One core reason why. Your business must connect with your audience.
The old business mantra of if you build it they will come may be fine for bricks and mortar but for your online business, you probably sit inside a bubble filled with competitors and need to test many types of digital marketing approaches to find the one or two great approaches to stick at.
I will talk about methods to bring your audiences to you without paid ads in another post soon. Here I want to highlight the top reasons for digital marketing in your business life. And connecting with your potential customers is the key. Sounds obvious? Yeah, so why do businesses say:
I have no time for PR.
It’s too expensive and time consuming, won’t do it.
Those are statements from businesses who have a ‘hope for the best’ policy built usually on partnerships or through built in audiences. But they still must market at some point. If you say those words and have no connections and no audiences aware of your brand, you’re doomed to fail.
It’s that simple. Jason Matthew at Digital Acetech put it in the easiest to understand context.
Today, there are numerous types of digital marketing techniques and some are new, most go back years but have met refinements along the way. One thing for sure, digital marketing with all its changes and quirks and an overload of information online…
…really is crucial to your everyday business efforts online.
It does not need to sink your budget or all of your time. Campaigns can run at your own pace. It’s not a race for the Google no.1 spot. You need to do something else first, using authority driven content to get your ROI.
Find and connect with your audiences: who are they? what do they need? how can you help? Bring them in!
If you can’t do that… your business is dead before it starts online. Let’s look at the top general reasons why you have to engage in digital marketing daily with some links to info to help get you familiar with what works in 2022. It helps to compare with traditional marketing mediums to see where your ROI is likely to be better served.
Digital marketing is important for business growth.
Digital marketing is important for business growth because it allows you to reach a larger audience and gives you a better opportunity to grow your business.
With digital marketing, your company can reach a larger audience than they would be able to with traditional marketing methods. For example, if you decide to take out an advertisement in print media (such as a newspaper ad), then that ad will only be seen by people who read that particular newspaper or magazine. But if you take out an ad on social media, that same ad can be viewed by millions of people around the world.
Digital marketing helps businesses grow because it allows them to create relationships with their customers. This is done through the use of different strategies such as blogging product reviews, email campaigns and social media posts. With these strategies, businesses can interact directly with their customers so they know what products and services they want from them in order for them to grow their business even more effectively.
Digital marketing offers a better ROI.
As a business owner, you want to do everything in your power to make sure that you’re getting the best return on your investment. When it comes to digital marketing, the ROI is significantly better than with traditional marketing. Why?
Because digital marketing is easier to track and measure than traditional marketing strategies. With digital advertising, you can see exactly how many people have seen or interacted with your ads and how much each has cost. With traditional advertising, it’s really only possible to estimate these numbers accurately using qualitative data from focus groups or similar studies.
Digital marketing is measurable.
Here’s an infographic to sum up why you need to engage in content marketing online through your blog, your social media profiles, and some ads.
One of the best things about all types of digital marketing is that they allow you to track every single aspect. You can even measure the returns on investment for each part of your digital marketing campaign.
You can also develop a tracking system for your digital marketing campaigns. Using Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel, you’ll be able to learn from what works and what doesn’t work. Further, these tools will help you increase the effectiveness of your future campaigns and improve your ROI by leaps and bounds.
Neil Patel, one of the world’s top speakers and revealers on all things SEO and Digital, has covered the tools you NEED. These are the ones to really look at and choose for your business. I use a few of these weekly.
Consider this list of digital marketing tools
Digital marketing is convenient for customers.
When you (the customer) are ready to buy, you can do so on your own time and at your own convenience. This is especially helpful if you have a busy schedule. If it’s more convenient for you to purchase something at 11:59pm on Sunday, then that’s what you’re going to do!
If the product is digital (like an eBook or a software download), then the buyer can receive their product right away, without having to wait for the postal service. They may not even have to leave their house in order to buy it—they can just download it from home.
The same goes for contacting a business: customers can contact a business at their convenience when they need help or want more information about a product or service.
Digital marketing drives more conversions.
You might be wondering how digital marketing can help you reach more potential customers, increase conversion rates and prove the ROI of your marketing activities.
It’s a daily success story to see content that serves the right solutions to the audiences sells very well. I readers trust your content, they’ll trust you, and buy from you. That goes for your own products or ones you refer readers to e.g. affiliate marketing.
This costs nothing but time if you write your own content. You just need your blog, some killer article titles and solutions to problems to talk about.
Let’s include ads in that as promoting your content with a Facebook Ad can be very good for your site. It’s one of the types of digital marketing ways that draws mixed opinions due to its costs. But you can shoot an ad out for the price of a beer. Take a look at boosted posts as it doesn’t need to be costly.
With targeted advertising, you’re able to show your ads to a specific audience that is more likely to convert. For example, if you sell laptop bags, you can use Facebook ad targeting to create an audience based on users that have previously expressed an interest in laptop cases or bags.
This will ensure that your ads are shown only to potential customers who have shown interest in your products or services.
Digital marketing levels the playing field.
- Digital marketing levels the playing field.
- Digital marketing is cost-effective.
- Digital marketing is accessible for businesses of any size.
I hope, this information has helped you understand that digital marketing is a must for small businesses because it’s cost-effective and accessible to businesses of any size. It’s also important to note that there are many other things that can be done with digital marketing than just paid advertising.
As Neil Patel point out in this article on What is Digital Marketing, and you can get right into these methods within an hour.
The types of digital marketing to learn right away are:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Search engine marketing (SEM)
- Content marketing
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
- Affiliate marketing
- Email marketing
Investing in a digital marketing strategy can help you reach your audience and achieve your goals.
You’ve heard the benefits of digital marketing. Let’s sum up:
- Digital marketing is the best way to connect with your audience. In the US, 78% of Americans have a smartphone and 95% of Americans own a computer, it’s more likely that they are going to be online rather than out and about.
- Digital marketing is cost-effective. Compared to traditional marketing methods like TV commercials or print ads, digital marketing costs significantly less. Plus, it’s easy for your business to track which ads or campaigns work best so you can get the most bang for your buck.
- Digital marketing is measurable. Because digital advertising allows you to see how much money each ad brings in, measuring ROI (return on investment) becomes much easier—and that makes it easier for you to know what works for your business and what doesn’t. Make sure you use the social media management platforms out there, the best tools for marketing are crucial to your daily efficiency and throughput.
- Digital marketing is convenient for customers. Instead of having to go into a store or look through racks upon racks of merchandise, consumers can visit your website anytime they want from their phone or laptop without even leaving their couch! This also means people will be able to find products they like faster because there are fewer distractions around them—which ultimately leads us back around full circle again as they buy things on social media (see point number one).
Keep following the blog for ways to begin or progress no matter which of the many types of digital marketing efforts you prefer.
It starts with a plan, and ends with a conversion.