First of all, what is digital marketing?
We can describe digital marketing as the part of marketing that utilizes internet and online activities such as search engines, websites, social media, email etc. to reach consumers and develop businesses.
Especially right now, it represents a fundamental part of many companies’ strategy.
Why? Let’s have a look at our top 5 reasons.
Reach people in the right place
Nowadays, where are people shopping most of their time? Online, online, online.
According to Storm (2020), 7.7 billion people use the Internet across the globe, and the number keeps growing. Again, 22% of the global population is on Facebook (62% of people in the US). 76% of Facebook users and 51% Instagram users are on the platform every day and 37% of people’s time on social media is spent interacting with brands (Sean, 2019).
Your customers are online, every day, looking for reviews, exchanging opinions, purchasing products and services.
Reach the right people in the right place
One of the biggest assets of digital marketing is the ability to precisely target your audience. Once created your buyer persona, you can easily input their characteristics on social media ad campaigns. In this way, you are sure to only reach relevant people interested in buying your products and services.
You can also segment your audience to deliver a more customized and personalized experience that will result in more and more leads and conversions.
Out-compete with your competition
Having a digital presence means that you will be able to reach a wider audience and spend less money. If you manage it in the right way, with SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay-per-click) techniques, and you are able to read analytics, you will able to take the right decisions in order to optimize your spending.
Moreover, SEO works by relevance. The more relevant your ad is, the more chances you have to appear first in Google Search. This gives many small businesses the opportunity to be “close” or even “above” big companies whose ads are not as relevant!
(Tip: remember that optimizing SEO is always the first thing to do.)
Your competitors are already doing it and they are reaching customers that could be yours. Can you do better?
Digital marketing will give you measurable results
Another one of the greatest advantages of digital marketing is that it is measurable. It is easy to monitor your campaigns and optimize them by reading data and insights. How many people did I reach? Are people engaging with the content?
You can easily answer to these questions by looking at metrics such as clicks, likes, follows, shares, comments, conversions, impressions and so on.
Your strategy will of course depend on your goal. Once your goal has been set, you can start deciding priorities in order to understand which media to use and which metrics to focus on.
(Tip: have your goal always in mind first!)
Digital marketing will give you a huge ROI (return on investment)
Online marketing strategies can result in a huge ROI. Taking the example of email marketing, do you know that for $1 spent, you can earn up to $44 in return? (Storm, 2020).
It is a huge (and cost-effective) opportunity for your business. Compared to traditional methods, it is much cheaper to run a PPC campaign, also considering that you only pay-per-click (which means a potential customer).
Are these 5 reasons enough? Of course, there’s a lot to add and consider, and you will find more and more detailed information on Ohlelo’s articles, but for now one thing is sure: digital marketing is the key!
What are you waiting for?? Check out our guides to digital marketing strategy and effective email marketing, which will help take your business to the next level!
Questions about digital marketing for discussion on Ohlelo:
- Are you a digital strategist?
- If yes, which would you say is your #1 tool to do digital marketing?
- If not, do you want to become one?
- If you are a business, do you keep your marketing in-house or external (through an agency for example)?
See the WebFX blog for more great digital marketing tips, and check out the best of our digital marketing content on our Digital Marketing homepage!
