Why should Small Businesses use Digital Marketing?

Everybody wants to use Digital Marketing Nowadays but this is about small businesses using Digital Marketing. Why Every Small business related to any sector must use digital marketing as their marketing strategy.?

What is Small Business?

When we talk about small businesses, it's not only about IT companies having 1-20 employees. Small ration shops, garments shop, and even small Dhabas comes under the segment of Small Business. You may define a small business as those businesses having fewer operations and employees. But if they want to increase their profitability and sales, can they leverage digital marketing?

Small Business Case Study?

In my career, I have worked with various local shops taking minimal charges at the start and today those shops are profitable and increased their sales area as well. So I started Digital Marketing in 2015 and at that time, it was very new to shopkeepers. They were happy with traditional marketing like pamphlets. However, I convinced a few and did various things which I am going to discuss here. It's easy to learn with practical examples, so I am giving that.?

Ration Shop - The margin in the ration shop is very less so they can't afford the marketing cost. Most of the time they are happy with the fixed customers. I started my campaign with one shopkeeper. I made his Facebook page and started posting their products, prices, etc but likes were not coming. So I started an ad campaign with minimal budget targeting only a radius of 2 KM. The purpose of the campaign was to show our product variations, and prices to maximum people living in that area. It worked and footfalls increased. Later, we launched a basket size campaign. If you are purchasing products worth more than 5000 in one go, we launched a 500rs coupon which can be availed in the next purchase. We promoted the same on Facebook and it again worked. So it was a major success for that small shopkeeper.?

Saree Shop - Margin in readymade clothes is good but sales are not that much as small shopkeepers only target a small area. They sell 2-3 saree in a day and still make more than 1000rs. What if they can sell to a wider audience and can deliver if the basket size is big? Yes, I did the same, at that time there were Amazon and Flipkart available but I didn't use that. We built our own store using WordPress with Big Commerce. We only wanted to deliver to the 10KM area and we did the same. Delivery was only possible if you buy at least 3 sarees worth 2500 in total. Guess what? There was no delivery charge! Our sales increased as we are serving a larger audience now. We launched a campaign on Google My Business and Facebook for more Branding. We also started posting our customer reviews and if anyone provided their pictures wearing our saree, there was a special discount for those ladies on their next purchase. Campaigns were simple and we got what we really wanted.?

Local Vegetable Shop - This was the hardest one as many vegetable vendors were already there, so promoting this was not easy. We launched our campaigns on Facebook and GMB. Posted a lot of photos. Our main goal was to promote our biggest USP and that was Fresh Vegetable and Fruits. Still, there were no major changes in customer footfall. Later, we launched two campaigns and it changed everything for the vendor. The first campaign was promoting our monthly plan where users can get choose their vegetables using Whatsapp chat and can pay in advance. If you are paying in advance, you will get vegetables at the same rate even if the prices are rising only for that month. If prices are decreasing then you will get a refund. So this was a massive HIT. The second campaign was again the delivery system for the 2KM area only having a basket size of more than 200rs. Delivery was again free and it worked for us.?

I had experienced similar kinds of results with many small vendors and delivered what exactly they were craving.?

Small Business in Current Scenario

Do they use Digital Marketing Now? Big Yes! At that time, we had limited platforms to get more customers but nowadays even with a smaller budget, we can make a big impact on our local customers. Youtube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and many short video apps are there to promote your products in the form of content creation. You just need the right strategy to make yourself different from others in the local market.

It's my personal suggestion to hire a Digital Marketer for every small businessman. It will only make their business profitable. We have seen Covid-19 recently and it is high time to go digital.??