Digital marketing is a blood sport. Winners win big and losers lose big. You’re either going to do right, that means to dominate, or you’re going to go home with your tail between your legs.
If you're not devoting enough resources to digital marketing or you're using an ad-hoc approach with no clearly defined strategies, then your competitors will eat your digital lunch!
Business executives, entrepreneurs, and individuals use digital marketing strategies as part of their digital marketing efforts to build their brands, build trust, and connect with their audience. Therefore, you always want to be a step ahead of your competitors, constantly evolving and constantly innovating your services menu or product line.
Do you have a well-chalked out digital marketing strategy in place? If not, if not, let us give you 12 reasons why you should integrate digital marketing (DM) strategy immediately.
1. DM Provides Balance the Battlefield
Digital Marketing is not only for the likes of multinationals and large corporations that have sufficient resources required to mount an online marketing campaign. Digital Marketing balance the playing field, providing small and medium enterprises the chance to compete against the giants and attract their share of targeted traffic.
With digital marketing, small companies now have the resources to perform sales and marketing processes that were previously available only to large corporations. Small businesses can engage effectively with multiple customers, even to customers from many parts of the world even if they don’t have physical stores or branches in these locations.
Here what users said when they were asked about the features they like about shopping digitally that are missing from an in-store experience.
2. DM Is More Cost-Effective than Traditional Marketing
Small businesses have very little resources and even capitalization. Therefore, Digital Marketing provides them with a better and much more cost-effective marketing channel that delivers results.
In the early days of marketing, businesses depended on print ads, billboards, direct mail, radio spots, and TV ads. And while these are marketing methods that can certainly work—even in a digital age—they come with a hefty price tag.
Though some invest in paid ads online; however, the cost is still cheaper compared to traditional marketing.
3. DM Delivers Conversion
Businesses marketing products and services online measure success by the percentage rate of incoming traffic gets converted into leads, subscribers, or sales, depending on the intended purposes of your website.
Without conversion, all your traffic would mean nothing, and all your marketing efforts will simply go to waste. That is why business owners are streamlining their digital marketing campaigns towards conversion optimization, making it a top priority above everything else.
4. DM is More Cost-Effective than Traditional Marketing
With better revenues and better branding, Digital Marketing can provide a better Return on Investments (ROI) than traditional media and marketing channels. With traditional media, the cost is too exorbitant for small and medium enterprises to leverage on, and the results received are somewhat vague and difficult to measure.
Digital Marketing, on the other hand, can easily be tracked and monitored, with results immediately realized and measured as soon as targeted audiences provide contact information, subscribe to a newsletter or training program, or make a purchase. The key to success in Digital marketing, however, is to generate a steady flow of targeted traffic that converts into sales and leads. The more your business generates this kind of traffic, the faster you can realize your ROI.
5. DM Promotes Interaction with Targeted Audiences
One of the reasons why digital marketing is taking over traditional marketing channels is the ability of Internet marketing tools to interact with targeted audiences in real-time. Engagement in any form is what your customers expect to receive when interacting with your brand or business. How your business handles such engagements and interactions will spell the difference between business success and failure.
Interacting and providing your customers with proper engagement points can give you an insight of what your targeted audiences want. This vital information will steer you towards making the right set of next moves, provide your customers with an even better experience, develop good relationships with them, gain their loyalty and trust that you will need when your business begins to grow.
6. DM Caters to the Mobile Consumer
In 2017, 2.73 billion people worldwide will use a mobile phone to connect to the internet, representing 36.9% of the global population and 78.9% of internet users.
Of that group, 87.4% will use a smartphone for mobile internet access.
Now would be the best time to have digital marketing campaigns intended towards mobile consumers, paving the way for them towards achieving better growth and faster expansion.
7. DM Builds Brand Reputation
The power of digital marketing lies in its ability for attracting targeted traffic. These types of audiences for your content are most likely already ready to know more about your brand, products or services and may be interested enough to purchase what you have to offer. Delivering on what you promised will help you develop a better relationship with your targeted audiences, help them transition into paying customers that will go back and interact with your site some more – on a regular and continuous basis.
This will prove beneficial for your brand reputation, as satisfied customers will most likely tell other people about their experience with your brand, product, or service. Your brand reputation will go viral as expected, further opening new doors of opportunities for reaching bigger markets and attain business growth.
8. DM Earns People’s Trust
Digital marketing grows from social proof, social media signals, reviews and real testimonials from clients who have previously used joined, purchased, or availed of a service or product marketed by your business. Most clients would trust a service or a product when people they know give positive feedback, reviews or information about a brand.
9. DM Engages People to Take Favorable Action
While social signals and testimonials help earn trust from targeted audiences, Digital Marketing makes use of effective strategies that will entice people to take a favorable action your brand or business intends them to take. Conversion to leads or sales is still initiated and under full control by the website visitor. They are not compelled to do so but digital marketers can make use of clever and innovative ways to entice conversion using Calls-To-Action.
Calls-To-Action specifies what your web visitors should do next – either to sign up, like, download something, call, or buy – specific steps that will entice them to perform a favorable action. Innovative forms, buttons, and texts are optimized according to copy, color scheme, graphics and even positioning on the page to generate the best results in terms of generating favorable action.
10. Because Digital Marketing Ensures Business Survival Online
It is a normal occurrence for brick-and-mortar business establishments to encounter visitors entering their store, skimming through, and inspecting products, then leave without buying anything. Many kinds of people like these come and go, but a targeted few will make a purchase and if satisfied, will come back for more at a later date. If you get less of the later and more of the few, eventually your brick-and-mortar business will cease to exist.
Your business can be likened to this. Even if you have tons of website visitors but none of them ever convert, your business will also cease to exist. Digital Marketing helps you make use of proven strategies and techniques that attract not necessarily more traffic – but highly targeted traffic that delivers results. Targeting the right kind of people that deliver the right kind of results is what Digital Marketing is all about – ensuring survival for your business.