I want to assume that most of you are familiar with the term Digital Marketing by now. And with the way the internet is taking over how we consume information, it has become imperative to keep in touch with the latest trends.

Having worked in a retail company that was deeply rooted in the traditional way of doing things, I saw first hand the benefits of digital marketing. We had good products and services to deliver, unfortunately, our method of outreach greatly affected our customer engagements and almost led the company down the hole…

Then came the change in management with a little sprinkle of digital marketing innovation to advertise and participate in the digital sphere and……VOILA! Our customer engagements and sales turnover started to pick up the pace, soon outpacing the workers.

Brands have had to adapt to that change by getting their products in front of people where they spend most of their time and trying to pitch new clients whilst maintaining their existing ones.

However, the discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of digital marketing versus traditional marketing is still ongoing. There might be no definite answer to that question, but we all know that having a digital marketing strategy is an essential part of business importance to its customers.

In this post, we’ll cover eight reasons why it’s time for your brand to adopt an online marketing strategy.

Let’s Start!

1. Great Return on Investment (ROI)

It’s easier to get an impressive ROI when you go digital with your marketing. At the beginning of your online marketing journey, this can be mostly accomplished through a combination of email marketing, content marketing, and social media marketing.

Email marketing, for example, has one of the highest ROI of all the strategies. According to campaignmonitor.com; For every $1 spent, you have the potential of earning up to $44 in revenue. That is an ROI of 4400% and a great opportunity for you to grow and earn a profit from your marketing efforts.

Content marketing on its own can be said to generate 3X the leads (i.e potential customers) for about 62% less than traditional marketing. It is very likely that these people will also purchase your goods and become loyal customers.

ROI for social media can be indirect at times. But a study by Forbes showed that businesses using social media outperform 78% of businesses who don’t use social media. It was also discovered by IBM that a lead that comes in through social media is 7X more likely to become a paying customer. More likely to convert also means you’re spending less money trying to convert people who will never become paying customers.

As a business, the ability to measure every marketing action ensures a cost-effective strategy. This leaves room for a great ROI because you don’t have to spend much money to run a campaign. This way, you can create the capabilities to support digital marketing operations. That’s the importance of digital marketing to small businesses.

2. Build an Online Presence

A reason to invest in Digital Marketing is to build reputation. When was the last time you patronized a business without looking it up on the internet?

In recent years, the behaviour of customers has changed and so have the marketing techniques used ,to reach these customers. Building a solid brand image and rapport with your consumers on the internet will help make those undecided customers close deals quicker. This means that online branding is your chance to gain the public’s recognition and engage with them.

3. Your Competitors Are Already Online

If you’re wondering why digital marketing is important, one of the answers is that many of your competitors have already taken advantage of all digital marketing has to offer. They’ve designed websites and adapted them for SEO, created social profiles across the board, and run paid ads to enhance their reach.

When you take an interest in what your competitors are doing, you have an idea of things that are working and things that aren’t. It is likely that no matter the business you’re in, your competitors already have an online presence. What type of content are they putting out there? How do they communicate their brand and what makes them unique? How well do they engage with the audience? Do you think you can do better? You can’t if you don’t participate in competing in the digital world.

Digital marketing enables you to compete with your competition by increasing your reach on a much smaller budget. When efficiently directed, it gives brands remarkable control over how and where they spend their money. Having this type of control and data to back decisions help you make smarter ones.

This was shown in the Mint campaign. Even though Mint was relatively unknown amongst its more popular competitors, the company executed a digital strategy issuing exceptional content pieces, from informative blog posts to viral, eye-catching infographics to boost their business. As a result of these digital marketing efforts, they gained an impressive following in the digital sphere before being sold to Intuit for a whopping $170 million.

4. Increase Customer Engagement

Digital marketing provides an opportunity to have a higher level of interaction and engagement with your customers. Your audience is immediately connected with you via different digital marketing channels whether it’s through email messages, DM’s, or comments.

You can also interact with your customers via surveys, webinars, and videos and this easily builds a stronger and long-lasting relationship with them. Running a business in line with your customers’ requirements always has a positive impact. And digital marketing allows you to do just that because you can interact with your audience and provide solutions to their questions without delay.

An example of this importance was shown by UNIQLO, a Japanese apparel company whose tagline is Lifewear Made For All. People who live in major cities have probably seen a Uniqlo advertisement, however, the company wanted to be seen as a technology-focused company, not just a fashion brand.

They designed a world-first “fast-moving” image campaign, initiated it online and in 100 locations. The campaign made use of images to deliver a unique code that is unclear to the naked eye.

Customers were then asked to upload the five-digit code to their website to be given a sample from the HEATTECH clothing range. Once the viewers got to the site, they were directed through a series of screens with detailed information that described the technology behind Uniqlo products before getting to the price page.

The results of this experience were amazing. Over 25,000 people signed up to receive UNIQLO newsletters and their online videos were viewed 1.3 million times. The campaign reached over 4 million people, which resulted in 35,000 new customers.

Digital marketing is an important avenue to interact with your audience and educate them on your products and services. Taking charge of the discussion with your audience enables you to craft the story you want to put out to your target audience.

5. Adjustable and Flexible

A lot of campaigns are not properly thought out and could be improved if businesses were able to use their customers’ feedback during that period.

In any form of marketing, there’s always an initial investment necessary to drive traffic. However, the significance of digital marketing to small and medium enterprises is suddenly understandable when you see what little effort it takes to scale and adapt as your business expands.

An example is with social media campaigns in which you can choose a daily, weekly, or monthly budget. It is unnecessary to renegotiate an ad spot to keep the ad running as it continues uninterrupted. You just increase your ad spend as you continue to convert that traffic.

Another example is if a client puts in a large order and you need to cut back to avoid getting backlogged, it’s really easy to do that. As opposed to traditional marketing whose production costs too much to consider making a change however minor.

You can also utilize feedback to improve the campaigns as this also doesn’t have a financial impact. The power is in your hands. Just make that change and re-launch your ad.

6. Measurable

An advantage of digital advertising is that it’s measurable to the scope of impressions, reach clicks, and conversions. With traditional marketing, it is hard to figure out how many people engage with your promotional material.

Every single time people visit your website, click a link, or engage with some sort of media, they leave trails that indicate what they liked and didn’t like. You can calculate the exact ROI and optimize based on which ad placement is giving you the highest conversion rate.

Scaling the monetary value of traditional adverts as possible but at the end of it all, it’s mostly parallel and a rough estimate. This is not the case with digital marketing. It’s definite and involves a whole lot of data with results in monetary terms. Also, tracking KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) is a much more straightforward process this way. Because of that, companies are more likely to learn from their mistakes and get better with Digital Marketing as time goes by.

7. Reach Your Target Audience

The capacity to reach your target audience is arguably one of the prominent reasons why digital marketing is so important.

Dissecting huge demographics and trimming them down into very targeted groups to get the attention of a specific kind of person is one of the gifts of digital marketing.

Why is this? Because this person is the one most likely to purchase what you sell.

When you target at this level, you design campaigns that are highly applicable to your target market. And just because it’s so applicable, it resonates on a level that common campaigns can’t. This connection gives the ability to influence decisions.

It is done without annoying traditional marketing. The same ads are not displayed over and over for a month-long and you’re not interrupting someone’s program. Your ads can run forever at a minimal cost and you can easily improve the ad to connect with various demographics of people. This level of control over who sees your ad can not be seen using any other kind of marketing.

When you reach your target audience, you drive better results with your campaign.

8. Cost-Effective

Unlike offline marketing, digital marketing doesn’t request you pay fully in advance and wait for results. The process is normally paying for what you use. For digital marketing, you must create a budget before the commencement of the campaign, and the money is used based on the type of ad model used which can be PPC. This implies that you pay only in line with the clicks or engagements you receive as opposed to paying the entire budget.

In contrast, traditional ads that involve prints and TV amongst others are widely known as overpriced and unpredictable.

To Wrap Up

The importance of digital marketing for your business cannot be overemphasized, and there are a million reasons your business can benefit from it.

Your digital marketing plan should have a clear purpose, be based on a visible target audience, and implemented with the appropriate tools as this can increase your brand awareness, save you money, and be adaptable when necessary.

So, are you up for the challenge?

If you’re unsure of where to start, why don’t you check out Growth Channel? It’s an awesome AI-powered tool that generates personalized marketing plans and is sure to get you started on the right path.

See you at the top!!!????

Source: Medium