Do more business in 2020 with an effective online marketing strategy.
Not sure why you need one?
Here are 10 reasons you're definitely going to want a digital marketing strategy to see optimal growth and maximum visibility for your brand; thus bringing you more client retention, lead generation, and new consumers within your target audience.
It may come as no surprise that as technology continues to evolve, that the market itself has become increasingly spread across multiple digital channels. The benefits of digital marketing are becoming more needed and more relevant every day, especially as more consumers are researching and buying products online as a regular part of the customer journey. In other words, digital marketing plans are directly responsible for improving profitability.
According to Forbes, 82% of consumers shop online, so if you're not promoting your products and services to that audience, you're missing out on a huge piece of the revenue pie. So how do you reach a potential customer online, you ask? Simple - through a custom-designed digital strategy and inbound marketing plan.
Here's a deeper dive into the top 10 reasons your business needs a digital marketing strategy:
1. Digital Marketing is the Most Effective Form of Marketing
Statistics show that a massive increase in the number of small businesses that are increasing their revenue are doing so through implementing digital marketing plans. This helps to efficiently reach and engage their target customers online, and the numbers just keep rising. In fact, the U.S. digital marketing spend is expected to exceed $332 billion by 2021.
And even with all this high spending, digital marketing tactics have proven to be the most cost-effective way to reach prospective customers within your target audience. It's all in the numbers, and even more so in the technology. In this era of online "everything," if you have something say, sell, or promote, it's got to be done through the proper online channels and executed with digital marketing campaigns.
2. Digital Marketing is the Most Cost-effective Way to Market your Business
One of the most significant upsides of digital marketing is that it's truly the cheapest way to promote your company. It is very difficult for small businesses with limited budgets to compete with big businesses for ad space when it comes to traditional advertising. But with online digital marketing tactics, small companies can get more for their advertising spend and meet their business goals.
For example, a company can reach over 1,000 consumers with their services and products for less than $3 with social media marketing.
The real cost to digital marketing is time, while traditional marketing tactics also often come with hidden costs that vary depending on the service. Websites, content marketing, SEO, and social media engagement take time to see significant results, especially when it comes to organic traffic. But there are digital marketing strategies like pay-per-click and social media advertising that can produce faster results if this is the approach to marketing that you want to take.
Using a paid or free online marketing strategy will depend on your marketing objectives. Both can be a successful strategy leading to business growth.
3. Digital Marketing is the Most Measurable Form of Marketing
Are your marketing efforts working? How do you know if they are?
The only way to know for sure would be to measure your growth and success over time. While it can be tricky to monitor the success of a traditional marketing campaign such as radio advertising or sending out mailers, every digital marketing strategy and online tool that you use is measurable. This advantage alone is every reason why you should invest in digital marketing.
Digital marketing analytics takes the guesswork out of deciding whether your marketing efforts are actually working, and helps you to determine which outlets are most effective and where to focus your efforts most. By measuring your digital marketing campaigns in real-time, you can see which tactics aren't working and troubleshoot how to re-correct your tactics across all the digital marketing channels being used by your brand.
When it comes to spend, digital marketing analytics allow you to effectively utilize your digital tools and better allocate your marketing budget. Taking the guesswork out of your digital marketing performance means you can reduce unnecessary expenditures and focus on the plans and campaigns that are most likely to boost your ROI.
4. One of the Biggest Benefits of Digital Marketing is Targeting your Perfect Audience
When you get billboard space or put an ad in a magazine, you are taking a shot in the dark that this messaging will reach your target customer. Even though there are certainly ways to increase your likelihood of success with traditional marketing strategies, it just does not offer the same targeting capacities as digital marketing does.
With digital marketing, you can make sure that the right consumers are viewing your content and that your message is reaching its intended audience. SEO allows you to reach those customers that are searching the web for specific products and content that are related to your business and improve your website's ranking in search results. Other strategies like pay-per-click, display, and social media marketing allow you to target individuals who are most likely to be interested in your products or services based on their demographic information and overall preferences.
5. Many People Start their Purchasing Journey Online
Consider how many times you turn to Google or another search engine just to find the general info you need. Your customers are no different when they begin to look into the services or products that can help them solve their biggest problems.
Recent studies have shown that 93% of purchasing journeys begin with a search engine. Before customers even know what service or product they want, they are going to the search engines to look for answers to their own questions and to learn more about the items they're looking to purchase.
This presents an excellent opportunity for small businesses to get in touch with prospective clients and educate them from the beginning stages of the buyer's journey - from the awareness stage to the final steps of the buying funnel. By generating engaging and relevant content that's properly optimized for search engines, you can enhance your visibility online and reach clients where it matters most. Most businesses do this by creating targeted blog posts as part of their content marketing strategy.
6. Your Prospective Clients are on Social Networks and Digital Marketing Helps you Reach Them
One of the most important on our list of benefits for digital marketing is the ability to utilize social media platforms to reach your audience. By restricting your business to the traditional techniques in marketing, you'll certainly experience a limit in scope and size. The only way to expand your scope is to allocate your budget toward a digital marketing strategy. Beyond the average social media platform, email marketing, video marketing, and other marketing tools can be used to reach your business objectives.
With digital marketing, your reach will be further and more concentrated. The only limit is your creativity, strategy, and spend allowance. Regardless of what industry your business is in, there's a good chance that your buyers are spending their time on social networking channels like Facebook or Twitter. According to eMarketer, 2.34 million people, or about one-third of the earth's population, uses social media platforms regularly, and digital marketing helps you reach these engaged consumers.
7. SEO and Local SEO Helps you Reach More Qualified Online Buyers
Search engine optimization is another powerful digital marketing strategy that offers a variety of benefits. This tactic works to attract more buyers online by optimizing your website content to respond to the search engines by using key terms that are relevant and help explain your service or product to attract more targeted visitors.
General SEO is for businesses that are nationwide, whereas local SEO is for customers that are searching for local companies online that are near them. In fact, Google reported that 28% of searches for something nearby resulted in a purchase. Local search engine optimization, or optimizing your website for local search results, is a highly beneficial digital marketing strategy for businesses that operate in specific geographic locations.
8. Digital Marketing Makes it Possible to Connect with Customers On-The-Go (Through Mobile Devices)
Another one of the many advantages of digital marketing is that it permits you to connect with consumers who are currently browsing and consuming content through their mobile devices. Over half of all online users are accessing the web through their mobile phones, and digital marketing activities allow you to reach people on desktop computers, tablets, and cellular devices.
It's essential for your broader marketing strategy to incorporate mobile as it is an effective strategy for building deeper relationships with your ideal customer where they are already spending most of their online time.
9. You Can Easily and Quickly Switch Up your Digital Marketing Strategy for Best Results
With traditional advertising like tv or newspaper ads, you have to wait until after the campaign is complete to see the outcomes. And although you can use what you learn to later adjust your campaign tactics, there is not much you can do "in the moment" to accommodate your strategies and get the best results possible.
While digital marketing strategies allow you to look at the real-time results of your campaigns and adapt your strategies on the spot to better the outcomes as you go. With Google Analytics, you can look at the pages that have been visited, view the number of visitors that come to your site, and determine how long they're spending on each page. This digital marketing tactic allows you to see the optimal times and best traffic days as well, and monitor conversion rates, all of which offer smart insights to improve your campaigns in real-time.
10. Digital Marketing Levels the Playing Field, Allowing your Business (No Matter the Size) to Be Competitive
It is often hard for small businesses to compete due to limited resources, advertising budget, and funds compared to their counterparts. This is especially true when it comes to popular strategies such as influencer marketing which isn't as friendly to the wallet.
But, by allowing brands to stay in the competitive landscape of advertising online with digital marketing, it helps to level the playing field for all involved. Digital marketing and advertising tactics are affordable, allowing businesses of all sizes to gain exposure online.
With digital marketing, small businesses can also promote their products and services nationally or even globally. If your organization is not restricted to a particular place, you can use digital marketing to reach your intended audience throughout the world, which also positions businesses to find new audiences.
How to Implement a Digital Marketing Strategy
Convinced you need a digital marketing strategy but don't know where to start or how to build one? That's ok, get a custom-built marketing strategy for FREE with The Hive Marketing Collective. We'll outline the things you're already doing right, and highlight your company's biggest areas of opportunity for growth.
What are you waiting for? Let's get growing!
Digital Marketing Strategy FAQ
Why is digital marketing important in 2021?
Compared to traditional and print marketing, digital marketing offers a much bigger audience with the added ability to track and monitor your marketing campaigns and iterate on the most successful ones.
Why do you need a digital marketing strategy?
Digital marketing strategies help your business to narrow down your target audience, identify their biggest pain points and help you capitalize on them by:
-Bringing customers to your virtual business doors
-Increasing sales
-Offering you detailed analytics
-Helping you with market research
Is digital marketing worth it in 2021?
The answer is a resounding YES. In today's business environment, you'd be hard-pressed to advance without having some sort of digital marketing in place for your brand.
How is digital marketing in 2021?
Exciting new developments are driving digital marketing this year, from voice search optimization to dominating shoppable posts on social platforms. There are many avenues to explore when expanding your digital horizons.