FAQs
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is the practice of using digital tools and channels to promote a business.
You’re probably familiar with a lot of these channels, like email marketing, social media marketing, e-commerce and web development. However, digital marketing also includes search engine optimization (SEO), Local SEO using your Google Business Profile and other tools, and Pay-Per-Click ad campaigns on Google, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms.
Each of these marketing channels can be used in different ways to market to customers at different points in your sales funnel. Each of them also has it’s own set of specialized tools that require a strong level of tech savvy, as well as time and patience, to set up.
What makes these channels different from traditional marketing? Without doing anything sneaky or underhanded, these tools provide incredible data on your customers, allowing you to engage customers more efficiently and more effectively.
You’ll get the most bang for your buck if you integrate your digital marketing campaigns across these channels, and collect data from each channel that informs your messaging in the others.
Why do small, local businesses need digital marketing?
Simply put, in the 2020’s, just about everyone is online, in some capacity or another. What are the profiles of some of your customers? Chances are, whoever your customers are, there are more of them online than you realize!
Or what if you want to find more customers? Or a new type of customer? If you want to grow, then integrated, data-driven digital marketing campaigns will provide the best ROI (return on investment) of any type of marketing spend, as well as the most potential for maintaining long-term customer loyalty and success.
But my customers find me by word of mouth.
Maybe what you mean is that all of your customers SO FAR find you by word of mouth. And that’s incredible! That means that what you’re doing is working. Your business is offering products, services or experiences that build loyalty.
But do you want your business to make more money? If so, we either need to find more of the customers that you have, find ways to get the customers you have to spend more money with you, or we need to find a new type of customer. Or all three!
But my daughter / son / niece / nephew does my social media for free.
That’s wonderful! It’s so great to have the whole family involved in your business!
If you’re happy with the amount of business that you’re generating, that’s awesome.
But if you want to increase your revenue, it might be worth seeking out and investing in professional support for things like social media management, content development, email marketing and overall digital marketing strategy.
But I do my own digital marketing and it doesn’t cost me a dime.
If you’re choosing not to spend money on digital marketing, then the cash might not be coming out of your pocket, for sure. But the money you’re spending simply isn’t coming into your pocket to begin with. It’s that simple. Choosing not to invest in digital marketing is choosing to leave potential customers out there. Not only is that less revenue for you, but your products and services are great! They bring joy to people! You make your products and services with love, with heart, with soul. When you invest in digital marketing, you’re sharing that love and that passion with the world. We deserve to know about the great things that you create!
On top of that, EVERY small business owner knows that time is a limited resource. There are only 24 hours in a day. Wouldn’t you rather be doing what you love for as many of those hours as possible? Are there ways that you could spend that time that would be more fun? More efficient? More productive? More profitable?
Maybe it’s time to invest in yourself and in your business. Businesses like yours that want to accelerate their growth spend 10-20% of revenue on marketing, and then cut down to 5-10% once they’re ready to maintain their level of growth.
Will it work for me and my small business?
At Two Bridges, we’re transparent: There are no guarantees, and every business is different.
That said, successful digital marketing is long-term, data-oriented, integrated and iterative. We come up with a customized plan for every business that we work with. Based on that plan, we execute and collect data. And we analyze that data to help us improve in our next iteration.