Here is a question every fresh small business owner is set to ponder. Fair enough… But we argue there is nothing to really think about, as the answer is quite obvious: in today's world, there is no other way. Regardless of the industry, small businesses cannot gain traction without engaging with digital marketing. There are multiple reasons for why this is the case, and this is what we will be talking about in today's article.

If anything, the digital marketing revolution brought a major change to the advertising industry by granting everyone the chance to marketise regardless of the available budget. Whereas, back in the day, advertising for the masses was only a thing for corporations and companies rich enough to pay the bill (for TV, radio or magazine ads and create various PR stunts), in present days, your ad can reach an impressive number of people with a budget as low as 10 Euro per day. Not to mention that the targeting systems of the various digital marketing tools available are super-sharp and can showcase your product or service to the right people at the right time. And this is something you don't want (and cannot afford) to miss out on.

Small or no marketing budget at all? No problem!

And this is fantastic news for small businesses, because they usually enter the market by focusing on niche segments. On top of this, no matter if you advertise for a big company or a small one, the marketing metrics and results are a key component of any healthy campaign. And as you probably know by now, all marketing platforms offer extensive live and post-campaign data. Again, a must have.

As we have seen, there is an online marketing solution for every budget. But with the right dose of creativity and dedication, a small business can drive results even with no budget at all. Posts on social media have always been free, and if you have a decent following, organic reach can be a good launching pad for your business.

Content: The king is dead, long live the king!

Because we are talking about cheap or free marketing actions you can use to drive results for your small business, let us not forget about brand management. One of the most successful digital marketing strategies of present days is content marketing. A well thought editorial plan (whether video, text or audio content) might be the shortest and cheapest –though lengthy – way to project trust and position your business as an authority in a certain industry or niche.  

Market insights

More so, social media activities can provide invaluable information about your target audience. For a small businesses – with simple products and/or services and limited activity –marketing research becomes really rather straight-forward. Once you've captured the attention of your community or tribe, the solutions for future development will present themselves naturally and effortlessly. If you make yourself relevant enough, people will actually tell you what they want. In an ideal scenario, business growth will be driven by the dynamics between feedback and new products. Just keep the conversation going.

Sether yourself for success

While the answer for the title question is definitely yes, nobody said managing complex digital marketing campaigns is easy, especially when you are just a beginner or have limited experience. To make the long story short, we developed a tool that can simplify the marketing process across various channels. This basically means two things. On the one hand, Sether imports all the running CPC campaigns and displays their results in a single dashboard. Why is this important? Because you will no longer spend time on switching between platforms to see what your campaigns are doing, and you will see in one glance what channels are performing according to your KPIs. This can help you step up your game in terms of directing your budget towards those channels that are delivering the best results.

On the other hand, in terms of brand management, Sether created a sentimenta nalysis function, that can provide you with everything you need to know about how your brand is seen across the Internet. Our tool uses specialized crawlers to scan the web in order to find every single mention of your brand (or the desired keywords for that matter). When it finds such a mention, Sether automatically analyzes the content of the review, comment, article etc. and lets you know whether it is a positive or a negative feedback. Pretty neat, huh? Oh, and we almost forgot to mention that the basic account is free!Try it out and let us know what you think!

‍