Online marketing or digital marketing is widely used to promote business globally. Even a layman understands importance of digital marketing in promoting big businesses. But if a layman is asked about use of online marketing to promote small businesses locally, then his or her knowledge would be found wanting. That doesn’t mean small neighbourhood businesses are not indulging in digital marketing. Use of online marketing to promote businesses locally is as rampant as its use to promote businesses globally. Local is a relative term. National promotion will be regarded as local promotion if comparison is with global promotion. But here I am not talking about that type of local promotion. I am talking about promoting a business within a district or city or even small town. And the businesses that I am referring to are small single city businesses. Contrary to popular belief small businesses are using online marketing big-time, to promote their businesses locally. Specific training courses are being offered by IT training institutes to train people how to promote businesses locally. Many digital marketing training institutes have designed exclusive courses for this purpose. All digital marketing tools like search engine optimization (SEO), Email marketing, Mobile marketing etc. are used to promote business locally. But approach is very different.
Best way to understand importance of online marketing in promoting small local businesses is through illustrations. Let us consider the case of a neighbourhood dentist. If someone has dental problems and decides to find a good dentist in a locality called Lawrence road online, he or she will visit google and key in keywords like- best dentist in Lawrence road etc. Dentist who is not indulging in digital marketing will no way get this patient. Here one needs to note that small businesses don’t always need to do online marketing or SEO marketing themselves. They can outsource this work to online marketing firms. These firms can then promote these businesses online through trained digital marketing executives or SEO executives. Small businesses like provision stores, medical stores, restaurants, opticians, property dealers, stationery stores, computer stores, plumbers, motor mechanics, beauticians, schools, colleges and what not, are using digital platforms to market themselves. Not only restaurants, even dhabas are resorting to online marketing. Information like addresses of restaurants, their menu, their speciality etc. is readily available. If a customer is vegetarian, he or she will search for veg restaurants; if non-vegetarian then he or she will search for non-veg restaurants. Another business that extensively uses online marketing tools is hotel business. People travelling find hotel rooms online even before arriving at a place. This is an example of online promotion of business locally. Provision store owners can get footfalls using digital marketing. At times customers don’t find a particular product in market and go online to search for the outlet that can provide that product. In such a scenario, provision store that maintains catalogue of products online and keeps it updated too, will be the winner.
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