Navigating digital marketing for SMBs

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) stand at a digital crossroads. Once the exclusive domain of large corporations with deep pockets, the digital marketing landscape is now becoming increasingly accessible to smaller players. Yet, for many SMB owners, the question remains: how can they navigate this complex terrain without getting lost in the turbulence?

Danielle Senekal, senior digital campaign lead at +OneX, a new-age solutions and systems integrator, draws an intriguing parallel between digital marketing and air travel. “When you board a plane, you trust the crew to follow a set of behind-the-scene checks that will ensure a safe journey,” she says. “Imagine if marketing for a small or medium business could be as smooth and seamless.”

While we may not have reached that level of automation yet, recent advances in digital marketing are bringing us closer to a world where SMB owners can set their destination and trust in the process. Digital platforms have evolved beyond mere alternatives to traditional offline marketing methods like billboards or flyers. They now offer cost-effective and automated ways to scale businesses and engage with customers.

Today’s businesses can leverage advanced programmatic advertising, artificial intelligence (AI)-driven targeting, and retargeting strategies to boost visibility and drive specific traffic effectively. Paid advertising has transformed into a powerful set of tools and solutions that make it relatively simple for SMBs to implement complex, multi-channel campaigns.

The digital marketing landscape continues to evolve, driven by technological advances, changing consumer behaviours, and algorithmic updates. AI and machine learning are enabling personalisation and automation of marketing efforts, while emerging technologies like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) promise to create new, immersive brand experiences.

Consumer behaviour has undergone dramatic shifts over the past decade, with the rise of voice search, new social channels like TikTok, mobile-first shopping and search, and increasing consumption of video content. These changes significantly impact how paid media campaigns are designed and executed.

Just as pilots monitor and adapt for safe travel when weather conditions change, SMBs need to remain flexible as the digital marketing environment shifts. By doing so, they can steer their campaigns towards success in the competitive digital landscape, achieving goals and maintaining market relevance by reaching customers with personalised messaging.

The good news is that one doesn’t need to be a data and algorithms expert to reach marketing goals. Implementing tags on a website is akin to putting a plane on autopilot once it’s reached a certain altitude, automating processes to efficiently target the right audience with tailored messages.

However, many small businesses struggle to take these initial steps. That’s why Senekal and her team have developed a new approach: partnering with startups and small businesses to guide them onto the right platforms and empower them to pilot their own campaigns. This strategy minimises initial hurdles that have often discouraged smaller companies from embracing digital marketing, granting access to tools and capabilities typically exclusive to larger competitors.

To kickstart a SMB digital marketing strategy, Senekal recommends several steps:

1. Manage tracking tags efficiently with Google Tag Manager (GTM)
2. Track user behaviour with GA4 (Google Analytics)
3. Link Google AdWords to Google Analytics
4. Install Pixels for Meta, X, and TikTok
5. Verify Pixel installations with helper extensions
6. Align campaign setups with GTM and GA4
7. Use UTM parameters for campaign tracking
8. Optimise campaigns based on specific goals
9. Create custom audiences and lookalike audiences
10. Consider platform-specific conversion volume thresholds

For businesses with low sales volumes, Senekal advises optimising campaigns for earlier stages of the customer journey, such as add-to-cart or sign-up actions, when more data is available. This ensures that campaigns remain effective with limited conversion data. Once conversion volumes increase and reach the recommended thresholds, businesses can switch to optimising for the final conversion goal, such as sales.

As the digital marketing landscape continues to evolve, SMBs have an unprecedented opportunity to harness powerful tools and strategies that were once the exclusive domain of larger enterprises. With the right guidance and tools, these businesses can take their marketing success to new heights, navigating the complex digital airspace with the confidence of a seasoned pilot.

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