Digital World
With the change and evolution of modern technologies, small and medium businesses are doing everything they can to keep up, which is also true for the rest of human society. Businesses are using digital marketing strategies – in an attempt to capture a growing and very lucrative online marketplace.
For it is the process of attracting targeted audiences online that will spell the difference between a successfully thriving business – and a failed one. Even if you receive tons of daily traffic to your website, they would not amount to anything unless they convert to leads or sales. In the digital arena where business and commerce are heading to, digital marketing tools and techniques provide business owners the best chances for competition, survival and even business growth.
At one point online marketing was just a new and different way to market. It opened up a new form of media to promote goods and services. Within a few years, the importance of digital marketing has become a necessity to every business. It’s become an integral part of what a business is to it’s customers.
It’s no longer enough to have a website or run some un-focused Ad campaign. Don’t have integrated digital marketing strategies working for your business? Time is working against you because of it. As the Internet becomes entwined with everything we do, the importance of digital marketing is becoming crystal clear.
- Affordability
- Mobile Access
- Flexibility
- Expansion
- Multimedia
- Interactivity
- Tracking
- Authority
- Influencer Engagement
Let’s take a look at why your business needs digital marketing to grow and blossom.
- More modern consumers are going digital.
The modern consumer is increasingly moving toward a more digital experience when it comes to researching and making purchases. Search engines like Google remain the most popular channel for consumer research. Whether consumers are at the beginning stages of the customer journey or ready to buy, they often use search engines to find the information they need to make an informed purchasing decision and research specific brands. It is vital that companies’ work is visible during these digital searches so they can engage the customer and work to influence their purchasing decisions by providing valuable information.
Though search is an important digital marketing tactic, it is not the only tool that the modern consumer uses to make an informed purchasing decision. A study from Blue Nile Research shows that a lot of consumers use search, brand websites and customer reviews for research. They use social, mobile and blogs to discover new solutions, products, and brands. All of these digital marketing tactics work together to help your brand deliver information to consumers who are looking for products or services just like yours. If you do not engage in these digital marketing strategies, you may be missing out on an opportunity to reach these customers.
As more and more consumers use their smartphones and other mobile devices as part of the consumer buying journey, digital marketing tactics will become even more important. The marketer should aim to deliver content to the consumer right in their moment of need. Using digital marketing tactics is one of the best ways to be reached by consumers who are looking for products or services just like yours in a time of need.
- Digital marketing strategies are affordable.
Even big companies with large marketing budgets need to be conscious of how they spend their marketing budget. One of the greatest benefits of digital marketing is that these tactics are both affordable and effective. Businesses can market through email, social media and SEO-driven content marketing at only a fraction of the price that it costs to produce and distribute print advertising or develop and place ads on prominent radio stations or television channels.
Not only can digital marketing strategies be more affordable, but they also often offer an attractive ROI for business owners. In fact, content marketing cost less than most traditional marketing tactics. Additionally, marketers who consistently publish relevant and valuable blog content are more likely to experience a positive return on investment. Content marketing is not the only affordable digital marketing tactic that offers an excellent ROI. Overall, digital marketing tactics can help you get more for your money.
Business owners can save money by implementing affordable digital marketing tactics for some campaigns, while still being able to allocate funds to campaigns that may require more expensive, traditional marketing materials. In the end, these affordable and effective digital marketing strategies help businesses get the most out of their marketing budget.
- It is easy to track and monitor your digital campaigns.
It is vital that the modern marketer has a way to track the success of their marketing campaigns. This helps brands see what is working and what isn’t when it comes to their marketing tactics. With this information, companies can not only make more accurate measures on their return on investment, but they can also identify areas of improvement and work to create more successful campaigns based on the findings. Digital marketing makes these tasks easier than ever by taking all of the guesswork out of tracking and monitoring marketing campaign success.
Digital marketing offers marketers and business owners the advantage of having a wealth of useful campaign data at their fingertips. With easy-to-use digital marketing analytics tools and software, business owners and marketers can test different ad content to see what resonates best with their target audience. Whereas traditional marketing tactics require you to wait until the campaign has run its course to review what worked and what didn’t, digital marketing analytics tools allow you to see how your campaigns are performing in real-time and make adjustments to your campaigns in the moment.
Overall, the ability to track and monitor your digital marketing campaign success closely allows brands to get more out of their marketing budget. By having access to real-time analytics, you can work to make changes to improve campaigns before you waste any more money on ineffective tactics. By reviewing these analytics periodically, you can also work to optimise your marketing budget by allocating more of your budget to the tactics that provide the best results.
- Your brand can provide a more interactive experience through digital marketing channels.
Digital marketing channels also allow companies to provide a more personalised experience through interactive video ads and tailored product recommendations. Online video has quickly become a part of consumers’ daily lives. This presents a great opportunity for brands to engage their target audience. Businesses can use online video to grab the attention of their on-the-go audience and inform, entertain, and engage their ideal consumers.
When it comes to personalisation, product recommendations are the best way to encourage repeat sales, cross-sell, and up-sell to your current customers. In fact, consumers are more likely to buy from a brand if they are given a personalised shopping experience. Businesses can take advantage of the wealth of data that digital marketing offers to provide personalised recommendations based on user behaviour. Through email and social ads, you can target your current customers and provide personalised recommendations based on past purchases or browsing behaviour.
Digital marketing allows you to reach back out to customers who have visited your site, filled their shopping cart, and left without purchasing. With remarketing ads on social media, you can increase sales by showing consumers what they left behind or remind them why your brand is so great. By re-serving personalised ad content to customers who have not yet followed through with their purchase, you can stay top of mind and work to encourage their future purchasing.
- Digital marketing channels allow you to be a part of the conversation about your company.
Social media marketing is a popular digital marketing tactic that allows your company to be part of the online conversation about your brand. Over the past few years, it has become clear that social media is here to stay, and it’s not just for young people. There is an attractive opportunity for brands who want to reach their target market and start a conversation on social media.
What’s more is that consumers are not just using social media sites frequently, but they are often influenced by the information that they find there. This shows the power that social media can have on consumer purchasing decisions. Whether consumers are looking at reviews on Facebook or asking their friends and family for advice before making a purchase, social media engagement can go a long way in determining a consumer’s ultimate purchasing decision.
Businesses can take advantage of social media marketing as a tool for participating in the conversation about their brand online. Through consistent engagement and posting of valuable content, brands can work to develop a stronger relationship with current customers while also starting a conversation with potential leads. By answering questions and concerns on social media, brands can also improve their customer service processes, which contributes to a better overall online reputation.
- With digital marketing, you can respond to trends in real-time.
Digital marketing allows you to respond to popular trends in real-time. This helps your business take advantage of consumer response to current events, trends, topics and technologies. Whether your brand is using the latest technologies to reach out to customers, communicating in conversations about popular current events, or using the most popular platforms to deliver targeted ad content, digital marketing makes it possible to stay ahead of the game. By taking advantage of what’s popular in the moment, businesses can increase their visibility online and reach more leads and customers.
One example of this is using digital marketing channels that social media and blogs to deliver relevant and useful content on popular trends in your industry. No matter what type of product or service your business offers, there is bound to be trends in your industry that change over time. With digital marketing, you can respond to these trends in real-time by participating in the conversation or delivering targeted content that speaks to the current concerns of your target consumers. This can help build brand loyalty and establish your business as a leader in the industry.
The immediacy of digital marketing allows you to respond to these trends quickly. Whereas it takes time to develop, produce, and distribute traditional marketing. if you need to communicate something to your customers and leads quickly, you can work to develop and publish blog or social media content within the hour or use SMS marketing to deliver the message to your customers and leads immediately.
- Increase your business reach.
Traditional marketing materials can be quite effective for reaching a targeted audience. if you want to target a certain geographical location, radio and television ads can be a great way to reach that local audience. Similarly, print ads in newspapers and magazines are an effective way to reach the specific demographic who spends time reading these publications. However, if you are looking for ways to move beyond these targeted audiences or reach new targeted audiences across the nation or the globe, digital marketing can help you increase your overall reach.
Consumers across the world are online right now searching for information about products and services or looking up brands that might help them solve their biggest problems. Why limit your reach to local consumers or a limited publication audience when you could be engaging with consumers across the country? If you provide a product or service that may be useful to a larger demographic, you can use digital marketing tools to reach this audience online.
Digital marketing provides new ways to target your audience. With traditional marketing, you might place a print ad in a magazine that is read by consumers who are most likely to buy your product or service. This is a great way to gain exposure in your target market and build brand recognition. However, there is a good chance that this publication does not reach every consumer who is part of your target demographic. This is where digital marketing comes in. With digital marketing, you can reach out to more consumers in your target market. Through tailored blog content, relevant social media platforms, and search engine marketing, you are able to reach those consumers who may have missed your initial ad or need a bit more engagement before making a purchase.
- Digital marketing can help brands improve their customer relationships.
Another reason why digital marketing is a must for most modern brands is that it allows companies to foster better customer relationships. Whereas most traditional marketing provides one-way communication with the consumer, digital marketing allows for two-way communication in real time. This makes it easier for brands to effectively address their consumers’ questions and concerns without delay while also fostering brand relationships through quality consumer engagement.
Social media is a great tool for improving customer relationships. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter allow brands to communicate with customers and engage them in a significant and genuine way. When customers have questions or concerns, they will often contact a business on social media for information or resolution. The fast-paced nature of social media allows companies to address these questions and concerns quickly before they escalate. By improving customer service relations, social media also helps improve overall customer satisfaction rates, which can lead to repeat sales and customer referrals.
Digital marketing tactics like social media are not only great for improving customer service, but they can also help improve customer relationships by allowing brands to better get to know their customers’ needs and wants. By engaging with customers on the brand website, blog, and social media accounts, companies can better understand what their customers and leads need. By understanding the customer’s greatest challenges, brands can work to develop better products and services to meet their needs. This improves customer relationships, but also helps boost overall sales.
- Digital marketing tactics pair well with traditional print marketing.
Many companies are under the assumption that once they go digital, they can’t go back to traditional marketing. However, using the two in conjunction allows “the best of both worlds” when attracting and engaging your customers. The key to finding success with an integrated marketing strategy is to consider the strengths of each marketing tactic and take advantage of these strengths to maximise results.
Many modern brands find success in pairing traditional marketing tactics like print ads with digital marketing tactics like social media to maximise the overall success of their marketing campaigns. Traditional marketing tactics like print and television ads are successful in offering a broad reach that can build brand recognition and help you stay top of mind in your target market. Whereas many digital marketing tactics like social media, blogging, and SEO can help you deliver more targeted content that informs and educates your audience. Not to mention, some consumers respond better to one type of marketing over another. Both of these approaches to marketing are valid and successful, but combining the two can make for a stronger marketing strategy that covers all the bases.
- Your competitors are doing it!
If you want to remain competitive in your industry, it is vital that you keep up with your competitors. And there’s a good chance that many of them are already using digital marketing strategies to reach new leads, engage current customers, and influence purchasing decisions. With the majority of brands reaching and engaging consumers through digital marketing, consumers have come to expect this type of digital engagement from the brands that they buy from.
In addition to gaining organic or unpaid traffic, modern brands are also using paid digital marketing strategies to reach out to their ideal customers online. It is clear that paid channels like search and social media ads are just as important to a brand’s digital marketing strategy as those that are aimed at driving organic traffic.
Not only are brands using digital marketing strategies to reach their audience, but they are continuing to increase their spend on these strategies. It is clear to see that digital marketing is here to stay. If you do not work to integrate digital marketing tactics into your company’s overall marketing strategy, there is a good chance that your company will get left behind.
More facts about the importance of Digital Marketing.
- Reaches people where they spend their time and money
- Levels the playing field for small business
- More targeted
- The power of segmentation, automation & personalisation
- More advanced analytics
- Easy to scale and adapt
- Digital marketing earns people’s trust/respect and enhances reputation
- Better ROI (Return on investment)
- Aligns with how people shop today
- It’s how people prefer that businesses reach them
- Integrates marketing with mobile technology
Digital Marketing Takeaways:
The importance of digital marketing for your business
Businesses in the modern economy need digital marketing to compete. Online is where the customers are. It’s where they prefer that you reach them. Online is where the modern buying process begins.
You get the importance of digital marketing. But that doesn’t make it easy to implement strategies that get you the ROI you’re looking for. Find out how we can help you employ digital marketing to grow your business. Contact us to schedule a consultation.
Benefits of digital marketing for business:
- Lower costs and higher flexibility for your marketing efforts
- Access to consumers who rely on their mobile phones or do all their shopping online
- The ability to speak with authority on topics related to your product or industry
- A chance to engage with influencers, earn their respect and get them to endorse your company
- Opportunities to incorporate multiple types of media into your marketing
- The ability to track customers’ purchase journeys
For more information on the art and importance of digital marketing for your company or if you need help in developing a digital marketing strategy for your business, contact TunedIn Marketing Solutions today. Also explore our other blog posts.