How Technology Helps Level the Playing Field for Small(er) Business Marketers
Effective marketing is vital for growth, whether you are leading a small or midsized business or an industry titan. Unfortunately, smaller companies must compete for the same shortened attention spans, interest, and page views as much larger competitors.
Category leaders have an inherent advantage when it comes to marketing; the more media dollars a brand has at its disposal, the greater its potential reach. This creates a snowball effect: More reach results in higher brand awareness, which can translate into increased loyalty among customers and more revenue to flow back into the advertising budget.
How can smaller, challenger brands compete against larger budgets? For starters, don't think in terms of growing market share. Your specific media goals should always be tied to your company's bottom line — and growing market share is not the answer. Smaller brands need to spend their money strategically because challengers will always struggle to outspend category leaders. You don’t just want to generate leads; you want to find high-quality leads that are likely to convert quickly.
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Thankfully, advances in digital marketing technology allow smaller brands to target individualized audiences, automate processes, and make smarter decisions. When used strategically, technology can effectively level the playing field for marketing budgets of any size.
Fishing With Better Bait
Before you use the first digital marketing technology you come across, you need to know how your messaging will compete against the big brands to truly connect with your customers. Larger businesses have access to the same strategies and tools, so you'll need to find ways to differentiate your message.
I call it fishing with bait rather than a net. Think about how your brand is different. What makes you — and your customers — genuinely unique? Understanding your key differentiators allows you to stretch the value of each dollar you spend.
Speaking of spend, your marketing efforts will be most successful if you focus on variables that you can measure explicitly. It's even more important for marketers who have smaller budgets to ensure each dollar spent is in service of maximizing profit. After all, it's hard to know whether your bait is working if you don't keep track of nibbles and catches. When you allow data to be your compass, you get results that can be scaled.
Digital Marketing Technologies: The Great Equalizers
Once you've determined the best messaging and differentiators to reach your target audience — as well as the best ways to measure and scale success based on those efforts — then digital marketing technology will help you execute competitively. The advent of digital media makes it possible to create highly targeted, effective campaigns without breaking the bank.
You don't have to cast a wide net — you need to fish in the right places with the right bait. Technology will help you do just that. Sophisticated tools can enhance your targeting, search engine marketing, digital video, programmatic buying, and other marketing tactics. Here’s how to take advantage of digital marketing technologies on a smaller budget:
1. Personalization Strategies
According to a 2019 survey, 98% of marketers agree that personalized ads lead to a measurable lift in engagement. What's more, 85% of marketers say their clients and prospects expect personalized messaging. Personalization in marketing often comes in the form of advertisements, website content, email campaigns, and behavioral-based targeting (more on that later). As a marketer, you might personalize a message based on location, interaction history, preferences, or device use.
With the right tools, you can serve dynamic ads that are personalized to a specific consumer’s location. A display ad might show one consumer specific content about your brick-and-mortar location. Another display ad might reference the consumer's city or neighborhood, leading to a geographically specific landing page.
Some brands rely on consumer accounts, which are tied to the consumer's preferences, loyalty rewards, ongoing purchases, or suggested products. This is especially popular in the travel industry. The data collected through these accounts can provide marketers with key insights about where consumers are in their purchase journeys.
This is just half of the story. Read the rest of this article, including how to use three more technological tools to make the most of your budget, on Business.com.