Gone are the days when only big corporations and businesses can afford to do massive marketing campaigns. These days, aided with technology, the way companies of all sizes promote their brand, product, and services have changed.
Digital marketing has paved the way for small businesses to come at par with huge enterprises in reaching a massive audience, building a brand name, and improving sales conversion. Though it is not a replacement for any traditional methods, digital marketing has given new opportunities for many businesses to amplify their business’ success.
Doing digital marketing initiatives is now the new norm for brands in terms of promotional activities, and if you have been adamant about it, you might get left behind.
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Types of Digital Marketing
Online promotional activities do not only mean posting images on your social media page or building a website. It goes beyond that. As technology progresses, so does the emergence of different strategies for your digital marketing campaigns.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Owning a business website is not enough to make your business grow. You cannot expect people to show up on your site, so SEO does the work for you. This digital marketing strategy focuses on how to increase your website traffic and help your brand become visible online.
• Social Media
Perhaps the most popular of all of the digital marketing strategies is social media. Businesses widely use social media in their online promotion activities. In recent years, social media has grown massive, which boasts about 3.8 billion users worldwide. Its powerhouse like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and others have become a household name over the years. It has also proved to be a great tool in communication with your customers.
• Video Marketing
According to studies, 88% of digital marketers says that video marketing helped them reach a positive ROI. Experts even consider it one of the most promising ways to do your digital marketing campaigns and calls for a productive online promotional activity.
• Content Marketing
Like video marketing, creating valuable content is another strategy that helps businesses grow their brand online. Content marketing is about providing insightful information and avoiding the sales-y pitch, which can turn away any target audience.
• Email Marketing
One of the oldest tactics you can do for your online marketing is through email marketing. The earliest form of digital marketing, email marketing is by far the most promising in terms of ROI. You can use email marketing for your online promotional activities by sending out personalized and segment emails to your target market. It has been an efficient way to bring traffic to a website and for augmenting sales conversion.
• Pay-per-click (PPC)
While most of the strategies mentioned above have a free option, Pay-per-click or PPC is a paid option to drive traffic to your business website.
Why Digital Marketing Matters to Businesses
Digital marketing has become an integral part of a lot of businesses these days. As a small business owner, it has allowed you to be at par big enterprises in connecting with your target audience. Aside from that, here are some reasons why digital marketing matters.
1. Your Audience Are Found Online
In April of this year, about 4.57 billion people are on the internet. The number of people online encompasses 59% of the world’s population, making the internet a great avenue to find for your target market.
Having an online presence does mean creating social media profiles or posting content on your website. The things you do in your digital marketing campaigns help people find you online. You cannot just expect people to found you accidentally.
One of the critical customer behaviors today is when people want to purchase something, they will most likely check for review online or visit your social media profile and website. If they cannot find you online, they will most likely go to your competitors instead.
Another benefit you can get from doing digital marketing is the ability to target your niche audience. Putting up a billboard sign can make you visible to many people; however, you are taking a blind shot in reaching out to your intended audience. With digital marketing, you are sure that you are targeting the correct audience and reached by your content.
2. You Can Build Connection with Your Customers
Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing can build lasting relationships with your customers. This tactic is vital in your business because as you build rapport and connection to your customers, you can make them your loyal consumers.
Digital marketing has also given way to directly interact with your existing clients making after-sales service a positive experience for consumers. Social media platforms and chat boxes found on your website can provide answers to your customers, solve any complaint, address any concern, and provide product suggestions that can augment sales. These opportunities can turn clients, even those irate ones, into a repeat customer. Customer service is a tool to help your brand’s reputation grow.
3. Reach Customers Fast
The dawn of the internet almost made communication instant. Emails are sent and received in a minute; text messages are read the second you send them to your recipient, and content is made available right after you post them.
If you have been doing traditional marketing in the past, you will know that putting up a campaign can take a long time. After designs get approved, you still have to wait for the possible airtime before placing a TVC or have an entire village put up your road signs and billboard. With digital marketing, as long as your material is ready, all you need is an excellent reliable computer and the internet. The moment you have posted it, your customers can already access it, or they can already view it. Above all, you can measure how your material is performing.
4. Your Strategies Are Measurable
One of the critical factors why digital marketing should matter in your business is that it is measurable. Being able to measure means you can find our if your marketing efforts are working or not. This benefit should be enough to make you invest more in your digital marketing efforts.
Doing traditional marketing can give you a hard time tracking your success, but with digital marketing, everything you do is measurable. It even allows you to tweak your campaign so it will fare better. By being measurable, digital marketing will enable you to maximize your efforts and resources with a better chance of ROI.
5. Cost-Effective
As a small business or a budding business, the advertising budget is often the problem. Without any marketing budget, you will be limited to reach your desired audience and can affect your business bottom line.
In digital marketing, even the smallest business can leverage on it. Most of the digital platforms, like social media channels, are free. While email marketing, website creation, and PPC require you to shell out a bit for your marketing efforts, it is incomparable to the massive amount you have to spend to place a billboard on the busiest street or to air in a TV commercial.
Final Thoughts
Digital marketing offers many benefits for businesses of all sizes, making it a vital thing you need to make your brand grow. It may be quite overwhelming at first, especially if you are not that tech-savvy; however, once you can grasp it, you can find much potential to make your business big and massive.
AUTHOR’S BIO
Maricar Morga
Maricar Morga worked as a marketing professional for almost a decade. She became part of the biggest real estate company/mall operator in the Philippines and handled concerts, events and community service-related activities. One of her activities became a nominee in the ICSC Asia-Pacific Shopping Center Awards 2018. Leaving her corporate job for good to pursue her dreams, she has now ventured in the path of content writing and currently writes for Softvire Australia and Softvire New Zealand. A Harry Potter fan, she loves to watch animated series and movies during her spare time.
