Top 10 Benefits of Digital Marketing

The marketplace is becoming increasingly digital as the technology continues to evolve. The benefits of digital marketing are becoming more prevalent each day with more and more consumers researching and buying products online. According to Forbes, 82% of consumers conduct research online, whereas, as per Tech Crunch, 79% of the people shop online.

So how do you reach these consumers?

Through digital marketing!

More and more small businesses are implementing digital marketing to cost-effectively reach and engage their target consumers online, and as per the reports, the digital marketing spend is projected to rise to about $332 billion by 2021 in US alone.

Check out top 10 ways your business can take advantage of digital marketing.

1. Digital Marketing Is the Most Powerful Form of Marketing

Digital marketing has the potential to transform the way you reach and engage your customers. Here are some real examples of how digital marketing helped businesses just like yours:

• An eCommerce company witnessed increase in their sales by 500% over a 3-month period using social media
• Another jewelry company, was able to reach its audience for less than $1 per engagement in a year, increasing foot traffic and leading to real conversions

2. Digital Marketing Is the Most Cost-effective Way to Market Your Business

One of the most important benefits of digital marketing is its cost-effectiveness, as it provides a level playing field to small businesses with limited budgets who can otherwise never compete with larger businesses for ad space.

While traditional marketing often involves hidden costs, the only cost to digital marketing is time. SEO, content, and social media engagement take time to perform. However, digital marketing methods like social media advertising, pay-per-click, display, etc. can be used to produce quicker results.

3. Digital Marketing Is the Most Measurable Form of Marketing

The only way to know if your marketing is working for sure is by measuring your success over time. While it can be difficult to track the success of a traditional marketing campaign like a radio advertisement or mailer, every digital marketing method you use is measurable.

Digital analytics helps you determine whether your marketing is working or not, and adjust your future campaigns accordingly.

For instance, let’s say that you want to create a social media marketing campaign for a new product. You’ve decided to publish a series of social media posts over a two-week period. With social media analytics, you can see which posts were more popular and drive conversions. You can then use this insight to try to reproduce this success with future campaigns.

Digital marketing analytics allows you to more effectively use your resources and allocate your marketing budget. Since you are no longer guessing about what’s working and what isn’t, you can reduce pointless expenses and focus on the strategies most likely to work.

4. One of The Greatest Benefits of Digital Marketing Is That It Allows You to Target Your Ideal Buyers

When you purchase billboard space or place an ad in a magazine, you’re taking a shot in the dark that this messaging will reach its intended audience. Though you can increase success with traditional marketing, it’s not as targeted as digital marketing.

With digital marketing (SEO), you can ensure that your content is reaching the right consumers who are searching for topics relevant to your business online. While pay-per-click, display, and social media advertising enables you to target those who are most likely to be interested in your products or services based on demographic information and general characteristics.

By improving targeting, you can work to get more for your marketing budget and resources. With digital marketing, you no longer have to worry that you are spending money on ads that won’t reach likely audience.

5. Most People Are Starting Their Journey Online

Think about how often you turn to Google or another search engine to find the information you need. Your customers are no different when they start to research the products or services that can help them solve their biggest problems.

In fact, according to Vimeo, 93% of online experiences start with a search engine. Before consumers even know what product or service they need, they are going to the search engines to look for answers to their questions and to learn more about their challenges.

This presents a great opportunity for small businesses to connect with potential customers and educate them during the beginning stages of the buyer’s journey. By creating SEO content, you can improve your visibility online and reach customers when it matters most.

6. Your Customers Are on Social Media, and Digital Marketing Helps You Reach Them

No matter what industry your business is in, there’s a good chance that your buyers are spending their time on social media channels like Facebook or Twitter. According to eMarketer, 2.34 billion people use social media platforms regularly.

Digital marketing helps you reach these engaged consumers. Not only are you able to publish and promote unique content on these social sites, but you’re also able to reach consumers through advertising. Social media platforms like Facebook offer targeting options to reach consumers who are likely to be interested in your products / services. It also allows you to have one-on-one conversations in real-time and gain valuable insight into your brand, something which traditional marketing doesn’t allow.

7. Reach Qualified Buyers Online with the Help of SEO and local SEO

SEO allows you to optimize your site content for the search engines and reach more buyers online by using relevant keywords that describe your product or services in an apt manner, helping you bring more targeted traffic to your site, and increase conversions over time.

SEO isn’t just for national businesses. Many consumers search for local companies online, which eventually leads to purchase. In fact, according to Google, 28% of searches result in a purchase. Local SEO means optimizing your site for local search results, can is an extremely valuable digital marketing tool for businesses operating in specific geographic locations, such as brick-and-mortar stores, restaurants, and other service-based business.

8. Digital Marketing Helps You Connect with Mobile Customers

Yet another one of the many benefits of digital marketing is that it allows you to connect with consumers already browsing and consuming content on mobile devices. More than half of all online users access web from a mobile device, and digital marketing can help you target those people.

9. You Can Easily and Quickly Adapt Your Strategy for Best Results

With traditional marketing like television or newspaper ads, you have to wait until after the campaign is complete to see the results. While traditional marketing methods may require you to wait weeks or even months to determine which strategies are working, digital marketing allows you to view the real-time results of your campaigns and adapt your methods to improve results as you go.

With website analytics, you can view the number of visitors that come to your site, look which pages they are visiting, time they are spending on each page. You can also see which the peak site traffic days and times are as well as track conversion rates across the site. All this information offers important insights that can help you improve your campaigns over time.

10. Digital Marketing Levels the Playing Field, Allowing Your Business to Be More Competitive

It’s often difficult for small businesses to compete with their larger counterparts due to a limited budget and resources. However, digital marketing levels this playing field by allowing smaller brands to take bigger brands head-on.

Traditional marketing like print advertising is expensive and requires big budget, however, digital marketing is more affordable, and allows all kinds of businesses to gain exposure nationally or internationally. If your business is not limited to a specific location, you can use digital marketing to reach your target audience across the globe. This allows small businesses to find new audiences for their products and services.

How to Take Advantage of the Benefits of Digital Marketing?

As you can see, there are many benefits of digital marketing that can transform your business reach and engagement. Digital marketing is the best way to reach customers when they are most likely searching for brands just like yours.

Wondering, How to Get Started?

It’s important to have a sound digital marketing strategy in place before you start creating and distributing content or launch a digital ad campaign. Ensure your overall business goals align with your digital marketing goals, create customer avatars, determine which digital marketing strategies to use, and develop a plan for proper implementation and analytics.

Be tuned to get more updates on how you can better your digital marketing efforts. Write to me your specific questions and what topic would you like me to write on further.

Happy learning,

Neha Agrawal Singhal