When you’re running a small to medium-sized business, usually — every penny matters. With rising inflation costs alongside higher wages and higher worker benefit liabilities, marketing is often the last thing on most small business owners’ minds. Neglecting digital branding and marketing, however, is a huge mistake and could end up costing even a small physical location revenue or, in the worst-case scenario, the entire business itself.

Breaking The Myth That Digital Marketing For Small Businesses Is A Nice-To-Have

While some brick-and-mortar businesses can rely solely on a great location, high foot traffic, or word-of-mouth, a large swath of business owners don’t find themselves in an ideal situation, especially for their first location. Even those who can get away with this by providing a superior product or service offering can still greatly benefit from stronger digital marketing.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, the shift to online retail has been apparent in the United States over the last two decades. According to Statista, US e-commerce sales are expected to hit an eye-watering $1.2 trillion in 2024. The rub is that even if you don’t currently sell online (which you probably should if possible), 74% of in-store shoppers search online before visiting an in-store location, according to a recent Google/Ipsos survey.

With stats like these, it’s clear that your business requires a strong online digital presence, or you run the risk of tarnishing your reputation before the customer even visits. Digital marketing in today’s landscape is more of a sink-or-swim necessity rather than a nice-to-have “extra” that only big companies can afford.

How Digital Marketing Helps & How It Can Hurt

Not all digital marketing is created equal. And no, this is not a segue into “please get marketing from Think Tank Consulting.” I’ve been doing marketing and communications for well over a decade at this point, and I’ve seen it all. Affiliates overpromising, “gurus” giving bad advice, large agencies planning an “innovative evolution” only to underperform and have no impact on the underlying business. You may have even hired a consultant or an in-house specialist who has yet to do anything and are still wondering why you hired them in the first place.

I’m here to tell you that you’re not alone, and you’re not even wrong.

Let’s take, for example, a school we recently worked with. Previously, the school was working with an antiquated website, which got new students via email that students had to find on the website. To any digital marketer, this process is flawed. For the awesome educators at the school, it wasn’t as obvious.

By merely relaunching the website, improving its useability, and implementing SEO tactics, we were able to rank #1 regionally for the school in Google, increased website traffic by over 44% three months after the website launched, and now they generate hundreds of inquiries through a focused funnel. If you’re wondering how this all matters — the more prospective students that showed interest, the more students that enrolled, which equaled over a 30% increase in revenue for the owner YoY. From here, we have the foundation, and using other methods like paid ads and other marketing campaigns, we are able to drive even more students their way and set even loftier goals.

On the flip side, let’s take another example. You research a marketing company near you, and they send you a proposal that you agree to — but the project runs over the timeline, and once the website is launched, you’re not feeling much of an impact. The company tells you to “be patient,” and three months later, you’re not sure if this is actually working or not. The company is reluctant to give you access to the raw metrics — the Google Analytics or the backend of the website. You’re in the dark, and you’ve just spent a lot of money that could be used to reinvest in the business, and you feel like you’ve wasted money. This is NOT the way it should feel or should be.

How To Find A Good Marketing Agency

As a small business owner, it’s imperative that you ask the right questions, especially when “stress testing” or “proofing” a new agency. How will this campaign bring in new customers? What is the goal, or what kind of measurable results do you expect to see? How long will it take for new customers to come through the door? These questions aren’t to “challenge” the agency by any means; it’s to set clear communication and agree on a set of standards and goals moving forward. If they have no concept or no window or can’t give you some level of projection, it’s a red flag.

The second thing to look out for is if the company is asking you the right questions. A good agency will have to intimately understand your business and customers in order to have success. Questions like how you tend to acquire customers now or what your goals are for hiring us should be paramount. “Building a new and more user-friendly website” is a task, not a strategy. The strategy is to “relaunch your business’s digital presence to drive more online leads/conversions and increase revenue.” HOW you get there will depend on the strategy of the company.

A good agency will educate as much as they execute on campaigns. If there’s something specific that you want to understand on the backend, like issues with your Google Ad campaign, they won’t obfuscate it with excuses as to why you shouldn’t have access. You own the property (or at least you should), so you should also understand how everything works. This includes access to your GA4 or any other database or analytics that the company can share.

Digital marketing and the steps required to pull off a successful campaign require nuance, experience, and skill — but the results of every campaign should drive revenue (in some way) to your business. If the digital agency you’ve hired costs more than you’re seeing your bottom line shift, it’s simple arithmetic that they might not be worth it. Some campaigns might have a longer-term timeline, especially if you have larger goals, but there are KPIs and metrics along the way that will signal that you’re at least going in the right direction.

To learn more about marketing with our company, fill out the form on the Work With Us page for an initial evaluation and consultation.