Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses: A Comparative Analysis

This paper aims to provide empirical evidence on the use of digital marketing strategies by small enterprises in Belarus and Turkey. One hundred and eight small businesses are surveyed. The results of the current research show how small firms use digital marketing activity and provide evidence that the digital marketing practices of companies differ from the perspectives of company age, advertising budget, the nature of marketing intermediaries, and customer structure, etc. The study developed a model based on a theory of planned behavior, which predicts the perceived and actual use of digital marketing strategies. According to our results, the financial opportunity, perceived behavioral control, and company age are the main factors increasing the degree of the developed digital marketing strategies effectiveness. In the further part of the work, we discuss how educated, informed, and advised entrepreneurs can improve the strategic value of digital marketing. The main aim of our paper is to contribute to both the understanding and empirical investigation of small business digital marketing strategies by looking at digital marketing strategies influencing performance. With the number of small businesses growing rapidly, the analysis of how they adopt, adapt, and benefit from digital marketing strategies, as well as the exploration of the differences in digital marketing achievement factors between different regions, is done more frequently. The current paper has a unique focus by taking the digital marketing strategies from the perspective of entrepreneurs having small enterprises. It aims to answer the following three questions: What are the most practiced digital marketing strategies by small entrepreneurs? In what way should a technical support system be adjusted or developed to adapt to the size of the small business? Which digital marketing practices are less accepted or used?