Online Marketing Impact on Micro-Enterprises: An Insight through Visibility in Search Engines

Abstract

Transforming marketing into an online format is an inevitable process of developing an information economy. The study of information flows allows using a comprehensive approach to the problems of online marketing. The activities of small businesses are characterized by various limitations, but it is an important factor in increasing the flexibility of the economy and the ability to adapt to changes. The gap in the theory and practice of conducting Internet marketing activity in micro enterprises has helped to shape the relevance of this work. The aim of the study is to research the phenomenon of visibility of Internet websites from the perspective of marketing information flows in the activities of small businesses. The article discusses the theoretical foundations of marketing information flows, Internet marketing, inbound marketing and visibility of Internet websites. The research methodology is based on the methods of marketing analysis and sociological surveys. The study was conducted on the basis of the sampling of 306 websites of small enterprises. The study examined the characteristics of the websites of small enterprises, reflecting the effectiveness of Internet marketing activities. The results show that there is a correlation between the number of applied methods of Internet marketing and the visibility of the websites of small organizations in the search engine. The existence of particular cases of the use of single methods of Internet marketing has been revealed, providing high visibility and effectiveness of Internet marketing activities of small organizations.

Analysis and categorization of studies of digital marketing in small and medium enterprises

“…Moreover, a wider range of research methods could provide richer data and improve studies on both general and specific social media platforms. Such methods could combine marketing analysis and sociological surveys with selective interviews (Kovalenko & Kuzmenko, 2020;Rivera-Trigueros et al, 2019. There is also a need to use simplified methodologies to investigate the impact of the characteristics of websites and social media platforms (such as the age of the website, the link profile, and the quality of text content optimization) on the visibility of internet sites, as well as their relationship with SMEs' financial results (Kovalenko & Kuzmenko, 2020).…”

“…This cluster includes studies of search engine optimization (SEO), which refers to a set of actions aimed at improving the positioning of a website in the results page of an online search engine in order to increase its visibility (Gaur et al, 2020;Kovalenko & Kuzmenko, 2020). The literature in this cluster indicates that SEO is one of the main activities that companies can do to promote their products over social media (Somjai et al, 2020;Thomas & Simmons, 2010) and one of the factors that determine the adoption of digital marketing by SMEs (Darmon & Zeroukhi, 2014).…”

“…More research is needed on SMEs' adoption of digital marketing tools and techniques, as well as on their choice of specific social media platforms (Dumitriu et al, 2019;Kovalenko & Kuzmenko, 2020;Rivera-Trigueros et al, 2020). In addition, future studies should further explore the reasons why SMEs do not have corporate websites and do not create corporate profiles on social media sites (Rivera-Trigueros et al, 2019).…”

“…At this point, it is important to understand how these enterprises use internet marketing technologies in order to create connections between different factors. For instance, the lack of knowledge about information technologies and the absence of specific financial resources devoted to monitoring the evolution of technology (Kovalenko & Kuzmenko, 2020;Pradhan, 2020) make it harder for SMEs to adopt these technologies. In this regard, Sidorchuk (2012) points out that the owners of these enterprises do not have the necessary capabilities to characterize the internet marketing tools that they can use in their enterprises and business models, resulting in a lack of awareness of how these technologies could benefit their marketing efforts.…”

Modern forms of value creation in the global agri-food chain – Perspectives from the facebook ads market

“…Recent contributions to the literature consist of papers approaching the topics of value cocreation and topics related to the emergence of a new form value, referring to the one generated through digital methods (King et al, 2016;Rodgers and Thorson, 2018;Xie et al 2016;Balaji & Roy, 2016;Hein et al, 2019;Sorensen et al, 2017;Kovalenko and Kuzmenko, 2020). King et al (2016) raised awareness over the need for value innovation and called for management and stakeholders to invest resources into digital projects since a clear demand was observed coming from consumers.…”