Digital marketing is an important investment for businesses of all sizes today. This resource connects your brand to customers on a personal level while providing evidence of your expertise and value.
Your goal with a digital marketing investment is to connect with an ideal customer. These leads are already online, searching Google or clicking on ads for information they need to make their lives better in some way.
Without digital marketing, your resources are not findable. That means the individual will look to your competitor to find what they need.
That’s just the beginning of the story. Here are the reasons why your business needs digital marketing today.
1. You Can Measure for Success
When companies invest in traditional advertising methods, it can take several weeks or months to analyze how everything performed.
In digital advertising, a marketing investment generates enough data to make informed or empowered choices in days – and sometimes hours.
Several web analytics tools, including social media metrics, are quickly accessible through online dashboards where customer demographics become meaningful filters. This information ensures that you know how each ideal customer group interacts with your message.
Since the information is nearly instantaneous, every business must set digital marketing goals from the beginning. Here are some examples to consider.
- Online Sales Growth. A goal like this one would require monitoring the average transaction per customer or cart abandonment rates to determine if successful outcomes occur.
- Lead Generation. Metrics like your click-through rate can tell you if your digital marketing investments generate attention. It helps to have a conversion definition to know if your rates increase in that area.
- Company Awareness. Investments in this outreach effort let you see how many people get exposed to brand impressions through various advertising categories.
One of the best ways to get started is to try pushing your cost-per-thousand-impressions to the lowest rate possible to stretch your advertising money further.
2. You Can Increase Mobile Access
About three-quarters of American adults own at least one smartphone. People are more likely to use these mobile devices for their online needs than desktops or laptops today because of their ability to provide instant access.
Think about what you use your smartphone for today. Does it hold your calendar and schedule? Is it your connection to your social networks?
Digital marketing investments can help you tap into this audience effectively.
Options like text and email marketing can directly communicate with potential customers. You can use remarketing ads to keep your brand at the top of the mind for cart or site abandonment issues.
When you can reach people with mobile access, you can get your business in front of people wherever they are. That means your brand presence remains, even if different apps are active on the device.
3. More Advertising Flexibility
Digital marketing is a diverse category that delivers multiple ways to reach out to potential customers. Customers tend to engage with brands more when the marketing materials combine numerous content types.
That’s why it’s worth considering the following options if your business is considering an expansion into digital marketing.
- Banner ads provide a straightforward communication tool that highlights who you are and what you do.
- Email marketing provides a direct communication line that highlights a value proposition while delivering links that can lead to potential transactions.
- Search engine optimization creates answers for the questions that Internet users have, which means your information gets put in front of people who already potentially want what you’ve got.
A business can invest in everything or only one thing with digital marketing. That makes it suitable for startups, entrepreneurs, or freelancers who are just beginning their journey or large multinational corporations.
Some efforts combine multiple assets, such as SEO. With a suitable optimization strategy, you might upload audio clips from a podcast, videos, and photographs of what you offer.
Although investments in traditional media can provide multiple content types in a single exposure, it’s far cheaper and easier to incorporate them in digital marketing.
Digital marketing also provides scalability flexibility or stopping a campaign that performs poorly in real-time to avoid unnecessary expenses.
4. Exposure to Different Target Audiences
Today’s online marketplace is more competitive than ever. In 2020, approximately 223 million people considered themselves to be social media users.
When online use expands to a global audience, the number of worldwide social media users reached 4.2 billion people in 2021.
Businesses must engage digitally with consumers today because that is where the audience for almost every industry is located.
What makes digital marketing a unique asset in this environment is expanding your target audience. Suppose you know that one demographic in the United States is attracted to your product or service. In that case, it’s a reasonable assumption to think that the same truth might apply in Canada, Europe, or other geographic regions.
When a mobile demographic engages with your digital marketing messages, you can expand that effort by targeting tablets, computers, and other devices.
You can dial into specific demographics that match your ideal customer with absolute precision with filter availability today or set your investment to reach only households in the top 10% income bracket of a specific geographic region.
Do you want to reach families that wish to purchase a home in the next six months? You can find that audience with today’s digital marketing resources.
You can set your target audience to be in any age range, employment category, or gender.
You can also mix and match those demographics with digital marketing assets to research specific target audience opportunities.
Using the different examples above, you could put your message in front of someone between the ages of 18-25, still living at home, with an HHI of $150,000 that likes to use a tablet while researching new places to live in Seattle, WA.
Since finding a new target audience can be a little complex in some situations, engaging the services of a professional digital marketing agency can help your business build the foundation it needs to find these benefits.
5. More Revenue
Companies that use digital marketing strategies have 2.8 times more revenue growth expectancy than those that don’t make that investment.
Complete digital strategies create higher conversion rates because the messages are more customized to each target audience. When you can individualize the process while taking advantage of today’s automation technologies, you’ll find that the bespoke structures lead to more sales opportunities.
When you have a higher conversion rate, that means more people are buying goods or services – or the current customer base raises the average amount per transaction. Both outcomes provide positive results!
6. Build Stronger Relationships
Even though we’ve moved to a hybrid customer-business relationship structure that includes in-person and online interactions, some truths remain. One of them is that a brand is not as likely to earn transactions without consumer trust as those with an established connection to individuals.
Your business must attract, secure, and convert leads to be successful. The only possible way is to develop in-depth knowledge of your ideal customer.
The building blocks for trust are relatively simple.
- Value the long-term relationship with each customer. Meet their current needs, but take the time to learn what it’ll take to go even further.
- Be honest about what you can do. If you break promises, getting caught in a lie often ruins an entire marketing campaign.
- Honor each commitment. Follow through on what you say you’ll do for each customer.
- Don’t offer excuses. If you did something wrong, take responsibility for the situation. Then try to make things right.
- Trust is easily damaged when miscommunication occurs. Try to communicate in ways that won’t leave any room for misinterpretation. Sometimes that means you need to listen first instead of pitching another idea.
- Allow your brand to be vulnerable. When you show emotions with your customers, it can tap into places where you have some common ground
- Be helpful whenever possible. That often means offering something of value first before you earn revenues in return.
- Show people that you care about them. Customers shouldn’t be treated as commodities.
- Stand up for what you believe is right. Even if some people want you to agree with everything they say because the “customer is always right,” the best relationships form when every insight and opinion receives value.
- Be 100% transparent in everything you’re doing. Talking about why you’re making the choices for your business can help everyone understand where you’re coming from each time, even if they disagree.
You cannot build trust with consumers overnight. That’s why businesses should engage in a long-term approach through digital marketing assets.
When you can prove that your brand honors its commitments, admits when it is wrong, and works hard to provide valuable products or services, you’ll be on your way to achieving a successful result in this area.
7. Customers Prefer Digital Marketing
Before search engines were a viable way to find information, people turned to the Yellow Pages to find local businesses.
Now that digital marketing delivers so much information to people, consumers look online for data about local businesses first.
Over 70% of customers check online reviews or business ratings before buying a specific product or service. That information is treated in the same light as a personal recommendation from a trusted friend or family member. Some people read up to six reviews before proceeding.
Your potential customers are already online. If they try to find you there and no information is available, you might as well not exist. When there aren’t any reviews or resources to find an in-person location, it’s tougher to establish trust.
When you form a clear digital marketing strategy that takes care of these needs, you’ll find that most interactions are relatively straightforward today. People will come to you knowing what they want, simplifying the lead conversion process.
How can you use this digital marketing investment to your advantage?
- Encourage customers to leave honest reviews about their experiences. Even if the information is negative, responding to the situation can still win over people.
- Have people leave testimonials about your products or services and why they’re helpful.
- With more information available upfront, consumers can decide for themselves if they want to work with you without interference.
8. Save Money
40% of businesses report experiencing increased cost savings after implementing a digital marketing tactic, but even so, 15% of B2B companies don’t include outreach efforts to keep leads warm.
Nurturing leads doesn’t need to be a complicated process. All it needs is concise and relevant content to ease the nerves that customers have during the journey through your sales funnel.
When you hold regular meetings with your sales and marketing teams, craft messaging to follow the buyer’s journey, and personalize the outreach effort, you’ll find successful results are more likely out there to discover.
Then you can use your digital marketing investments to stay on top of buyer actions or feedback. By reviewing your performance data or taking note of what causes more engagement or unsubscribe results, your business can find ways to grow.
Since you’re not using trial and error methodologies for this process, the money you can save through digital marketing is massive.
Digital marketing represents about 2.5% of a company’s revenue when 100% funding occurs. That’s about 25% of the marketing budget each year. In return, you can boost your ROI to stratospheric levels because the return can be over $40 to every $1 spent in some categories.
Are You Ready to Start Your Digital Marketing Journey?
If your business hasn’t invested in digital marketing until this point, it is at risk of falling behind the competitors in this space. The good news is that it doesn’t take long to start catching up once you start making a few investments.
Once your ideal customer starts seeing what you offer, your expertise and value can stand out in a sea of similar items.
