The present and the future is online (digital). Yes, online marketing is such a thing now and the importance of digital marketing can no longer be overlooked.
As an online entrepreneur and a content creator, your main strive is to position yourself accordingly. Digital marketing is only getting huge.
The industry has seen robust growth, and for a good reason; everything is going online, including shopping.
Importance of Digital Marketing
So, what are the benefits of digital marketing when it comes to businesses and brands?
1. Alternative and Better Growth Option for Small Businesses.
Before the advent of digital marketing, businesses had to spend millions on TV ads and billboards advertising. This meant one thing,
If your business didn’t have the financial stamina, it would never see the light of day in the national market.
With digital marketing, even those with lower budgets can promote their products and services and reach the people they want to reach, armed with knowledge on what keywords they should target and the customer profile they want to reach.
While traditional marketing such as print, radio and TV still work for certain industries, online marketing is becoming the ultimate winner as it gives the users the flexibility and customization that their advertorial campaigns need in order to be effective.
2. Free Form of Marketing
Small businesses now leverage the power of digital marketing to grow organically (and free) with proper keyword search, link building, search engine optimization and content marketing.
Free, doesn’t necessarily mean easy. You have to do the work. Apart from Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, almost all the other forms of digital marketing can be achieved without the need to spend money.
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3. You Can Start Digital Marketing with a Low Budget.
In order to rapidly scale, you do need to spend money in digital marketing. When you think of paid marketing, social media marketing and social PPC advertising come to mind.
However, depending on the nature of your business, you might find that you would rather spend the money on content marketing and distribution in order to build credibility.
The good news is that you don’t need a large budget to get started, unlike in traditional marketing channels. You can start targeting the Facebook audience with as little as $20 or even less, monitor your campaigns and adjust accordingly.
4. Allows Immediate Customer Feedback and Response
If you’ve been in business for a while, then you would appreciate the importance of digital marketing when it comes to customer satisfaction. Social media marketing and email marketing, for instance, plays a very important role in customer support.
By harnessing the power of online marketing channels, you get to have immediate customer feedback and respond in good time, almost instantly whenever you can, with the aid of your social media managers.
You can have your own in-house social media team or outsource from a reputable social media management firm.
5. Digital Marketing results in Higher Conversion Rate.
Your business needs a higher Return on Investment in order to suffice. Digital marketing is associated with higher conversion rates.
Social marketing, SEO, and email marketing results in higher conversion rates. This is because SEO brings in highly targeted traffic, while social media and email marketing allow direct customer communication hence a way to build trust, clarify issues, and hence better chances of converting.
The good thing with Digital Marketing is that you can easily measure performance of your campaigns, calculate your conversion rates and then make informed decisions on the next step, something that you don’t essentially get with traditional marketing methods.
6. Digital Marketing is the new PR.
A comprehensive digital marketing strategy includes a detailed way of using your online presence to build rapport with your customer base, enhance your brand reputation and enhance your brand positioning.
Remember that scandals can bring your business down, regardless of whether they are true or speculated. If you’ve been building your reputation with valuable content, sharing your business journey with your community, and updating them on your CSR, then unverified scandals will not do much harm to your business, unless they are huge and factual.
7. Results in Better Returns on Investment (ROI)
Online marketing is a demanding process that requires patience and dedication. At first, nothing seems to be moving. However, as you push more and more quality content and roll out effective marketing strategies, you begin to see traction.
ROI seeks to paint a picture on how the time, money and effort you put into your brand influences your bottom line.
By utilizing channels such as social media and email marketing combined with the ultimate power of content marketing, you can get very high Returns on Investment. This is because of the high conversation rates that can be as high as 3800%
This means that, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you could bag $38
8. Measurable Form of Marketing.
Web analytics is the reason why internet marketing has grown rapidly in the recent past. Instead of throwing in some money and hoping that it actually sticks, web analytics help you monitor your marketing strategies.
With advanced analytics, you can derive a lot of data from your campaigns thus enabling you to do account-based marketing. For instance, you can get the following data from advanced analytics;
- Who saw your campaign
- How many views did it receive
- How many people did it click through
- How many people converted into paying customers
- How people interacted with your campaign
- The number of shares it received.
Besides these data, you can also learn a lot about the kind of people who are interacting with your data. For instance:
- Their gender
- Where they visited just before landing on your website
- Their interests
- Their favorite shopping places
- Their spending categorization
- Search terms they use to find your brand online.
This is the kind of data that you wouldn’t get with traditional channels. Armed with these data about your customers, you can design campaigns that are more tailored and targeted, and hence higher conversion rates.
9. Expand Audience Reach
You’re in a position to reach the global market and target your potential customers wherever they could be. This is one of the most important benefits of digital marketing. It gives you an opportunity to get a wider market for your business.
Under traditional channels, you’re bound to a limited audience size. Print media limits you to certain places and markets. Internet marketing, on the other hand, gives you the freedom to easily explore various markets.
10. Ease of Scalability and Adaptability
Digital Marketing is the no-contract form of marketing. It makes it so easy to adapt your campaigns based on newly deduced information on what is and what is not working. You can scale up or tone down your paid-per click adverts such as Facebook and Google ads.
The importance of digital marketing lies in the fact that you can quickly analyze data, tweak campaigns as they run or even pause them to avoid losing more money on campaigns that are not working for your business.
11. Less Intrusive Form of Marketing
Most channels in internet marketing are content based, and those that are not, utilizes the power of AI and Machine learning so as to only show your campaigns to people that are actually more likely to be excited to see them.
The underlying fact of digital marketing is that it is a permission based form of marketing, from content marketing, email marketing to SEO.
12. It Aligns with How People Shop Today
Today, almost every shopping starts online. Before someone buys an item, they go online to look for options, features, and stores. If your online marketing is done right, then you will have a better chance at having your content show up as it meets the search intent
From restaurants, to doctors, to jobs directories, the shopping process begins online.
How to Align Yourself and Remain Relevant Online
- Use content marketing to let people find you
- Guest blog regularly on big publications that fall under your niche
- Target keywords that people use when searching for the types of products and services that you provide
- Harness the power of PPC advertising to jumpstart your growth
- Work towards growing your social media profiles
- Solicit honest reviews about your brand and showcase them on your website
- Optimize your LinkedIn personal and business account.
The Importance of Digital Marketing for Your Brand/Business
You’ve seen that your customers are online, and they prefer that you meet them there. Every shopping cycle begins online. If you don’t harness the importance of digital marketing in growing your brand, then you will soon be wiped out by competition.
To get started, choose the type of digital channel that works for you and focus on that as you scale and adapt as per the metrics of your digital analysis.
