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Contributed on July 27, 2020

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Take the Lead: How MSME’s Can Opt for Digital Marketing and Generate Quality Sales

Blog: NASSCOM Official Blog

• By Mr. Vikram Kumar, Co-Founder and Managing Director, SRV Media Pvt. Ltd.

Rightly said, digital marketing has entirely remodelled the way Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) engage and connect with their customers. In essence, it allows MSMEs to adequately put their brand in front of their target audience at the right place and time – cost-effectively and measurably.

Marketing for MSMEs’ can incorporate many offline local advertising methods. But alongside, small to medium enterprises also need to include a healthy share of the digital marketing strategy to maximize their sales. They need to embrace a digital marketing strategy that enables their brand visibility and develop an interactive connection with their users. 

Luckily, digital marketing is also a cost-effective choice for MSMEs’. An effectively-targeted and well-executed digital marketing strategy can reach its potential customers at a much lower cost. You can save both time and money by only targeting users who are actively looking for your services or products.

• Search Engine Marketing

This marketing strategy allows you to compete with more prominent organizations by being prominently visible in search results. Since people utilize search engines to find products online, it is important to maintain your presence on search results for keywords that are relevant to your brand yet don’t have a good ranking on the search engine result pages (SERP’s). And one of the quickest ways to do so, is search engine marketing.

Here, you can execute paid media strategies that use Google Ads. These ads create a seamless user journey, right from remarketing at the initial customer touchpoint to the enquiry and purchase.

If you’re spending money on sponsored Google Ads, you can embed unique codes that allow you to track who, when and how your ad has been seen. Did customers visit your website? If yes, which page did they view? Did they download content or place any order? You have a tap on all these queries.

With search engine marketing, you can monitor your conversion rate to see which leads get turned into revenue.

• Optimizing Google My Business Profile

Google My Business is a free and indispensable business listing service integrated with the Google search engine. With this listing, enterprises can ensure that they show up in Google search with up-to-date information. 

Google My Business listings help MSMEs’ – by introducing them to SEO and creating their comprehensive online presence.

An accurate Google My Business listing gets more clicks than an incomplete one. Hence, before you start digging around your website and online directories, make sure you’re optimized for search with your Google Business listing. 

GMB pages also enable users to suggest edits for a business page and allow answering questions about the business listing. 

When used correctly, Google My Business (GMB) is a powerful tool that can increase your revenue and can lead to improved customer loyalty.

• Specific Audience Targeting

Digital marketing provides a much more specific audience targeting. You can tailor campaigns to particular demographics, such as location, age, gender and interests, making them a lot more productive and making your customers feel a lot more valued.

For example, a company that specializes in architecture – can easily target two specific sets of audience – the interior designers and the homeowners. To amplify the reach of their content to their audience, a targeted Digital PR campaign can be created. Furthermore, the content can be sent for publishing in prominent industry magazines and on websites.

Specific audience targeting doesn’t restrain you to local campaigns. In fact, you can target and access a global audience with just one marketing campaign – through specifically targeted strategies.

• Content Marketing

This approach revolves around giving prospective consumers information about your service/product, as well as information in general. Through this informative approach, people will attribute a certain level of expertise to the business, instilling confidence in them. 

Besides, you can also enhance brand awareness through planned content marketing that could reflect your brand’s motivations and personality. A carefully developed content establishes authority and trust amongst your prospective customers.

Content created per your target audience ensures that your brand is seen as being both approachable and reliable. Writing blog posts and articles that address their pain points will foster more engagement and expertise within your industry.

• Social Media Marketing

The most significant aspect of social media is to use it to strengthen your customer base for achieving repeat sales.  

By regular postings, answering queries quickly and responding to reviews and comments – you are improving your brand loyalty. You are revealing to customers that you care about what they say and think.

Facebook & Instagram Advertising

Apart from having an amazingly extensive reach, Facebook & Instagram advertising is effective because customers there are naturally more receptive to brands – looking to explore, reach out, connect and interact . They are in a state of engagement with a desire to consume information. 

More importantly, social media platforms have a wealth of psychographic information on its users. This makes for unparalleled targeting capabilities to ensure your ads appear in front of particular audiences— giving you the highest return on your investment.

• Email Marketing

This form of marketing is essential to a small business, whether online or offline. Email marketing is about compiling a list of names and emails of customers who are interested in your business, thereby nurturing your customers in the purchase/marketing funnel. 

A responsive email list from trusted sources assists you in driving repeat sales and enables a stable relationship with your audience. 

Email marketing trumps all other communication channels for business mainly because it can be used for multi-purpose activities – engagement, acquisition, retention, branding, direct sales, generating traffic, thereby making it an essential part of your digital marketing strategy.

What’s more, email marketing is highly measurable. You can have real-time access to metrics like open rate, clicks, bounce rate, forwards, social shares, and more.

Different type of emails that can be used in email marketing are:

• Transactional – sent out by an automated system ( like order or return confirmation, password reminders)
• Relational – used to nurture leads (like welcome mail, Newsletters, Blog articles)
• Promotional – used for generating sales (promotional contents, offers, sale announcements)

As an MSME, you must work with your customers to generate digital strategies that are an innovative combination of analytics and creativity. After all, an effective digital marketing strategy means tying in all channels and creating a collaborative campaign. Integrating all the platforms available will go a long way to achieving your desired objectives.

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