Straight off the bat, I want to say that it is possible to find affordable SEO services for your small business…
However, this is an interesting question!
My honest opinion is that I can’t see how you’ll manage without any ‘online interactions’.
Even if you are running a relatively small business.
It is vital that your small business has an online presence.
Right now, if a potential client or customer can’t find you online, they will think something is up. Maybe you aren’t legit; maybe you are shut down….maybe you are closing. Any of these would be incorrect so you want to be sure that you can be found.
This is because the following are all established elements of the customer journey:
- Conducting online searches
- Seeking reviews
- Watching video demonstrations
- Following the business’ social media
- Reading company blogs
Potential clients and prospective customers EXPECT to be able to easily access these sources of information. So, why skip out on possible interaction if your ideal clients are searching for your competitors. You want to be able to scoop up these people and convert them to your business and get that sale.
Furthermore, they’ll want to be able to reach out to you at any time with questions or queries about your offering. Even if you stick to the more traditional forms of marketing such as sending out postcards and flyers, it would still put you at a disadvantage if you’re not active online.
If someone does not want to call via a number on a flyer, they will still attempt to look you up online. And if they come up with nothing, your flyering investment will be a bust.
Implementing a Digital Marketing strategy for your small business can supplement your offline efforts
This is not to say that offline marketing tactics can’t still be a decent SUPPLEMENT to online local business marketing. However, you need to get online. Here’s a bonus, here are 4 benefits your small business will reap from using online marketing:
1: Cheaper
Traditional forms of marketing, such as printing and distributing flyers, can get very costly, not to mention time-consuming. Other forms of traditional marketing…still costly and sometimes more than printing or flyering… are billboards, television commercials, radio advertisements
The average flyer printing service can run you up close to $200 for 2000 flyers…this depends on paper type and other factors… but doing this continually gets costly.
On top of this cost, most business owners have reported that high quality leads coming from television, radio, and/or print is only about 4%. That is a troublingly low amount of leads to come through based on the cost of that investment.
Trade shows are another traditional method but can vary with booth price, and some come at a hefty cost. Although, next to the above listed traditional methods, trade shows can be more successful in terms of leads and direct sales. Those that go to trade shows find attendees are 34% more likely to purchase directly at the show versus coming to the shop after an advertisement.
Having fully optimised profiles across social media, Google My Business, and most directories is often free to do. Running ads is when you start to build up costs associated with it but are still less than flyers and better targeted.
On Facebook, if you run ads, 1000 impressions cost less than $8. That is like skipping two cups of coffee to be able to run your ads. As a disclaimer here, running ads across numerous platforms for a long period of time does add up as well.
Building up social media profiles costs nothing though. Investing in your SEO will also pay off in the long run as it will help your site and web presence be well established and built to rank for your desired keywords.
2: Highly measurable
Running an online campaign allows you to see exactly how many people have engaged with your business online. There are several metrics that you can monitor to see if your marketing efforts are yielding the results you are after.
This is significantly more difficult to do when using traditional forms of offline marketing. There is simply no way to track who sees and is interested in your product or business unless they directly call or visit and mention it is due to the ad they had seen.
If you have a billboard, how do you know how many people have seen it and how many of those are your target audience? Sure, a billboard can allow for a mass amount of people to see it, but not every one of those suits your niche.
By running online campaigns, you will be able to target your demographic and be able to see who is engaging. These numbers are shown as new engagements, return visitors, those that stay on for long amounts of time and those for just a few moments. All of these metrics help determine how effective your campaign is and what may need adjusting.
3: Cost-effective
Regarding online advertising campaigns such as PPC, you are only charged when a potential customer or client clicks on your ads, you also have full control of your ad spend, meaning you’ll only pay for the interactions that have an impact.
As mentioned above, if you buy a load of online flyer maker, you have paid for those whether or not that got used or put in the trash. There is a large upfront cost without knowing how well that will actually pay off.
For PPC if you are in full control and only pay for clicks, you can let your dollar stretch much further than paying for physical items.
4: More relevant
Online campaigns enable you to advertise directly to your target audience in the modern age of everyone having some sort of device and staying on their mobile devices.
Back to the billboard again…what good does reaching a mass amount of people do if they aren’t suitable to your niche or product. You can tell everyone and anyone about who you are and what you do, but if you make specialised art supplies…not everyone wants that.
An online campaign would allow you to target the demographics most likely to purchase your product and have already shown interest in that type of product.
Relevancy is key to being able to meet your conversion goals and have a better ROI.
5: You can be extremely specific
While relevancy and being able to reach your target is great, digital marketing allows you to be very specific with who you advertise to.
Let’s say you create three different user personas before you start advertising. You would then be able to categorize ads and keywords based on each of those personas to best appeal to them.
Although hyper-specific may not always be best, in some cases, an ability to accomplish this can help garner some amazing results.
Conclusion
Sure traditional marketing methods aren’t dead and will probably always be around as an alternative to the digital world. Digital marketing has become one of the best options for many niches, though. The reach, ability to be specific, and the cost greatly outweigh some of the benefits of traditional marketing.
At my SEO marketing agency, Pearl Lemon, we specialise in SEO and have experience with working with several start-ups and small businesses – helping them to achieve their digital growth goals,
We provide affordable SEO services to ensure that smaller businesses can also benefit from the growth.
From my experience, I can confidently say that regardless of the size of the business, being present online and running high-quality, cost-effective ads and affordable SEO helps generate new leads and increase conversions.
Furthermore, it also helps with client retention and maintenance of profitable relationships.
But don’t just take my word for it! Here’s what one of our client’s had to say:
I hope this post has emphasised the importance of online interactions in today’s digitalised world. And if you need a bit more convincing, please feel free to pour over more of our blog posts or drop us a line to see what we can help you accomplish with your business on a digital level.
Whilst offline marketing can be an effective supplement to online efforts. Completely avoiding online interactions will put you at a disadvantage to your competitors who have an active online presence. ⚠️
In a world with high competition no matter the niche, having an edge against your competitors is critical. After all, you want to be the one to succeed. So, don’t spoon feed your potential customers to the rest of the guys by not having a bespoke digital involvement.
Thanks for reading this post! I’d be SUPER grateful if you could check out our Quora page – It’s managed by Rajesh (pronounce Raa-Jesh lol), one of our SEO specialists based in London. There you’ll find even more tips and advice for achieving your digital growth goals!
If you are looking for affordable SEO services in London, UK (or anywhere else in the world!) I’d be more than happy to have a chat!
