Why Small Business Owners Need a Digital Strategy to Grow

Small business owners shouldn't take Internet advertising lightly. 'With 90 percent of consumers getting most of their information digitally and searching for things online, you really have to move from offline to online,' said David Brown, CEO of Web.com (WEB) - Get Report . 'Most small businesses need some form and many need many forms of online presence in order to reach that population.'With 30 million small businesses in the U.S., each with unique goals, Brown said the starting point of any online strategy should be a website. 'That's a very rich source of information about your business and the other sources can be the entry points where people learn about you and are then transferred to your website.' Those entry points usually include social media outlets, such as Twitter (TWTR) - Get Report and Facebook (FB) - Get Report . Some small business owners may spend money on those entry points, such as buying targeted Facebook ads or purchasing search terms from Alphabet's (GOOGL) - Get Report Google. MainStreet's Scott Gamm reports from Wall Street.