Digital marketing has recently led to a change in the complete landscape of marketing. From the conservative desk based marketing strategies, digital marketing is now surrounded by web crawlers and clicks. Because of this paradigm shift, small business owners and other store owners have been facing many challenges. They are today facing a neck to neck competition with other online stores and e-commerce giants. Therefore, an online presence for a small business or a store owner works wonders to put profits into their kitty. Having a site or a blog on online platforms is a new-age marketing mechanism, which is not only going to improve their communication with others round the globe, but will turn out to be cost-efficient.

A business owner must remember that all this is not just an option today. Rather, an online presence for a physical store has become somewhat like a necessity, a bare minimum one can do.

How has this been possible?

Well, all thanks to the rise in internet users around the world. Everyone, in all kinds of countries is now connected. This rise has led not just to a change in communications but has led to improvements in trade and commerce. Internet has been seen to be a place where businesses can take their objectives forward and gain maximum value. An online marketing plan can now boost your sales, your profits, your revenues, your brand value and presence and the number of customers. All in one go. All hail the power of internet.

As a small business owner you can easily wage a war against big businesses and e-commerce sites through digital platforms. With the right marketing strategies and proper implementation of SEO and SME techniques, it is possible.

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And guess what?

Unlike traditional marketing strategies, online marketing strategies do not necessarily need a huge budget. You can do away with a smaller budget too!

So what should you be doing?

SEO?  We should be passing on that today, since a lot has been said about it.

But there is something people haven’t really been paying considerable attention to. What is it?

SME.

Here are a few ways you can leverage your online presence through SME.

  • Digital Marketing Analytics

Setting up Digital Marketing Analytics to measure the amount of success your online marketing efforts are bringing you is a great way to take control of all the elements around you. It is an imperative tool today.

There has been a mushrooming growth for all kinds of free and paid online tools to measure and analyze your Digital Marketing efforts. Google Analytics, Moz, Webmaster Tools are some of the available tools which can definitely help you out. Remember, whatever you do as a part of your digital marketing strategy, Analytics tools are going to keep a check on the results those strategies are bringing in.

Apart from the results, these analytics tools also help you examine the demographics and behavior patterns of the consumers, the web traffic that is generated through different posts, the number of likes and shares you get on online platforms, as well as the revisions your content might need. You also get a description of how your ads are performing on social media platforms and other sites, which in turn helps you in improving your brand image further.

  • Local SEO practices

As a small business or store your primary concern should be attracting local customers to your store/business as soon as possible. They should be attracted to your business, your products and your services through online platforms, exactly at the time they are looking for something similar online. Through local SEO practices you can easily get more visibility among the people in your local demographics.

Related: 5 Ways to Bootstrap SEO When You’re on a Tight Budget

Before displaying results to people on search engines like Google, the Google algorithms take into consideration a business’ location around the person who is searching for the same. Let’s say I live in city X and I am looking for a local store selling vintage furniture and home decor items, I am going to Google “Vintage Furniture” from the comfort of my home. The search results thus displayed will depend on my location as well as others who are top ranking sellers on various online platforms. Local SEO techniques ensure that business listings are shown from around you as soon as you start searching for the same.

Various tools and apps like NowFloats help boost your Local SEO automatically, making your local business available as a search result through organic modes. These tools and apps also enhance your digital marketing strategies for an end-to-end experience.

  • Social Media

Social Media has been at the heart of digital marketing strategies for long. They tend to offer an almost free platform for advertising your blog and business. It is a great platform when it comes to determining and assessing your audience base and the content they like and relate to. Social media provides multiple benefits for you to not just target your audiences but connect with them on a personal level to let them like you better.

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Unlike traditional means of advertising like Radio broadcasting, TV, banners and hoardings, social media advertising is not a one-sided effort. Social Media platforms help businesses advertise their business through a two-way channel. They help you as a business site owner in making direct connections with audiences, to communicate with them, redress their issues and also keep an eye on their needs and requirements. Moreover, the platform is open to all, despite the rising competitiveness.

  • Online blogging

As a part of your SEO and SME strategy, blogging as a new means of content creation has surpassed all traditional means like those of newspapers and magazines. This has led to a paradigm shift in the field of content marketing all around the world. Compelling material available online on different sites, in all kinds of genres has been establishing its authority on all our lives. In order to maintain a good online presence for your business, blogging is the least you can do. Not only can you create for your business an online identity, but you can also built a better network around to benefit you in the future. Content optimization can drive better organic traffic towards your site and can simultaneously offer you better conversions.

  • Invest in digital marketing

In this day and age, you should never shy away from investing in paid digital marketing techniques. It is not a crime to allocate some budget for traditional modes of advertising, however, not allocating some for digital marketing is one!

Pay per click advertising, a form of advanced digital marketing technique is an expert in itself to get you profits like never before. The process is cheap in comparison to other forms of advertising. Along with it being cheap, you also get complete control over every single component of the process.

As a small business owner, you can start in smaller segments with smaller investments. However, as the results begin to show, you can easily raise your level of advertising. Even with smaller investments, your online presence is going to be powerful. It is going to give you enough amount of targeted audience along with consistency in traffic generation. Along with all these major benefits, these investments of course bring to you and good return on investment.

Implementation of digital marketing strategies to uplift your business from scratch is pretty simple. It is not at all time-consuming and never requires an expensive budget. This is probably the best part about it, anyone can do it! Tap new opportunities and bring your business to compete with top brands round the globe. It is not difficult.