Digital Marketing: What It Is and Why You Need It

Modern businesses can’t operate without marketing, and digital marketing is fast becoming the most popular way to reach customers. So what exactly is digital marketing? In short, it’s any marketing that relies on online media to reach potential buyers, either through social media, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), or more advanced strategies like affiliate programs or blogs.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is a form of marketing that relies on creating, publishing, and promoting content online. Digital content can include web pages, blogs, social media posts, videos, photos — almost anything you can view or interact with in a digital capacity. This digital aspect allows marketers to harness their target audiences’ collective purchasing power by converting large groups of people into their customers. In other words, digital marketing helps businesses reach more people through technology. Digital marketing involves several tactics such as search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising (PPC), e-mail marketing, display advertising, video production, and many others. All of these methods are focused on driving conversions — i.e., getting traffic from one point to another while simultaneously turning it into leads or sales.

Why Do You Need Digital Marketing?

The short answer? There’s no way around it. You have to have a digital marketing strategy in place if you want to succeed online. Here’s why:

1. When it comes to digital marketing, everyone starts on the same playing field. Regardless of what location you are in, it’s your store’s visibility on the web that really matters. To put it simply, your company is easier to find, which attracts more clients to its door, if it is prominent on the web, is working to get its name out there, and is up-to-date on current happenings.

2. Digital marketing helps businesses keep up with their competition and be one step ahead. Digital marketing is the best way for a brand to keep an edge on its competition. SEO, geotargeting, native search, social media, Google Adwords, and blogs are all examples of search engine optimization you should focus on when in business. Reach more people by being on the web rather than going out to people.

3. Marketing in the digital world is cheaper than traditional advertising and less costly than the advertising mediums of radio, newspaper, magazine, or direct mail. As a result, business owners can now find cheap substitutes online, like Youtube in place of the television, blogs instead of magazines, social media instead of flyers, and podcasts instead of the radio.

4. With digital marketing, there are analytics to tell the company how well their advertisement is doing. Good news about digital marketing is that creators can measure with analytic methods that cannot be used with traditional advertising. One way to find out what your audience is interested in is to quickly run analytic reports on your advertisements and see what they read, looked at, or bought.

5. You can use digital marketing to target individuals who use smartphones. Digital marketing can be formatted to look good on a mobile device in order to reach customers no matter where they may be. Once a business’s location-based SEO and digital marketing have been fine-tuned, it can rely on the understanding that it will be found.

6. Digital marketing enables brands to be found easily through a multitude of channels. With so many potential channels on the web, marketing to get the word out about a new brand is easier than ever. Use shotgun marketing and potential customers will get confused. It’s far preferable to start with a short campaign and expand from there, while retaining an unique voice and brand design.

7. Thanks to digital marketing, business owners can keep tabs on their brand. And digital marketing is really beneficial for business owners in terms of checking on their reputation and managing their engagement with unsatisfied customers in order to quell bad publicity before it gets too big and becomes a headache.

8. By employing digital marketing tactics, brands can create and grow bonds with their audiences. By following, connecting, commenting, and acknowledging the concerns of its audience, a business will gain trust, friendship, and potential customers.

9. Digital marketing gives a business another stream of potential sales. Imagine digital marketing as branching off a brick and mortar business. One section of the business includes content including tips, advice, local news, and events related to the brand.

Are There Various Approaches to Digital Marketing?

Marketing professionals are divided in their opinions on digital marketing. Some believe that it should be done without investing much money into it. The others, however, think that to have success you have to put enough money into digital marketing to ensure at least some ROI (return on investment). There are different kinds of digital marketing approaches:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO is the discipline of increasing web traffic by enhancing position in various search engines.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing): SEM is a type of paid internet advertising that is used to boost the website visibility in search engines. SEM is frequently used in tandem with SEO.

SMM (Social Media Marketing): is the activity of promoting products and services using social media platforms. Influencer marketing is common in SMM.

Content marketing: is the publishing and dissemination of text (articles / blog posts), audio and video resources to individuals online. Businesses commonly use blogs, videos, and podcasts to partake in content marketing.

Email Marketing — Email marketing allows firms to distribute branded, promotional information to potential consumers directly through email. Automated newsletters are frequently used in this setting.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) — PPC is an online advertising approach in which a company only charges for its advertisements when someone clicks on them.

Native Ad — Native ads mix promotional materials into a platform, emphasizing the importance of both the main message and the marketing goals. Sponsored content is a typical kind of native advertising in which a company uploads its own material on another website.

Affiliate marketing: is a result-based activity that allows for earnings splitting and pay-per-sale (PPS) remuneration inside a shared network.

As the list at the top of this blog post points out, there are many ways to execute a digital marketing strategy.

How Much Will My Business Spend on Digital Marketing?

Typically, businesses spend 10% of their revenue on digital marketing. That’s not a set number; it varies widely based on industry. If you’re selling $1 million in product a year, that’s $100,000 in marketing costs. If you’re selling $100 million in product a year, that’s only one percent of your annual revenue. Here’s an example of how digital marketing breaks down for those two businesses: An e-commerce store making $10 million annually might spend about 1 to 2 percent on social media and blogging (they can get most sales from SEO anyway), but could budget as much as 15 to 20% for paid advertising on Google AdWords or Facebook Ads to target new customers every quarter. In other words, if you are thinking about spending $5,000 on social media ads over a three-month period — and those ads bring in more than $25,000 in sales — you’re going to make money. The cost will vary by company and industry, but there are a few ways to estimate what your business will spend.

Conclusion

How do you know if your business needs digital marketing? If it’s not working with social media, email marketing, or any other Internet-based marketing strategy, that’s a strong sign. Digital marketing is about engaging customers where they already are. Your competition is getting on board with digital strategies — are you? If you need help getting started or improving an existing online presence, a professional can help. And even if you don’t have a lot of time to spend on it yourself, it’s worth keeping up-to-date with what’s new in digital marketing because things change so quickly. We write two articles weekly on updated marketing tips so follow us and subscribe for more!!