There are many benefits digital marketing offers to small businesses in Canada, from driving more web traffic, generating new leads to boosting recurring revenue.

But many small businesses still stick to the same traditional methods of marketing and lead generation. While traditional marketing is needed, digital marketing, too, can’t be ignored anymore as most of the people today start their buying journeys online.

So let’s take a look at the top ten benefits that your local business (or any business in general) can get from using digital marketing.

Here goes…

#1: Get “Discoverable” Online To Make More Sales

One of the key benefits of digital marketing in Canada for small businesses is that digital marketing helps them get high online visibility and customers quickly. 

This online visibility is crucial because it puts small businesses before “ready-to-buy” leads via Google Ads and helps draw in business. You’ll be surprised to know that 27% of consumers look online daily for a local business. Digital marketing lets you break into these target audiences of yours who are actively looking for the services you offer right now.

For example, if you offer local legal services, you can use local SEO and Google Ads Management to promote your services before people from your target area in Canada who are searching for a legal service provider. If you don’t do digital marketing, your business will not be discoverable to such leads who need your services.

#2: Generate High-Quality Leads

The second most important benefit small businesses get from digital marketing is that the quality of leads that digital marketing produces is better than that of the leads that mass-marketing offline tactics generate.

There’s a reason behind this.

With digital marketing, you can laser target the people to market to.

Which means, if you offer legal services say in Ontario, Canada, then digital marketing lets you laser-target your ideal demographics from your local Ontario-based audience.

Not just that, you can further fine-tune your digital marketing strategies to market to people who are actively looking for your services on Google. So, instead of showing up for random local searches all the time, your business will only show up when an online searcher shows the intent of hiring your services or buying your products.

#3. Get Higher Conversion Rates

Because the quality of leads that digital marketing generates is way better than those generated by offline marketing tactics such as send out thousands of flyers, they convert much better.

A whopping 50% of the people who perform local searches end up visiting a business … and about 18% of them end up making a purchase in one day.

So why does this happen?

Well, this happens because digital marketing doesn’t just bring your services before the people who need it, BUT it also makes your services visible when your leads have the highest buying intent. For instance, someone who searches for a phrase like “hire child custody advocate Ontario“ isn’t just “looking.” This person is “looking to hire.”

You get the idea, right?

 #4: Earn Repeat Business

Another great benefit small businesses get from digital marketing is that digital marketing helps them keep their existing customers engaged, so they become customers for life.

Now, this is important because, for most of the small businesses, about 60-70% of their future profits come from their existing customers. Not just that, acquiring a new customer is about five times costlier than retaining an existing one.

So … how does digital marketing help with this?

Well, digital marketing comes with a bunch of tactics that solely aim at earning the loyalty of the current customers. And once you earn the loyalty of your customers, repeat business naturally follows.

#5: Build A Tribe

One of the best benefits digital marketing offers to small businesses is that it lets them build and engage a tribe — or a loyal customer base.

This benefit might seem similar to getting repeat business, but this is geared more toward winning word-of-mouth business.

For example, if you’ve a thriving Facebook community of your existing clients and potential leads, you’ll get exposure into their social circles, with many of their contacts actually being great leads as well for your local business.

#6: Get Consistent Results

Another one of the many benefits small businesses get from digital marketing is that the results of most of the digital marketing channels keep compounding.

For example, once you’ve set up a strong presence on local or niche business directories with SEO Canada, your profiles will keep attracting views and keep sending you leads.

Likewise, if you manage to rank at the top for some of your high-commercial intent keywords, you’ll keep generating search traffic (and leads) from your content.

#7: Build Your Brand Reputation

Another huge benefit digital marketing offers to small businesses is that it lets them build and manage their online reputation.

A big part of digital marketing online reputation building and management includes getting great five-star reviews from your happy customers and addressing all the negative feedback that’s posted about your business by your unhappy customers. And given that about 86% of people read local business’s reviews and need to read at least ten reviews in order to be able to trust a local business, building a great online reputation and managing it becomes even more critical.

But with online reputation management (a core digital marketing practice), you can keep a tab on how your brand is perceived online.

#8: Save Money With Targeted Efforts

A great benefit that digital marketing offers to small businesses over traditional marketing is that it can be laser-targeted to acquire the highest-quality leads.

You can choose:

1) Who to target,

2) What channels to use (digital marketing has tens of channels for reaching out to and converting leads), and

3) How much to spend on each channel and so on.

With traditional marketing, on the other hand, you’ve very little control on who you’re reaching with your flyers, brochures or post card marketing campaigns. For example, if you buy a list of cold leads to contact, you’ll invest a lot of your sales team’s time but you’ll have no way to know what to expect. The results of other traditional marketing tactics like signage and billboard marketing and direct mail are even more unpredictable.

#9: Build A Conversion Funnel

A key benefit small businesses get from digital marketing is that by using digital marketing, they get to build an entire conversion funnel.

Creating a conversion funnel is like hand-holding your best leads through their buying journey — right from helping them discover your services via search engines or business directories to converting them into loyal customers who only do business with you.

Digital marketing comes with a host of tactics that work on the different buying stages: source

#10: Optimize

Because the ROI ( Return on Investment) of most of the digital marketing campaigns can be measured, it’s easy to understand what’s working for your business and what’s not.

This means, after investing 6 months in a bunch of digital marketing tactics, you’ll know for sure (with real data) about the digital marketing channels that work for you. This allows you to invest your money in just those and cut back on the ones that don’t get good ROI.

Analyzing your digital marketing campaigns also shows you how you can improve upon what you’re doing to get even better results. At Marketing Blitz, for instance, when we run local PPC campaigns for our clients, we keep a close eye on the keywords that bring the most sales. We use the knowledge we get to optimize our ad spend for the future campaigns by using more of the most-converting keywords.

Wrapping it up…

While digital marketing offers many benefits to small businesses, it needs a tactical approach to actually get them for your business. 

And one sure way of failing is picking a few ad hoc digital marketing tactics from random blog posts and then applying them to your business.

To succeed with digital marketing, you need to understand the unique needs and challenges of your business and then create a digital marketing plan that supports your business’s growth goals. You also need to ensure the most optimized execution of your digital marketing plan.

If you’re looking for a digital marketing partner to help you get all these digital marketing benefits for your small business, check out our SEO, PPC, and Web Design Canada. At Marketing Blitz Inc, we help local small businesses like yours generate leads and sales with digital marketing and results-driven SEO in Brampton.