How digital can help start you small and still make you big?

There is always a narrative of digital marketing being a cost effective method of selling your products/services and helping create a brand that carries all new age qualities. An entrepreneur can understand the nuances of digital much better from an advertiser. One such interesting conversation.

Entrepreneur – Its tricky at times to talk to an advertiser who would always chase someone like me to start thinking to invest on brand, marketing budget etc. etc. How would you approach the context from your perspective?

Advertiser – I would simply say change is what entrepreneurship creates and change is what digital will help you bring into table always! As an entrepreneur you would have to keep a fine balance between your advertising or marketing budget and the cost of using a marketing channel. This means you can control the money spend on digital based on its performance unlike other traditional channels like TV and prints where one time cost is usually higher.

Entrepreneur – Interesting, but how about a brand that doesn’t need marketing or digital. We stand tall for our product quality.

Advertiser – It is indeed tedious for you to reach a larger part of your target audience through organic means. However a well planned marketing plan can give you cost effective results where relevant digital channel can be leveraged keeping in mind your customer's behaviour as your customers are connected more than before due to smartphone usage and internet penetration.

Entrepreneur – Ok, why don’t you tell me how you would ideally take my product to a million masses?

Advertiser – Regardless of any product or media it’s very important to understand the customer better.  Who are your customers? What do they want? How do they want it? Where will they buy it? Technology today is creating a highly conducive environment for advertisers like me take informed decisions on choosing marketing channels rather going ahead with more expensive and traditional media.

Every digital channel has its purpose as the customers indulge in various activities like searching,  emails, social media engagement etc. Hence its imperative to understand how every channel works and engage on various plans to execute good campaigns. 

Mostly digital marketing is a a little too much to consume together as you need to break it up to identify right tactic and strategy for it. Marketing is evolving online primary because of internet and users who are employing it for lifestyle, transactional and utilitarian needs. This resulted in various forms of new media, information search engines, chat applications, online portals, e-commerce and email communications and so on. All of which led to digital marketing becoming more precise, increasingly focused towards technology to find the right customer and ways to crack extra ordinary concepts to attract new customers, engage the existing and stay relevant to all. Digital marketing can be categorised to various sub forms as below.

Entrepreneur – How difficult it would be to execute this, as I don’t have a team of my own?

Advertiser – Digital marketing works on various stages within a budget. For example, you can prioritise your investment in time and money on free marketing tactics like SEO for your website, social media presence and consistency in content based on audience and product, definitely a host of other inbound marketing steps like blogs. This doesn't require a team even you can do it if holding basic writing and design skills. However if you need complementary skills please rely on freelancers or agencies. All of them provide value based on time, money and quality of work.

Marketing analytics tool will ensure every marketing spend is rightly measured and optimised for taking corrective steps. However, more digital trends will demand updated knowledge and skill set hence giving the domain more importance. 

Hence, digital marketing gives control over the marketing money and ways to leverage relevant channels to derive maximum value.