Today, in this digital world, establishing a strong online presence is essential for the success of small businesses. However, navigating the intricacies of digital marketing can be a formidable challenge, leading many small enterprises to struggle to maximize its benefits. This exploration delves into common pitfalls contributing to the failure of small businesses in digital marketing.
From misconceptions and inadequate strategies to resource constraints, the reasons are diverse. Nevertheless, armed with insights and actionable solutions, small business owners can not only avoid these pitfalls but also thrive in the dynamic world of digital marketing.
In this blog, we will uncover the key reasons behind small business digital marketing failures and unveil effective strategies to steer clear of these obstacles, ultimately paving the way for sustained online success.
Top Reason Why Small Businesses Have Troubles With Digital Marketing
1. Not Having Comprehensive Knowledge of Digital Marketing
Before diving into digital marketing, one should explicitly know what it is, how-to & what works for whom. If not, you might just be shooting an arrow into the darkness. This is where your chances of success online become slim.
Launching a marketing campaign without having prior data or statistics, you will end up wasting your money & time. Of course, you can always hire a professional digital marketing agency to work with you to attain your online marketing goals.
2. Anticipating Overnight Result
It is okay to dream big, and as a small business, you must see a clear & bright future for your company. However, one must be cautious and try not to go overboard with high expectations from digital marketing within a month or so.
You see, just like your business, your company’s marketing also needs some time to grow before it starts showing any results. Just having a website and a few social media accounts integrated with some researched keywords does not guarantee any results within a fortnight.
3. Unclear Call-To-Action
A call-to-action (CTA) is a short text message encouraging the user to act promptly. This action can be in the form of an email subscription, buying a product or service, clicking on the link to like or share a post, or something else.
Suppose that you have written a masterpiece idea to promote your business. You gain a lot of interested audiences to read the entire page, but by the end, you miss the point of converting that interest into a lead that a weak or unclear call to action might cause. You see, the purpose of CTA is to draw attention and motivate users to take action immediately.
It makes it easy for clients to contact the company. Ensure that your CTA has an email or, better, a contact number. You can even give information in a downloadable format, such as a PDF file, and add your contact or CTA where the text ends.
When you link your website link to social media, make sure that your CTA is clearly visible on the landing page, or else how will you be able to convert the leads into calls? With no clear CTA, a user may be tempted to leave your web page without taking any action.
4. No Original Content Or Content Marketing
One of the popular phrases that goes in online business is ‘Content is king.’ That’s true as more customers rely on content & not the product itself to know if the company is worth investing in or not. So, when you supply original content to your potential buyers, they are likely to buy your product or services.
Let’s understand that with the help of an example. Suppose that you are selling a cleaning solution for your home. Now, you notice that your competitors are doing the same; however, they are not providing people with any instruction about the product.
Therefore, you can create an informative page to inform people how to use your cleaning solution with the help of infographics or videos.
Linking images, infographics, and videos to set your content apart from the competitors. As more and more people find your content helpful, it will help boost traffic to your website. Ensure that you link your ‘how-to’ page to your social media posts and product information guide.
5. Expecting Too Much From Organic Content & Traffic
Now, we understand that organic marketing is crucial for your business in the long term, but sole dependency on it won’t help you much in the beginning. So, the best thing will be to look for paid solutions for redirecting more traffic to your website and qualified leads as well.
6. Not Focusing On Branding
Poor branding won’t help you much when reaching out to your audience. It would be best to create a brand persona that resonates with the potential customers who will buy your product & services.
A weak brand image may create mistrust in your company, and people may not like to purchase it again. Hence, the number of returning customers will take a hit.
7. Not Having A Target Audience
First, you must evaluate what audience your business is selling to. For example, if you are offering a cleaning service, you must ask yourself who it is meant for. Most likely, it is going to be used by working mothers, small and medium businesses, and single living people.
Now that you know, you must build your business around them. When you connect to your clients, you learn about their pain points and the regular ones that they face. And then you can offer your solution. You can’t offer a solution without knowing the problem.
You can try to embrace the language and tone that help you connect with your potential customers. Remember that different businesses will have different customer bases. It may surprise you, but not having a brief understanding of the target audience is key to any business failure.
8. No Tracking Of Results
Not tracking your data monthly or weekly, depending on your business, is bound to set you up for failure. Analytics are incredibly beneficial when using digital marketing. It helps you assess your performance & rectify your mistakes. Performance data keeps you updated with the ground reality of your business.
Nowadays, there are many tracking tools that can help you to leverage your digital performance for free. Some common key performance indicators (KPIs) are as follows:
- Conversion rate (CVR)
- Click-through rates (CTR)
- Return on ad spend (ROAS)
- Customer lifetime value (CLV)
- Sales
- Leads generation
- Website heat mapping
- Bounce rate
- Customer retention rate
- New customers
- Revenue growth
9. Not Embracing Social Media
Digital marketing is a part of your business that helps you reach a new audience. So, you must put yourself out there in front of the world to promote your company. Organic searches take time to develop, and word of mouth is not enough if you want to grow at a faster pace.
Hence, not leveraging the use of social media platforms will put your company in the back seat.
There are several social media websites, such as Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, etc., where you can target your audience to buy a product. These websites allow you to create a profile to promote your products.
However, while embarking on the journey of social media, do not forget about implementing SEO. Do not rely on one source to gain customers. This might not be a good strategy. Businesses that ignore the power of social media may miss out on a large part of the target audience.
Not to mention, consistency is the key. You can’t just post on social platforms irregularly or do it for a short period of time and abandon it later.
10. No Defined Budget Or Not Having At All
This clearly means that you have not taken digital marketing seriously yet. Some businesses just want to get away with it without spending much on it. This may be due to the fact that they are resistant to the digital marketing field as they have little knowledge about it. Hence, the resistance.
Trying to push aggressive and intensive marketing goals on a minimum budget is also a reason your digital marketing is not working. You must set a realistic budget & goals.
When it comes to online marketing, strategic planning plays a huge role in defining how successful you will be.
So, if you feel confused and shrouded with the technical terms, contact a growth-driven small business marketing agency for assistance.
Our experts will explain the benefits your business can reap by using effective SEO implementation and adequate digital marketing.
How Do You Avoid Pitfalls that Occur while DIYing Digital Marketing?
1. Have A Predetermined Strategy For Marketing
You must calculate what works for your business and what doesn’t. For this, you can analyze the following:
- Pre-assessment of your sales, tools, resources, and performance. This will be helpful when comparing it with future data to access growth rates.
- Who are your competitors, what have they done, and what are they doing to enhance their online presence? This will help you build your own business goals.
- Website planning, proper SEO implementation, original and informative content, along with the best all-to-action (CTA) that works in your favor. It varies with the industry.
- Ensure that your business digital marketing goals are smartly planned, measurable, attainable, and relevant to your industry. As an example, using marketing strategies developed by the real estate industry won’t help your cleaning business.
2. Keep Aside A Defined Budget For Promoting Your Business Online
As we discussed before, having a set-aside, budget helps you to attain goals & generate a return on investment (ROI). You get faster results when you redirect your marketing budget to the right campaign and paid ads.
Always have a clear conversation with your digital marketing agency to ensure there are no hidden costs or recurring payments that you did not initially consider.
3. Hire A Professional Digital Marketing Firm
It is always a better idea to hire someone already well-versed in the topic you are unaware of. This will save you time & effort. It would be best to use digital marketing at the earliest stage of your business.
This will give the digital marketing firm enough time to align with your business and develop campaigns & ads that speak about your business. Your websites will get full attention as the firm will plant the latest SEO techniques and relevant keywords to boost your ranking on the search engine result page.
4. Be Consistent
You can update your website whenever you feel like it, or you can do social media posting only during the festive season and then disappear completely from the picture. A timely schedule must be made for social media posting. Depending on your industry, you can post once or twice a week.
Further, you can even add blogs and infographics to your website with catchy animation that will increase user stay time on your web pages. This will boost your ranking.
You have to be consistent with your efforts and make room for digital marketing in your company’s marketing department. Alternatively, you can hire a digital marketing firm to handle your pain.
5. Maintain A Responsive Website
For the website, it should be:
- Structure properly with a responsive layout so that it opens up on all devices seamlessly.
- All internal & external links are working.
- Original and informative content (it will help you earn backlinks).
- About pages must be clear and descriptive about your business CEO or founder’s name, contact info, and the physical address of your office.
- You must give a proper email ID and social media links to interact with your customers or potential clients.
- You can add a subscribe pop-up dialog box to encourage people to become a member of your business community.
- Adding images & infographics can be extremely helpful.
- And finally, a proper SEO (on-page, page & technical) implementation with target keywords in place.
6. Have A Strong Brand Image
But how can you do it? Following are a few ways to help you build a strong brand presence.
- Creating a unique brand identity
- Having a brand voice
- Creating a brand message
- Solving your customer’s problem in a short time & effectively
- Setting yourself apart from the competitors
- Having the world’s best customer service
Final Words
In essence, understanding why small businesses struggle with digital marketing unveils the path to success. Overcoming misconceptions and resource constraints is crucial.
By embracing tailored strategies and staying current, small businesses can transform challenges into opportunities, ensuring a thriving online presence and sustained growth.
In the ever-evolving digital world, adaptability and strategic insight are the keys to unlocking the full potential of digital marketing for small businesses.