Whether you are just starting your business or have owned your business for a while you will more than likely have heard of digital marketing. But you may be wondering what it is or how it is changing, or why is it important for your business?
Digital marketing is a term that has gained immense popularity in recent years as businesses of all sizes have increasingly moved their marketing efforts online. With the rise of digital technologies and platforms, it has become essential for companies to have a solid digital marketing strategy to stay competitive in today’s fast-paced business world.
At MEEDEA, we want your business, regardless of its size to be successful, hit all of our objectives, and seamlessly grow online by establishing a sophticated and comprehensive digital marketing strategy. With our wide range of services we can be a part of this journey to enable your business to be a success.
This article will answer all your questions surrounding digital marketing, its importance, the benefits for your business, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of the different types of digital marketing to help enhance your skills to develop the best digital marketing strategy possible.
Digital marketing can be defined in a variety of ways. In short, digital marketing is any form of online marketing. But what does that really mean?
Digital marketing is the use of digital channels to market products and services in order to reach consumers. This can involve websites, mobile devices, social media, and search engines.
Digital marketing does tend to involve the same principles as traditional marketing and is used to understand customer behaviours (buyers persona) more intently.
Ultimately digital marketing is important for a variety of reasons especially in today’s digital world where people spend significant amounts of time online, technologies are constantly advancing, and the use of AI is ever-increasing. Some of the key reasons why digital marketing is important include:
Arguably one of the most fundamental reasons why digital marketing is important is because it helps to reach larger audiences, which would not be possible if traditional methods of marketing were used alone.
Through using digital marketing your business can reach audiences beyond your geographical location and can target prospects more directly to individuals who are more likely to buy your service and products.
By using a variety of digital channels your business can target specific demographics, interests, and behaviours of potential customers to help you reach your KPIs.
Unlike traditional methods of marketing, digital marketing strategies can easily be adapted and changed much quicker to best fit your business model as digital technologies change.
Often digital marketing is more cost-effective than traditional methods of marketing. Once you have established a sophisticated digital marketing strategy the Return on Investments (ROI) can happen much quicker.
With tools and platforms including social media, email marketing, and content marketing your business can reach your target audience now much quicker than ever before for a fraction of the price.
Digital marketing is also important because it allows you to track and monitor your digital campaigns in real-time, and adapt strategies accordingly to generate more leads.
A variety of aspects of your strategy can be measured more effectively including: website traffic, engagement rates, and conversions rates to name a few. By measuring a variety of metrics more closely, and in real-time, you can track performance more closely to easily evaluate what digital campaigns have been working better and why that might be.
Arguably one of the most important reasons to use digital marketing in your business is because it builds your brand awareness and visibility.
By consistently engaging with your target audience through various digital channels your business can establish themselves as an authority in your industry to build trust with potential customers.
With the way the digital world keeps adapting, growing, and changing you are putting your business at risk if you fail to attempt to adapt to the digital landscape.
Digital marketing therefore will allow your business to stay competitive and offer an easy and convenient experience by providing your potential customers a service that best meets their needs.
As discussed, traditional methods of marketing, including print and broadcast ads, still exist and are being used today. Digital marketing, however, involves a variety of different channels. These channels have evolved and continue to do so.
Some of the best digital marketing strategies will use a combination of different channels to reach their audience and potential customers in a variety of ways.
Some of these digital channels include:
Each of these digital marketing channels can generate various KPIs. Some of the most common KPIs across these digital channels highlighted above include:
Social media marketing ultimately helps your business build brand awareness and establish trust. It can be used to generate and secure leads through direct marketing or a sales channel.
The growth of your brand awareness and visibility in the market can easily be tracked through a combination of metrics such as: likes, follows, views, shares.
Another KPI that can be used in your digital marketing strategy includes tracking how many people visit your website, and using metrics such as bounce rate to help identify whether the site’s design and structure is easy to use to help contribute to sales.
Through tracking your website’s traffic you can also identify where your business ranks on search results. Through monitoring its search engine optimisation (SEO) your business can increase its traffic to your website and sit at the top of search results pages to be more visible to more customers.
One of the most important things to include across all the digital channels your strategy uses is to measure your conversion rate.
This measure focuses on your business’ call-to-actions and how a lead converts to a sale. One of the simplest ways this can be recorded is by dividing the number of successful engagements by the total number of requests made.
The benefits of digital marketing can be huge when the right channels are chosen correctly.
The table below shows the pros and cons of some of the most popular digital marketing channels to help you decide which ones are best for your business and digital strategy.
| Digital Channel | Advantage | Disadvantage |
|---|---|---|
| Social media marketing | Increase brand awareness Targeted marketing Cost-effective Engaging content Customer engagement | Time-consuming Ad saturation Limited control Negative feedback Difficulty measuring ROI |
| Email marketing | Cost-effective Highly measurable Personalised messaging Targeted messaging Increase brand awareness | Risk of being marked as spam Can be time-consuming Limited design options Unsubscribing Limited reach |
| Content marketing | Builds brand awareness Attracts and engages customers Improves search engine rankings Increases website traffic Builds customer trust Cost-effective Provides long-term benefits | Time-consuming Requires ongoing monitoring and updating Results may take time Content topics can be oversaturated and difficult to rank on |
| Pay-per-click marketing | Highly targeted Measurable results Cost controlQuick results Flexible | Competition Click fraud Technical knowledge required Ad fatigue Limited impact on brand awareness |
| Website marketing | Increased visibility Enhanced credibility Increased salesImproved customer engagement Measurable results | Cost expenses - both building and ongoing Technical expertise needed Competition Time-consuming Limited reach |
The table demonstrates therefore that there are plenty of benefits of digital marketing, but it is clear there are some challenges. It is important to overcome these challenges and keep up-to-date with the digital channels you will use to get the best outcomes.
Some of the most important things to remember in order to implement the best digital strategy is to be aware that constant updates will be needed, there will always be increased competition, as well as digital overload, security and privacy concerns.
When all of these are considered and planned to justify your digital strategy, your business will then be on the right track to gain the best outcomes.
This article has reviewed the fundamentals of digital marketing and has explained why it is important for businesses.
We have reviewed what digital marketing includes and through analysing the pros and cons of each we have helped to demonstrate which digital channels will work best for your business.
Through highlighting the importance of digital marketing we have been able to demonstrate how it can help build brand awareness and increase visibility to larger audiences compared to solely using traditional methods of marketing.
At MEEDEA we are a digital marketing agency that will help you to have the best digital strategy possible through helping you achieve all your KPIs and generate the most sales.
We offer both traditional methods of marketing with printed marketing and a variety of digital marketing services including website and logo design, social media marketing, and content marketing.
Contact us today and let’s start discussing your business objectives so we can produce the best digital marketing strategy possible for your business.