IMPORTANCE OF DIGITAL MARKETING FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM BUSINESS IN THESE PANDEMIC DAYS

 INTRODUCTION  

             The widespread small and medium scale business around the world due to pandemic situation is unprecedented. They have closed by downward demand shifts, health concerns,  financial status and other factors. But still some business sustained oneself  with the help of digital marketing. In this digital era everything is digitalized. Before pandemic situation SME's (Small and medium sized enterprise) played a physical role in the society. But during pandemic days SME's transformed to digital. Digitalisation reduces transaction cost, quick access to information and communication. It helps SME's integrate into global markets through reduction in cost. Yet despite all the benefits and opportunities digital technologies bring, many small and medium sized businesses continues to lag in adoption. But digital marketing helps SME's to stringing up everyday

IMPORTANCE OF DIGITAL MARKETING

• One of the most notable role of digital marketing is that it gives everyone equal chances. Anyone from anywhere can avail this. Even the SME's can compete with large scale business.
• During these pandemic days SME's focused more on return on investment (ROI) which is fulfilled by Digital marketing. By the way it helps them to earn more effectively with higher profits.
• The another important thing is that digital marketing allows us to reach people worldwide. With digital marketing SME's focused on the people who is interested in their products which is not possible in traditional marketing. 

" Digital marketing is not an art of selling a product. It is the art of making people buy the product you sell" -HECATE STATERGY

IMPORTANT PLATFORMS 

 Small and medium sized businesses used many digital platforms to enhance their business during this pandemic days. A digital marketing platform is a solution that supports a variety of function within the realm of marketing over the internet. Some common platforms used by SME's are

1. Social media marketing 
2. Email Marketing 
3. Search engine optimization 
4. Mobile marketing 
5. Content marketing 

"Digital marketing is more than just getting likes and comments " -RAHUL PANDAY

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING: Nowadays customers are more engaged in social media. The famous platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and snapchat. These platforms allow marketers to reach their prospects in a myriad of ways. Buying and selling if goods made even more easier by the means of social media. Because of its flexibility and time consuming most teenagers prefer to buy through social media. As a result through social media marketing SME's had a great results. 

EMAIL MARKETING: Email Marketing allow SME's to create targeted and personalized messages for their customers. This helps in building a meaningful relationship with their customers. It can also improve response rates to their direct marketing campaigns. While compared to traditional methods it's so fast and cost free and available for 24/7 which helps SME's to collect their customers needs. With the help of Email Marketing SME's can do things effectively. 

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: A good SEO optimize your visibility online. SEO is made up of multiple elements, knowing what they are and how they work is the important one. By SEO, SME's made their business more easier. SEO made their website more visible and that means more traffic and more opportunities to convert prospects into customers. The ultimate goal of SEO for business is to generate organic traffic—searchers clicking through to your website from a search engine results page

MOBILE MARKETING: Mobile marketing initiatives can include many of the digital marketing strategies and typically will leverage a combination of text messages, social media, email, push notifications and mobile applications. Mobile marketing is cost effectiveness, location targeting, instant real-time transactions, shareability and virality. Because of these effective uses SME's used mobile marketing to stick out with their customers. Which lend a helping hand to survive. 

CONTENT MARKETING: Content marketing is a marketing focused on creating, publishing and distributing content doe a targeted online audiences. SME's used this content marketing in order to achieve the following goals: attract attention and generate leads, expand their customer base, generating or increasing online sales, increase brand awareness and so on. First of all they will identify the customers needs after that the information can be presented in a variety of formats such as blogs, podcast, e-books etc...

NOTABLE CHARACTERISTICS 

Because of some major reasons digital marketing plays a vital role in small and medium sized enterprise during these pandemic days. Those characters are specific and notable. They include

• Affordability 
• Mobile access
• Flexibility 
• Expansion
• Multimedia 

AFFORDABILITY : Digital marketing is considerably less expensive than other marketing methods. Specific prices vary based on what you are doing but ad spend tends to be lower than other forms of marketing .

MOBILE ACCESS: Smart phones were used by most of the people in the world. They surf for various purposes such as entertainment, news, social networking etc...Digital marketing helps them to reach with remarketing ads, text emails marketing. 

FLEXIBILITY: There are many forms and uses of high quality digital marketing, including banner ads, content marketing and social media marketing. With digital marketing they have the flexibility of testing and stooping poorly performing campaigns in real time.

EXPANSION: Many customers do almost all of their shopping online. Digital marketing lets them to appeal to those people and thus expand the reach of your company. They can expand their brand recognition and boost sales.

MULTIMEDIA: Customers tend to engage more with marketing material that combine multiple type of content, including photos, video clips and audio. It is far easy to incorporate all these content types into digital marketing than any other type of publicity.

                   Even big companies with large marketing budgets need to be conscious of how they spend their marketing dollars. One of the greatest benefits of digital marketing is that these tactics are both affordable  and effective.  That's why it made even more easier for small and medium sized enterprise.

HOW THEY MADE IT ?

• SME's only have limited sources. Spending money to advertise traditionally is seems to be hard. Even the need to print flyers for their business is expensive. But with digital marketing, SME's can start the process immediately. They only need to conduct some studies 
• Not only on the advertisement side, but on the other side also digital marketing made it so easier. It gives SME's a better return on investment (ROI) because most of the customers can be seen online. ROI identify your investment's gains and gives financial returns. 
• There are billions of people using their mobile phones to do research or scroll through social media. By the way SME's reach out their customers with digital marketing through mobile phones. As a result they can engage with customers easily and communicate with them.

"Ignoring digital marketing is like representing your business without any audience." -  JASON MATTHEW

CONCLUSION  

"If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business " - BILL GATES

Not everyone can survive, not everyone can overcome, but the one who have guts can do anything. As a result small and medium sized businesses sustained easily with the help of digital marketing. As digital marketing played a major role during these pandemic days . With short period, with short equipment, with short resources, DIGITAL MARKETING made SME's to survive. Those effects can be seen virtually by everyone.