Digital marketing is without any doubt, the best way to go about for your products and services. It can be beneficial for your business in many ways. Some of these are:
- It is affordable to deploy than traditional marketing and advertising.
- It Prepares You for the Internet of Things.
- It goes from planning to execution more quickly.
- It Can Help You Compete with Large Corporations
- It gives readers, fans and viewers a chance to share your content.
- It Keeps You at Par with Competitors.
- It campaigns are easier to attach to other campaigns.
- It Helps Generate Higher Revenues.
- It campaigns have longer shelf lives.
- It Connects You with the Mobile Consumer.
- It is easier to stop or change a digital marketing campaign after it starts.
- It Enables Real-Time Customer Service.
- It gives the brand more time and space to tell its story.
- It Saves You Money.
- It Generates Higher Conversion Rates.
- It Connects You with Consumers on the Internet.
It allows you to reach a broader, more engaged and targeted audience fast than traditional marketing and is more cost-effective. With digital marketing you’re speaking to a specific audience and really test things and iterate quickly. So if one ad doesn’t work you can try variations of it and track progress. It adds a lot more science and tracking to marketing as well as allows companies to be more relational in their marketing efforts.
Some of the advantages of Digital Marketing:
- Simple to measure: Unlike traditional methods you can see in real-time what is or is not working for your business online and you can adapt very quickly to improve your results. For measuring traffic to your site you can use Google Analytics to measure specific goals you want to achieve for your website or blog and most packaged email marketing solutions provide good insight into how many people are opening, reading and converting from your emails.
- Level playing field: Any business can compete with any competitor regardless of size with a solid digital marketing strategy. Traditionally a smaller retailer would struggle to match the finesse of the fixtures and fittings of its larger competitors. Online, a crisp well thought out site with a smooth customer journey and fantastic service is king – not size.
- Real time results: you don’t have to wait weeks for a boost to your business like you would have to waiting for a fax or form to be returned. You can see the numbers of visitors to your site and its subscribers increase, peak trading times, conversion rates and much more at the touch of a button.
- Reduced cost: Your business can develop its online marketing strategy for very little cost and can potentially replace costly advertising channels.
- Brand Development: A well-maintained website with quality content targeting the needs and adding value to your target audience can provide significant value and lead generation opportunities. The same can be said for utilising social media channels and personalised email marketing.
- Refinement of your strategy: Basically anything that you capture in your customer journey can be reported on and honed for greater success at the fraction of the cost of traditional marketing. After all, how annoying is it to get a couple of forms returned from mail shot. Marketing online enables you to refine your strategy at any point in time and see any improvements or opportunities for further refinement almost instantaneously.
- Far greater exposure: your business can be seen anywhere in the world from one marketing campaign, the cost to do these using traditional methods would be considerable. Plus once you have optimised the key word search content in your website you should see a long-term return on your investment and will be fairly low-cost to maintain your ranking.
- Greater engagement: With digital marketing you can encourage your prospects, clients and followers to take action, visit your website, read about your products and services, rate them buy them and provide feedback which is visible to your market. So it doesn’t take long for good publicity to enhance the prospects of your business.
- Not Intrusive: I know most people hate receiving sales mail shots or phone calls at inconvenient times on stuff that they have little interest in. Online people get the choice to opt in or out of communications and often it is relevant because they were the ones searching for it in the first place. Also, have you ever got frustrated receiving a regular email on a topic that interests and adds value to you? Nor me so don’t underestimate the power of market segmentation and tailored marketing.
- Viral: how often do your sales flyers get passed around instantly by your customers and prospects? Online, using social media share buttons on your website, email and social media channels enables your message to be shared incredibly quickly, just look how effective it is for sharing breaking news. However a word of caution, bad news can travel much quicker so make sure you have a risk management strategy to tackle negative press as soon as it is circulated.
