Why your business needs a digital strategy

digital strategy

Business owners should be looking to digital marketing to help convert potential customers into regular sales.

Today, most small business owners will have developed a website to promote their services, but what about optimising it for search? Sending out targeted emails? Connecting with influencers on LinkedIn – do they know you exist?

To most business owners these will seem like “fads” and should be ignored. The professional marketer will argue that digital is an unstoppable force that has become essential to increase your sales figures. Let’s take a look at the facts, shall we?

“Google gets over 40,000 search queries every second on average, which translates to 3.5 billion searches per day.”

That’s an impressive figure in favour of digital marketing. Over the years, Mark Woodcock has followed the fast-moving evolution of the search market and he couldn’t agree more: “With the change and development of new technologies, it’s more important than ever to develop a marketing strategy for customers online.”

“Digital marketing, especially social media driven strategies allow for small business owners to establish targeted communication channels with existing and potential customers,” he explained.  

Here are his top three reasons for you to place a focus on digital marketing for your business:  

Customer expectations

Almost everyone has access to and regularly uses the internet. Most of us, when we hear about a business for the first time, we pick up our phones and search for their website or look for them on social media. Gone are the days of paying them a visit or opening the phone book. People will expect you to have a website and if you don’t, they may doubt your legitimacy and discount you as an option altogether. There’s a lot to be said for setting up a website, optimising it to reach potential customers and bringing in sales – it really works.  

Competition

You may not have a digital strategy, but that doesn’t mean your competitors aren’t doing. They could be dominating the digital landscape, generating more leads and offering a better first impression with a search-friendly website. To make matters worse, they keep refining their digital strategy and coming up with new services to offer potential customers.

Rate of change

Finally, it’s important to note the rate of change in the industry of digital marketing. Nothing is ever best practice for long; as trends come and go, it’s important to establish what best works for your business. Significant breakthroughs in technology, such as high-speed internet and mobile devices, makes people more reliant on the internet. This means that online marketing becomes more important on a grand scale. You may not have a digital strategy. You may still be generating leads and enquiries through traditional marketing but what about in the future? Will you struggle to retain customers as your competition advances their online strategy? Probably.

All in all, it’s essential to be using digital marketing to promote your business. The internet is here to stay and has become an integrated part of our lives, and the marketplace we operate in. Get up to speed with the wonderful world of online marketing or fall short to your competitors.

Mark Woodcock, Managing Director of Bigfoot Digital.