Ever since the advent of the internet, business dynamics have been highly volatile. Internet gave us the option of expanding the reach of our businesses, in terms of the customer base, visibility, and even virality. With the passage of time and upgradation in technology, the internet has come to give trade and commerce the invaluable gift of digital marketing – the messiah of businesses in the digital age.
According to Hubspot, digital marketing is defined as an umbrella term for all of your company’s online marketing efforts. This definition is probably as precise as how huge the concept of digital marketing is. For those who thought that this term is limited to online presence in the form of business websites, or apps, or social media pages, well, there is much more to it – the benefits of which to your business are manifold.
Digital marketing covers all activities right from having an online presence through business websites to using Search Engine Optimisation to rank higher in Google search results. The complete gamut of digital marketing includes all your digital assets such as photographs, emails, audio visual content etc. and marketing tactics such as social media marketing and digital advertising.
Everyone, right from well-established brands to nascent startups are investing in digital marketing, to either build digital marketing campaigns that stick with people or simply maintain a decent online profile. Here’s why.
Below is a list of the top 10 benefits of digital marketing that will reveal the success mantra of the businesses flourishing in the digital age and will give you enough reasons to kick start your digital marketing ride right away!
● Cost-effective –
Digital marketing allows you to make the most of your money. Small businesses or startups that are financially restricted can deploy their financial resources optimally by investing in digital marketing for spreading awareness or garnering publicity, which, on the other hand, if done by using traditional marketing tools such as television, print and outdoor media, will be a considerably high-cost affair.
A brilliant example of digital marketing’s cost-effectiveness coupled with incredible results is the startup From Paris Box, that witnessed an 8 times growth in its sales with zero paid promotions, at the time of the launch of its new product. Now that’s digital marketing done right!
● Conversions –
Digital marketing is aimed at turning traffic -organic or inorganic – into leads, subscribers, customers, deals or sales. Just like Search Engine Optimisation, Conversion Rate Optimisation is a technique that can be used to tap potential customers by programming the online data in a way that it targets the audience that is most relevant to the type of information given out online.
● Helps Reach Target audience –
You don’t want to be bombarding people with information about your brand who have nothing to do with it. In the virtual world, the ball is always in the viewer’s court – he can decide what he wants to view and block stuff that he does not want to see. Digital marketing makes sure that viewers become more receptive to your brand and its content by making it visible to the online demographic that is best suited for your brand. Unlike traditional marketing, where the sender has no control over who receives the message, digital marketing can set preferences as to who views the ads or messages about the brand.
● Call To Action –
Digital marketing encourages people to take quick action. Selling products online has never been easier, as, with digital marketing, you’re not restricted to selling products on your website, but you can now do it through almost every medium available on the internet. Call To Action is the tactic used by businesses to encourage a potential customer to make an immediate decision – either to visit your website or even purchase your product. You can ask people to buy your product almost anywhere – the posts you upload on social media, the ads you place on websites or apps, and even the personalized emails you send to your clients.
● Equal opportunity for all kinds of businesses –
As mentioned earlier, digital marketing is cost-effective. It levels the playing field for the small businesses that do not have enough funds to allocate for TV, print or outdoor advertising. Digital marketing helps them share information about the brand and create recall value at a fairly reasonable or no cost.
● Customer Support –
Customer service is no more limited to toll-free numbers, thanks to digital marketing. Grievance redressal or customer support becomes quicker and more efficient when a company decides to do it on their websites and social media pages and not solely over telephonic conversations. Quicker grievance redressal is a key to happy customers, which in turn, is the key to potential customers.
● Builds credibility and trust –
Digital marketing means interacting with your audience on a daily basis in some form or the other. This does not necessarily mean that the content has to come through the business. A professionally prepared website is the perfect place to share client testimonials, eventually drawing in potential clients. Testimonials, from both well-known personalities or common folk, not only get you the word of mouth publicity but also develop a kind of trust for the brand in the customers. Companies can even interact with the subscribers/visitors on their social media pages, answering queries, solving grievances, hence building credibility.
● Better RoI –
How do you know if your digital marketing campaign is doing ‘good’? In terms of Return on Investment. Digital marketing gives a better return on investment in many ways – it increases organic traffic through search engine optimisation which eventually leads to generation and even closure of some of those leads. It also leads to inorganic traffic through Pay Per Click or internet advertisements, which again can generate helpful leads. Not only this, but you can also track the channels from where most of your traffic flows in and hence invest your resources more efficiently.
● Analytics –
Probably the best thing about a marketing tactic would be the quality of being measurable and hence taking the guesswork out of the whole process. With digital marketing, you hit the nail on the head. Right from developing your content around what the customer is looking for, to uploading it when and where the customer is most likely to be online, digital marketing makes all of this an easy possibility. Not only this, it also gives the results of the campaign in quantifiable figures to help you understand and find the loopholes in the process, if any.
● Caters to mobile customers –
Majority of population worldwide spends most of its time on mobile phones, and a lot of time, it is to make purchases. According to Statista, mobile commerce accounted for 75.3% of the total retail e-commerce sale in 2024. This proportion is expected to rise to a mammoth 80% by the year 2024. With website designers paying close attention to making websites mobile friendly, digital marketing is spreading its wings all over the place, giving your brand the kind of outreach it needs.
In this digital age, digital marketing becomes the need of the hour for every business. It does need you to jostle your brains and work religiously – but that is all it takes to earn your business huge amounts of profit, and something so huge is definitely worth a sweat and a shot.
