Looking to make your small business a success? Here are some important budgeting tips and digital advertising trends that could be integral to your future.
If you’ve got a small business, naturally you want to make it lucrative. The best way to achieve this goal is through mobile and – more specifically – app marketing. The fact of the matter is that if you want to survive in today’s dog-eat-dog business world you need to outshine your competition or, at the very least, be on the same level. This can’t be achieved without a mobile presence. Like it or not, we live in a digital age and if you want to reach your target market, you need to employ the right marketing strategy.
In short: Mobile is the future and if you’re not targeting mobile users you will miss out on massive monetization opportunity.
Create your budget before you spend
Yes, there are many effective digital marketing strategies that you can put into place that could help your small business thrive and grow. However, before you get lost in marketing schemes, you need to consider your budget. Not having a budget  – and an intelligent one at that – could sink your startup. Knowing how much you can spend is more important than figuring out how to spend it.
How can you calculate your budget? One of the most simplest and best ways is to ask yourself these 5 important questions:
- What are you currently spending on your marketing? If you are paying a sales representative or if you have poured money into other marketing materials like a storefront a website, etc. calculate how much you’ve already spent because this will help you understand how much money you have left to play with.
- What does my business need? Do you require more brand awareness, more sales or more leads?
- How fast can I afford to grow my small business? How much can you afford to spend on what your company needs and how much of this profit are you willing to give away to the client?
- Can I take the risk to test different marketing strategies? Marketing is a gamble and you might not get the ROI you were hoping for.
- How can I minimize risks?Figuring out how to reduce the marketing risks that you will need to take can result in allowing you to take your budget further.
Explore the benefits of digital marketing
Once you know your budget, you can then start looking into the different digital marketing methods that may be the most ideal for your business. As an extra bonus, you’ll find that with digital marketing you will have greater budget management control. The beauty of digital anything is that digital means data and data is highly measurable, giving you the power to monitor what is and isn’t working.
With that in mind, the following are 3digital advertising trends that may help to benefit your small business.
- Native advertising – this form of advertising is really taking off. The reason is that users generally have a positive response to native ads when it is done well. Unlike banner ads or display advertising, native ads are subtle and not intrusive. Not only are they extremely relevant to the brand, they are seamlessly integrated into the content that surrounds it and provide value to the audience.
- Interactive content – users don’t just want to read content, they want to interact with it. Infographics, quizzes, polls, etc. are essential forms of marketing in an age where ads that contain only written content or are solely visual are typically lost in a ocean of advertisements.
- Video – video content is king and it’s everywhere on social media from YouTube to Facebook to Twitter. According to an Invodo report, the video viewership on mobile exceeded that of desktop since the fourth quarter of 2015. If you want to target Millennials, you need to have a video presence. YouTube is an advertising powerhouse as are other forms of social media.