Brand identity and brand awareness are always two concepts at the forefront of every marketing strategy regardless of the nature of business or organization. Often at times, small businesses will struggle to make it to the radar with insufficient or ineffective attempts at making their brand known to the public.
However, thanks to the versatile nature of the tech, it is much easier to grow and expand the bounds of the business by knowing how to utilize the digital landscape properly and this is what we will be focusing on today.
An Effective Use of Time and Resources
One of the reasons why small businesses marketing can now and even compete to a certain extent with established and well-reputed companies is because digital marketing is not nearly as expensive or resource-heavy than traditional marketing (billboards, TV ads, newspaper and magazine entries etc.).
Furthermore, thanks to the many analytical tools provided by popular platforms like Facebook Audience Insights, Google Trends, and Google Analytics, every marketer regardless of the scope and financial position of the company can employ a sufficient strategy to target its audience and spread the word of the brand.
In fact, due to the highly affordable nature of digital marketing for business and the ease with which marketers can carry it out, almost 40% of the companies claimed that using a digital marketing strategy led to considerable savings for the money to be spent elsewhere. Furthermore, the results also reflect the success of such a marketing strategy as digital marketing helps companies have a 2.8 times better revenue growth expectancy. There’s also the aspect of internal growth of the company, as internet marketing is 3.3 times more likely to allow businesses to expand their workforce and user base.
So what exactly are the many channels made accessible via digital marketing?
The brand’s website
First and foremost, digital marketing for business is all about creating a digital ‘presence’. This is where the information hub for your brand as a business and as an ‘investment’ of trust and money lies. Your website must seamlessly integrate the latest design trends and optimum usability.
From the ‘About Us’ section for detailing the goal or vision of the brand to ‘Contact Us’ page for details to get in touch by proceeding forth with the deal, a website is a must even if the associated company operates entirely out of a physical store following the ‘brick-and-motor’ model.
Marketers know the real value of online presence since having a website more or less puts you on the radar when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Here it is when the valuable metrics come into play including traffic, click-through rates, conversion rates and bounce-rates, domain authority (DA). This puts the focus on optimizing both the desktop and mobile versions of the website to establish a user-convenient and streamlined platform.
From effective Call-to-Actions (CTAs) to an intuitive and interactive navigation bar, every little detail adds to the overall reputation and confidence among the users as well as the search engine ranking algorithms. Backlinks, which serve as references that redirect back to your company’s website, are especially significant when it comes to ranking higher in the organic search results.
Page load times are also an important factor that contributes to the overall user experience and such an aspect is especially relevant to mobile optimization as Google highly values the metric for ranking purposes. Of course, above all, a website is the personification or the identity of any brand when it operates in an online environment. With specific color palettes, patterns, design choices and page layouts, the website is the visual reflection and representation of what your brand is all about.
Social media and shareable content
We can’t host a conversation about digital marketing for business without bringing social media into the picture. As the numbers suggest, almost 71% of small businesses marketing utilize social media in one way or another in their digital marketing strategies.
Apart from the Audience Insight Tool for a segmented marketing approach, Facebook is ahead of the other social networking and media sites thanks to its video ads and live podcasts. As videos constitute to 135% more organic reach compared to image-based advertisements.
From a survey hosted by HubSpot, 76% company owners said that advertising via video content helped them increase their sales while 81% of the surveyed individuals claimed to have successfully convinced a visitor to purchase a product online via video content. It’s no surprise that YouTube is now the second largest search engine in the world after Google, and processes almost 3 billion searches every month.
Most importantly, 83% of consumers are likely to share content with their close friends and relatives if it’s in video format, which brings us to the next important aspect of online marketing: shareable content.
Apart from Facebook, other platforms including Twitter and Instagram are all about redirecting traffic to-and-fro between the business’ website and these social networking platforms. Twitter is especially viable when creating the buzz for any new arrivals or trending products for the business and any issues are addressed directly with satisfactory responses. An astounding 82% of users actively engage with brands on Twitter. With Instagram, we have the Insta Story or short videos that have 250m daily active users.
Why social media sharing is so important?
Sharing is important not just because of the awareness for the brand it creates, but the positive reviews and impressions you can potentially spread among the dear friends of the individual who made a purchase. This ‘social proof’ concept is relevant to business strategists because all individuals look forward to people with authority or experience, namely those who’ve tried a particular service and if it’s a close relative or a credible source, then the reputation and authenticity of the business also receive a huge boost.
OfferFactor is e-commerce specializing in clothing & apparel which, in addition to providing the social media icons on its product pages, will ask for permissions to sync the shopping cart with the Facebook Messenger app.
Source: Offer Factor
This is activated by default, so there’s a constant reminder to the individual of cart expiry which is good as an anti-cart-abandonment measure.
Source: Offer Factor
Email marketing
Finally, the fact that people regularly like to check their inboxes cannot be overlooked. This makes the channel, a primary one for daily or monthly reminders in the form of newsletters about any promotions, special discounts or voucher codes and customer services including electronic receipts. The numbers speak volumes as well since email marketing is reportedly said to have an incredible ROI of 3800%.
Then there’s the matter of email lists which you can utilize to promote a new range of products on every special occasion. Here the number of newsletters you roll out and their quality and relevance for the particular individual matters. PlayStation does a good job in this regard by constantly keeping in touching with its players, which is the core value they stand on as evident in their slogan: ‘This is for the players’.
Apart from handing out free voucher codes, communicating any advancements or purchases from the PlayStation store, the company will even congratulate the player on completion of a video game and sometimes, if you’re lucky, even get 10$ allotted to your account as a kind gesture from the company. As this year ended, PlayStation rolled out interesting statistics associated with every player that counted the number of hours they’d spent on a daily basis, which games they played the most and how many trophies they earned while doing so. This is an excellent case of when businesses are willing to nurture their relationships with their users and strive to continue improving and building upon it.
Source: Sony
Conclusion
An online environment houses just the right tools and tech that can help you understand the user’s behavior and patterns, target them accordingly and allow them to share the experience with their dear comrades ultimately helping the business gain traction, recognition, and credibility as it continues to expand and spend more resources on digital marketing for business via the social media and email channels.
There is always a debate going on between the Mass marketing and the niche marketing to select which is the most effective way of marketing that will help in advertising in both the ways: in digital media simultaneously it should work out in the traditional marketing technique. However, mass marketing is inclined more towards Offline media or traditional marketing. Whereas, niche marketing is lent towards the digital platform or digital marketing. The marketing predominantly is of two types till now so as the methods, which filters out to be Niche marketing or Mass marketing.
Let’s have an in-depth analysis of the marketing method and know more about it.
What is mass marketing and niche marketing?
Mass Marketing
Mass marketing is the full opposite of Niche Marketing. Here, a single person deals with the whole and larger group of people or a company. On the other hand, we can say mass marketing as something which can be denoted as the marketing strategy that incorporates mass media and the huge distribution. Which directly gives a conclusion that you are targeting each and every sector and all the demographic regions.
The mass marketing only targets a group of people or you can say the mass, this derives actual meaning that relies on its name. Reaching to a huge number of audience, exposure of the product in the market to as many customers as possible, the sole aim is to target all the users and have a larger amount of sales or buying for the products. Its motto is a huge amount of sales at a low cost and providing all those kind of services which will appeal to everyone who is in the market as well as the customers.
This strategy is usually included by all the big and top corporate companies and some of the well-known brands such as Coca-Cola, FedEx.
Niche Marketing
Niche marketing focuses only on a specific product first. So, the niche marketing strategy targets the small, specific and well-defined portion of people which you target include only those who are already in your list and are the target people. Organizations adopting these techniques are known as the concentrated or focused way of marketing. It first identifies a specific segment and then makes a strategy according to the market need, habits and preferences.
Niche marketing is very precise you can target all those people whom you want to reach. You can get the customers under different categories like based on the demographics, habits, hobbies, occupation, interest, digital platform searches etc. all these factors help you knowing who are your target customers. Every single Niche marketing supports specific features of the product which includes things like design, the price of the product, the quality of the production and all the demographics that the company wants to reach.
The products or the items that people usually include in Niche Marketing basically include things like dermatitis, dandruff or acne, the products related to fitness in which some products that are only related to a specific body part, it also includes clothes which involve clothes for a specific body part or clothes for a specific occasion like wedding, party, officewear etc. and for all those customers who are budget conscious.
Mass Marketing and Niche Marketing- which is good for Advertising
Mass Marketing is hugely incorporated by those companies which are big or we can say it as the MNC’s, all those companies who are huge and can invest a lot of amount in Marketing in all the channel’s possible. The FMCG’s, consumer durables, all these types of services usually use this mass marketing method.
Advertising aspects of Mass marketing
Even the smallest things like pens even have a brand like Parker, Fountain etc. not only this company most of the pens company do mass marketing to reach the people. This involves all those small items such as Detergents, shampoos, soaps, toiletries etc. these all are the basic needs of a human which hugely do mass marketing to reach a lot of people. A lot of Deodorants, perfumes and some of the personal hygiene things use mass marketing to reach all the people. But it requires a lot of money to be wasted for all the advertisement on the TV, hoardings, banners etc. Mass marketing requires a lot of money to be invested, as it for the large scale and the whole market use it.
Source: Statista
The big company like WalMart, Amazon, Kruger etc incorporate these services. Until 2016 Walmart was leading in Mass marketing followed by Costco, Kroger, Amazon, and Walgreen’s. In the year 2017, Amazon tightened the seat belts and started investing more in mass marketing and stands in the first position in Mass retailing all over the world. Amazon topped the board and became the top company to invest in Mass marketing followed by WalMart, Liberty Interactive Corporation, target corporation and so on. These are all the top companies who have that much capital which they can invest in Mass retailing to get results from all sectors.
On the other hand, we can say that Mass marketing is like the traditional way of marketing, however, Niche marketing is majorly digital marketing. Mass marketing is usually opted only by those companies who have a lot of capital to invest. Which is not possible in case of the small industries or those companies which are still budding and are in a long run to reach that place. These type of companies can’t invest so much in Mass marketing that then these companies have to turn towards Niche Marketing.
Niche marketing aspects in advertising
Niche marketing needs very less amount to be invested in the advertisement these days it can be achieved only through Digital Marketing. While we say digital marketing this includes a lot of things involved like having websites online, content marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) etc. These all are a lot of things that create a hype for you in the market. Digital marketing doesn’t involve a lot of capital to be invested, you can promote your brand according to your budget. There is no limitation, here you can target the users according to your budget.
This type of marketing is being incorporated by all the Business people nowadays. It is similar to investing in those where you have to believe that people will revert back. Digital marketing and investing in digital marketing will increase the audience rate at a huge range. It is the best way of investing and getting back a lot of traffic. However, this also includes a lot of strategies and tactics that should be incorporated to get the desired result.
A smart way of investing and grabbing the audience attention and making them permanent users is not that much easy, it includes a lot of marketing strategies to be done. Eventually, if you have to go to Digital marketing agencies to fulfill this whole Digital Marketing aspect. Digital marketing agencies are the right place who can deliver you the result. While the top companies already have their in-house Digital Team ready, who grab the audience attention in the online or the digital medium.
Targeting the audience and making them into the permanent subscribers is what the niche marketing does, with investing as much is your budget is and according to your need. So, it is advised to have a niche marketing for any scale of the company not necessarily small or big it is open for all. However, Mass marketing is just for the big companies who can invest a lot.
How to differentiate mass marketing and niche marketing?
Niche marketing and mass marketing can be understood much better when both are compared and explained together because niche marketing is the complete opposite of Mass Marketing.
Lets us know more about these both with Examples of Mass marketing and Niche marketing!
Example of Mass Marketing
Niche marketing targets only small groups of people and all those people whom they think to be loyal customers and will get the returns for sure. However, when we come towards the Mass Marketing it is like burning all your money in advertisements. Mass marketing is like the standing smack in the middle of the huge park. Then you pile up all the denomination of the currency in the large ground and then the mass marketing person comes and sets all the currency pile in the fire. This huge fire lit in the middle of the park will grab the attention of a lot of people and those people will start thing something huge and big has happened and get curious about it.
In this lit fire, the mass marketer will try to make the users more curious about the fire, just by spreading the rumors that: burning the pile will generate a huge amount of smoke which is very good for health release a kind of gas which cures some kind of health issues. This scenario is what the Mass Marketer showcase the customers, to which people get excited and fight to try it first. This smoke plus rumors spread slowly and capture the whole park and everything becomes smokey. Similarly here the park is the whole area that the marketer targets, smoke is the ad of the product that the marketer sells. This is the whole way how Mass Marketing works.
Example of Niche Marketing
However, on the other side when we come towards Niche Marketing, here the marketer takes all the currency piles and goes to all those customers who are his loyal customers and make sure the customers purchase their product at any cost, and then the Niche Marketer will set the pile of currency on fire. He does all the previous research about the customers and their interest, hobbies, and habits, then targets those people who are someway related to the product that they want to sell. Which means here the marketers will target those people who want the smoke to have good health and cure all the health issues. As the marketer here targets people and usually are smaller in size, people who want the smoke will get it.
We easily get to know which is the best marketing technique is best for the type of business. But according to me for any type of business, it may be but Niche Marketing is the best way to get a huge result out of a small investment.
Advantages of Niche marketing and Mass marketing
Niche marketing
It is considered the best way of marketing and it is one of the cheapest ways of marketing. Marketing strategy differs with the money you want to invest for your business branding. The audience gets trusted emails and endorsement for the brands. However, this also involves a lot of background of investigation like in Niche Marketing the digital agencies target those people who will for sure buy the product, or those who have the keen interest in the product. In that limited investment which you can spend.
Mass Marketing
This is basically for the Big MNC’s those who can invest a lot of money in marketing. This includes all type of marketing strategy starting from hoardings, billboards, TV commercial etc. This includes all the FMCG items like daily use items soap, detergents, toiletries etc. all these things have a huge branding and extract a lot of traffic from the Mass Marketing. The marketing facility here holds a good hand in advertising the daily used items as people will obviously buy it. So, the top companies target every sector people and opt Mass marketing for this.
Conclusion
At, last we can conclude that Niche marketing is for all the brands and companies who want to make a mark and want to drag the customer’s attention and which can only be achieved through Digital marketing. On the other hand, Mass marketing is incorporated by the big MNC’s who can do the traditional way of marketing.
It is up to you what you want to include in your marketing technique to grab the audience attention. But my personal suggestion is Niche marketing which saves both your times and money!
