6 reasons small businesses should be online

There is apathy from some small business owners as to having a website and putting their business online. We list a few of the key reasons why they should.

1) People are searching for you and you're not there: Consumers use the internet to search for products and services and find information to help them choose which products and services they need. Your competitors are putting their goods in front of these consumers

2) Digital marketing levels the playing field with larger competitors: With an optimised website to send traffic to which shows off your products and services, and gives the consumer what they need you can compete. It requires a bit more thought, innovation and creativity but a digital marketing plan that uses these principles will send high quality traffic your way

3) Digital marketing is completely trackable: Smaller businesses tend to have smaller budgets which need to be managed a bit more tightly. With digital marketing you can start by investing small amounts and measuring the results from this. If it doesn’t work there are other digital channels to test and if it does work you can increase the spend slowly making sure you always have a return on investment that works for you.

4) Optimising mid campaign is possible with digital: Because digital marketing is trackable from day 1 it means you can measure which channel or message is getting you better results and return on investment. This means you can increase your budget on this channel and decrease on another that maybe isn’t performing as well. Compared to traditional marketing, where you pay for 1 message to be put across a variety of channels, digital is much more accountable. For example, you don’t know which newspaper is performing for you and you also won’t know if you would have got a better response from a different message.

5) With a website for your business, you will have increased conversion rates: People will search for your business, or a product or service and go to your website. This is much easier for consumers in today’s world than going to the Yellow Pages for example. From a retail perspective, someone can go to your website and make a purchase, instead of having to get into their car and go to your premises. In terms of leads, someone can quickly fill out a contact form and send you exactly what they need instead of having to ring you. Websites offer a much lower barrier to entry.

6) Reach a global audience from here: With the advertising tools available it is easy to run a campaign in various locations across the globe. If there is an audience type that performs really well and the Northern Ireland audience size is small, you could spread this campaign out to the rest of the UK, the rest of Ireland, Europe etc. Compared to traditional marketing this is a massive benefit of digital marketing. With traditional marketing you would have to use untested radio stations, newspapers, TV channels etc to spread your message.