understand why digital marketing platforms are so important when it comes to your business. There are many benefits, like the ones I mentioned above, plus many more that I didn’t cover in this article.
DirectLync’s digital marketing platform is known for its many benefits. From being able to post on social, to build a strong relationship with your customers, to having the ability to develop and design fantastic emails, you will never want to go back to what you had before a digital marketing platform.
"This is absolutely the most functional, easy to learn, and instant value-add tool our business has adopted in its history." – Matthew McInerney, VP, Meads Bay & Solaire Beach Villas
