When you think of digital marketing you think of a strong social media presence, Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns and SEO driven traffic to a top-tier website, and effective email campaigns to lists of 10,000+ subscribers generating orders for a new, dynamic, e-commerce business.
What doesn’t spring to mind is a more traditional business, essentially local rather than digital, established for many years with a strong local customer base. In reality, though, the same tactics that brought the traffic, leads, and sales to the e-commerce business will also help the local business in two traditional areas that increase profits (more on that in a minute).
A different approach
There are, however, a few differences in how a digital marketing agency could approach the two different types of businesses’ needs. Clearly, the strategy for a large web-based business is well-known and will start with an initial response to a social media post or ad.
Once some form of contact is established, via a follow, subscribe or submission of details, the contact is then exposed to a series of content resources in various targeted media to build a positive association and make a sale.
More established businesses will usually have a customer base that they already have a relationship with, but probably only have limited contact with that base via digital means. With the accelerated growth of online purchasing, a local business needs to increase that level of contact and then expand it to create new customers.
Global or Local?
Whereas an e-commerce business is designed to work countrywide or worldwide, a local business might have some restrictions based on the business type. For instance, a company in Coventry that sells soap bars can easily transfer their business to a more global scale.
However, the window cleaner or roofer in the next building would need a more local targeted approach and would have to be restricted to digital marketing in the Coventry area. This would also be true for any business where the customer needs to be physically present for the transaction to take place, like a barber or nail bar.
Digital Marketing Agency
Once the digital marketing agency has set about re-creating the relationship the local business has with its customers on digital platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, it can use the 24/7 nature of those platforms to present offers to customer more frequently (or in a more timely manner) than could be done on the traditional 9-5 basis.
This will allow the business to create more revenue by selling to that customer more frequently (ie the local bakery/sandwich shop posting a picture of a bacon sandwich or similar every morning) instead of previously when the customer is ‘reminded’ about the bakery as they happen to be driving past on the way to a job.
This exposure also allows them to showcase new and more expensive products to the same customer without having to get them to ‘happen’ past again. Strategies like these have proved very effective for many local businesses who have engaged digital marketing companies to run targeted campaigns for them.