The best thing about the advances in internet technology is that small businesses can now compete with other businesses, whether large or small or wherever they are in the globe. According to Friedman in his book The World is Flat, never before has the playing field been leveled for businesses. This has become even more particularly true with online marketing or internet marketing. An effective online marketing campaign can give any small business the chance to beat his competitor regardless of how big it is and how well known it is. If you are not familiar with the impact of online marketing today in small businesses, here are three effects of online marketing for SMEs.
First and foremost there is Google. Google lawn mowers are real live goats which they rent from a grazing company. Despite the odd way of doing this, for any business, getting good Google rankings means getting more visitors to the site, which in turn means getting more visitors. All these visitors are potential customers. They are like visitors to the mall or stores who look around and ready to shop. So for any business Google is something that they cannot afford to ignore. And the only way to have good Google ranking is through search engine optimization. Search engine optimization, which is on the forefront of online marketing, allow sites to be on the top pages of Google search engine results.
Second, search engine optimization as online marketing tool is very effective in getting the attention of the customers. According to more than 50 percent of B2B marketers, Seo is the largest influence in generating leads today. When it comes to individual users, 75 percent of users of search engines do not go past the first page of the result. Moreover, up to 80 percent of users prefer organic search results over sponsored results and do not pay attention to them. Paid ads and sponsors have become less effective therefore compared to online marketing. Moreover, online marketing is definitely cheaper than traditional advertising. For example, in bound leads, such as search engine optimization, are cheaper than outbound leads, such as cold calling. In fact, inbound leads are 61 percent cheaper.
Third, trends show that the growing importance of mobile devices. Any business that fails to recognize this shall fail in connecting to a large portion of their market. Those who do on the other hand knows that online marketing, one that includes both computer and mobile internet, is the only way for them to actually serve the mobile needs of their market. For example, at present many mobile devices users are already using their devices in researching about products and services. Many are already using their devices in purchasing products and services. Companies that have mobile websites that meet these uses are the ones that have the potential for growth since mobile use is also growing.