Digital technology has now reached far and wide in all realms of business, from ad campaigns to customer interactions. It is not only big businesses that can benefit from this change. Even small and medium-sized businesses can gain much from digital marketing. After all, every business needs an efficient process of reaching the target audience down to making sales.
Digital marketing has become an undeniably crucial aspect of any business marketing strategy. Let’s find out how it can bring in revenue for your business.
What is digital marketing?
As the name implies, this marketing strategy utilizes online media and digital technologies to implement marketing strategies. You can either employ an in-house team or help from expert internet marketing services.
Social media giants and microblogging sites including Facebook, Google, and Instagram, use algorithms that affect your visibility and the ad fees. These marketing activities allow businesses to connect with their customers digitally. Digital marketing is a spectrum with various methods, some of which are:
- Content marketing
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Pay-per-click (PPC)
- Inbound marketing
- Social media marketing (SMM)
- Affiliate marketing
- Email marketing
To gain visibility, the marketing team and business owners alike must be acquainted with the latest trends and techniques. To make the most returns, you need to ensure that the team invests in the suitable types of media and activities.
Digital marketing can be grouped into six fundamental pillars that the team needs to be aware of to develop an effective strategy. Here are the pillars in brief:
- Strategy and management: Goals – analytics, strategy, resourcing, structure, marketing technology, data, integration, marketing, and sales alignment.
- Goals and measurement: Forecasts, digital reporting, attribution, and consumer insight.
- Media: Both paid and owned media, search, social, and display ads.
- Experience: website, apps, customer service.
- Messaging: Social media, email, chat, and personalized interactions.
- Content: Interactive tools, product and blog content, PDF download.
The impact of digital marketing
The impact of digital marketing is immense and evident throughout people’s interactions, habits, and lifestyles, as seen from the following statistics.
- Approximately 3.03 billion people use some form of social media. Accessibility to the Internet is more prominent than ever before, fueled further by the pandemic.
- 93 percent of all website traffic can be attributed to search engines.
- 82 percent of people research online before making any purchase.
- 50 percent of consumers are positively reinforced by brand names or endorsed by influencers in search results.
Advantages of digital marketing
To reap the benefits of digital marketing, you need to be aware of its advantages, which we will touch on briefly.
1. Mobile access
With 77 percent of smartphone users in the US alone, it makes sense for businesses to utilize digital marketing to reach the audience through ads, emails, texts, and social media. You can connect with customers through different apps and platforms while on their phones.
2. Flexibility
The beauty of digital marketing lies in its multitude of options. You can market through social media, blog posts, emails, banner ads, and more. The wide array of possibilities allows trials of different strategies, which can then help identify the best one while halting underperforming campaigns.
3. Expansion
The influence and popularity of online shopping have skyrocketed during the pandemic. And what better way than digital marketing to broaden your brand recognition and enjoy an uphill trend in sales?
4. Multimedia
A collaborative approach incorporating various content, including video, blogs, photos, and audio, has a significantly better response to product placement than other methods.
5. Influencer engagement
Social media has had a significant impact on marketing strategies. With the most influential figures in modern culture endorsing products through their social media handles, their followers can become your customers if you play your cards right.
6. Authority
Use your product or industry to talk openly about real-world issues and generate discussions. This enables you to establish your expertise and knowledge on such topics, which gains the trust of customers.
7. Tracking
Tracking customers helps you collect valuable information regarding their purchase decisions. Before a purchase, the ads and types of content can help you discover the most effective marketing methods and improve current marketing strategies.
8. Equity in business
Perhaps the most significant advantage of digital marketing is the equal opportunity enjoyed by all businesses, big and small. The online aspect has allowed small businesses to go head to head with established brands. They can quickly increase their customer reach by approaching clients on various platforms.
9. Budget fit
Another bonus for small businesses is the low costs involved in digital marketing. The broad reach coupled with the cost-effectiveness has contributed to the mass popularity of Internet marketing services.
10. Helps in conversions
Conversions of subscribers to customers and deals are best understood by tracking traffic. In comparison to traditional marketing forms, digital marketing enjoys higher conversion rates. Thus, robust strategies can increase revenues for small businesses.
11. Targeting the right audience
Target-specific marketing is only possible with digital marketing. This results in accomplishing predetermined goals more readily and interacting effectively with the target audience; digital marketing ticks all the boxes in a personalized form of marketing.
12. Helps in mobile marketing
The increased use of smartphones has led to the inclusion of mobile marketing within the digital marketing sphere. Hence, more companies are developing mobile-friendly websites.
13. Increases brand reputation
Attracting more customers is the main initiative of any business. This translates to the maximum possible clicks for your website and marketing platforms in digital marketing. Then, as you gain recognition for your brand by offering them their desired products and services, your reputation is boosted.
14. Influences buyers
The purpose of digital marketing is to influence potential customers to increase conversions. With clear instructions and CTA, or calls-to-action, you will be guiding more customers toward a conversion.
15. Gives measurable results
Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing helps you compare and analyze sales and customer profiles to see the impact of your marketing strategies, even on different marketing platforms.
16. Improves customer relationships
The accessibility and ease of communication are critical to the good relationship between businesses and consumers in digital marketing. The brand can quickly and effectively answer consumer queries and concerns in real-time, generating trust and loyalty within the buyers. It also allows for feedback from customers to know their needs and solve their issues. The result is a boost in sales and higher revenue.
17. Helps to stay ahead of competition
One of the ways to survive in any business industry is to stay ahead of your competitors. The advantage of digital marketing has not gone unnoticed. Many businesses are switching to strategies and marketing methods with the younger, Internet-savvy generation in mind. Therefore, failing to incorporate digital marketing into your business strategy will result in you falling behind your competitors.
Conclusion
The benefits of digital marketing far outweigh any apprehensions regarding its success and your marketing team’s efforts to put in. If the listed reasons aren’t enough to sway your mind on the effectiveness of a well-planned digital strategy, you risk losing valuable customers to your well-prepared competitors.
Photo credit: The feature image has been done by Igor Tishenko.
