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