Why is a digital marketing strategy important for smes?
Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2025 8:36 am
A few years ago, marketing and advertising meant buying radio time, paying for television advertising, or placing print ads. A company's marketing budget was used to hire an advertising agency or English language specialists.
Nowadays, things have changed. Now, the marketing budget, regardless of the size of the company, must be focused on SEO, ads, social networks,market research, emails, etc. Companies that understand this spend approximately 35% of their budget on digital.
But why is digital marketing important for SMEs?
"Hedigital marketing“It is essential for small denmark whatsapp lead medium-sized businesses,” says Simon Grabowsky, CEO and founder of GetResponse. “Digital marketers are changing the online world because the ROI that can be achieved through digital marketing strategies is substantial.”
What does this mean? ROI is now much easier to measure, data is readily available and this allows decisions to be made in real time, and a more positive ROI is obtained: costs are lower and results are greater.
Since 2013, we've been conducting online surveys to find out how much businesses are using digital marketing. And the results have shown us great improvements over the past few years.
Importance of digital marketing for SMEs
A few years ago, approximately 66% of SMEs did not have a digital marketing plan in place. And today, that percentage has dropped to approximately 49% of companies. Even though the number is still high, at least this figure means that most companies have already started to take digital marketing into account in their growth plan.
Looking at the graph, we can say that our research suggests an improvement in the percentage of companies interested in approaching the digital world or that already have a Digital Marketing strategy . (Congratulations if you are one of these companies!)
I invite you to read:Inbound Marketing: essential methodology in Digital Marketing
The approach I recommend to improve and/or get closer to Digital Marketing
Whether you have a strategy or not, the key to improving digital marketing is based on comparing where you are today versus where you see yourself in the future.
It is about defining objectives that can be met in the short, medium or long term. Once this is done, what you will have to do is, based on these objectives, determine what your strategies will be that will help you achieve them, which you can do yourself after analyzing your company or with the help of a specialized digital marketing agency, which is the most recommended.
I honestly don't think you need to start with a huge report. A strategy can easily be summarized in two or three pages. What's important is that you link digital marketing strategies to SMART goals or objectives in these pages. As easy as it may seem, the truth is that many organizations don't have a plan in place.
approach to digital marketing if you are an SME
Doing digital marketing without a strategy is common. In fact, I'm sure that many companies only use social media and since they get good results, they think that's digital marketing.
But I am sure that many of them are missing out on opportunities due to not having clear objectives and not having an optimized marketing strategy . The most common thought within an SME is that only large companies are those that have the budget to hire a digital marketing agency or the right people to sit down and establish and execute an entire digital marketing plan.
And there is nothing more wrong than that, if we remember what I told you at the beginning about ROI, it is even more important for small and medium-sized companies to have an established digital marketing strategy .
If you don't have a strategy yet, or maybe you're interested in knowing what are the important points or problems that need to be addressed with a strategy, here's a list for you: these are the 10 most common problems that arise when you don't have one.
10 reasons why you might need a digital marketing strategy:
1. You don't have a set address
I have often noticed that companies without a digital marketing strategy do not have clear goals. These types of companies do not have in mind what they want to achieve through the digital tools they use: whether it is to obtain more engagement, have more reach, obtain new clients, etc.
2. You don't know your online customers well
If you haven't researched your buyer personas, you're probably underestimating the importance of online services. The truth is that it's extremely important to understand what your digital market is. The behavior that a company should have in this world depends on the different types of customer profiles, their behavior, etc. And that's why it's very important to know your market if you're looking to create an online strategy .
3. You don't have a powerful value proposition in the online world
A defined value proposition will help you differentiate yourself from other businesses. Not only that, but it makes you harder to copy (yes, sometimes the competition can run out of creativity). Also, by offering a value proposition, your prices become less elastic.
You might be interested in reading:How to increase my company's profitability?
4. You are not integrated
It's common for marketing activities to be completed in a disintegrated manner. It's easier that way. But the truth is that digital marketing works best when it's integrated with traditional marketing.
5. You are wasting time and money
Even if you have enough resources, you are only wasting them if you are not measuring them. This often happens in companies that just do things for the sake of doing them but do not collect the data or do not make significant use of it. They simply leave it there, unused.
6. You are not aware of your tendencies
You need to monitor what's happening in the digital world to know what to offer and how to counter your competitors' offers. It's not about reading Facebook news all day, but about tracking hashtags that your customers use, detecting what they're talking about, what posts they're commenting on and sharing. Even those they don't like.
7. You think Facebook is enough
Having a Facebook page doesn't mean you're doing Digital Marketing. At the very least, you should have a website and a social network, whether it's Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, depending on where your audience is. You should also monitor your data, check and measure your results (your numbers from the week versus the previous week) and make decisions and take action based on these.
If you identified with any of these 7 problems, you need to start an evaluation of your digital marketing or start considering the design of a strategy. Having a digital marketing strategy taking this into account will allow you to progress and continually improve.
Nowadays, things have changed. Now, the marketing budget, regardless of the size of the company, must be focused on SEO, ads, social networks,market research, emails, etc. Companies that understand this spend approximately 35% of their budget on digital.
But why is digital marketing important for SMEs?
"Hedigital marketing“It is essential for small denmark whatsapp lead medium-sized businesses,” says Simon Grabowsky, CEO and founder of GetResponse. “Digital marketers are changing the online world because the ROI that can be achieved through digital marketing strategies is substantial.”
What does this mean? ROI is now much easier to measure, data is readily available and this allows decisions to be made in real time, and a more positive ROI is obtained: costs are lower and results are greater.
Since 2013, we've been conducting online surveys to find out how much businesses are using digital marketing. And the results have shown us great improvements over the past few years.
Importance of digital marketing for SMEs
A few years ago, approximately 66% of SMEs did not have a digital marketing plan in place. And today, that percentage has dropped to approximately 49% of companies. Even though the number is still high, at least this figure means that most companies have already started to take digital marketing into account in their growth plan.
Looking at the graph, we can say that our research suggests an improvement in the percentage of companies interested in approaching the digital world or that already have a Digital Marketing strategy . (Congratulations if you are one of these companies!)
I invite you to read:Inbound Marketing: essential methodology in Digital Marketing
The approach I recommend to improve and/or get closer to Digital Marketing
Whether you have a strategy or not, the key to improving digital marketing is based on comparing where you are today versus where you see yourself in the future.
It is about defining objectives that can be met in the short, medium or long term. Once this is done, what you will have to do is, based on these objectives, determine what your strategies will be that will help you achieve them, which you can do yourself after analyzing your company or with the help of a specialized digital marketing agency, which is the most recommended.
I honestly don't think you need to start with a huge report. A strategy can easily be summarized in two or three pages. What's important is that you link digital marketing strategies to SMART goals or objectives in these pages. As easy as it may seem, the truth is that many organizations don't have a plan in place.
approach to digital marketing if you are an SME
Doing digital marketing without a strategy is common. In fact, I'm sure that many companies only use social media and since they get good results, they think that's digital marketing.
But I am sure that many of them are missing out on opportunities due to not having clear objectives and not having an optimized marketing strategy . The most common thought within an SME is that only large companies are those that have the budget to hire a digital marketing agency or the right people to sit down and establish and execute an entire digital marketing plan.
And there is nothing more wrong than that, if we remember what I told you at the beginning about ROI, it is even more important for small and medium-sized companies to have an established digital marketing strategy .
If you don't have a strategy yet, or maybe you're interested in knowing what are the important points or problems that need to be addressed with a strategy, here's a list for you: these are the 10 most common problems that arise when you don't have one.
10 reasons why you might need a digital marketing strategy:
1. You don't have a set address
I have often noticed that companies without a digital marketing strategy do not have clear goals. These types of companies do not have in mind what they want to achieve through the digital tools they use: whether it is to obtain more engagement, have more reach, obtain new clients, etc.
2. You don't know your online customers well
If you haven't researched your buyer personas, you're probably underestimating the importance of online services. The truth is that it's extremely important to understand what your digital market is. The behavior that a company should have in this world depends on the different types of customer profiles, their behavior, etc. And that's why it's very important to know your market if you're looking to create an online strategy .
3. You don't have a powerful value proposition in the online world
A defined value proposition will help you differentiate yourself from other businesses. Not only that, but it makes you harder to copy (yes, sometimes the competition can run out of creativity). Also, by offering a value proposition, your prices become less elastic.
You might be interested in reading:How to increase my company's profitability?
4. You are not integrated
It's common for marketing activities to be completed in a disintegrated manner. It's easier that way. But the truth is that digital marketing works best when it's integrated with traditional marketing.
5. You are wasting time and money
Even if you have enough resources, you are only wasting them if you are not measuring them. This often happens in companies that just do things for the sake of doing them but do not collect the data or do not make significant use of it. They simply leave it there, unused.
6. You are not aware of your tendencies
You need to monitor what's happening in the digital world to know what to offer and how to counter your competitors' offers. It's not about reading Facebook news all day, but about tracking hashtags that your customers use, detecting what they're talking about, what posts they're commenting on and sharing. Even those they don't like.
7. You think Facebook is enough
Having a Facebook page doesn't mean you're doing Digital Marketing. At the very least, you should have a website and a social network, whether it's Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, depending on where your audience is. You should also monitor your data, check and measure your results (your numbers from the week versus the previous week) and make decisions and take action based on these.
If you identified with any of these 7 problems, you need to start an evaluation of your digital marketing or start considering the design of a strategy. Having a digital marketing strategy taking this into account will allow you to progress and continually improve.