With the change of modern technologies, small and medium businesses are doing everything they can to keep up, which can be said true for the rest of human society. Digital Marketing can help your business. Brick-and-mortar businesses are either changing their business models to an online one, or beefing up existing marketing efforts with digital marketing strategies – in an attempt to capture a growing and very lucrative online marketplace.
For it is the process of attracting targeted audiences online that will spell the difference between a successfully thriving business – and a failed one. Even if you receive tons of daily traffic to your website, they would not amount to anything unless they convert to leads or sales. In the digital arena where business and commerce are heading, Digital Marketing tools and techniques provide business owners the best chances for competition, survival and even business growth.
The following 12 reasons will show you why the use of Digital Marketing is not only an investment-wise decision but also an effective marketing channel that can help you grow your business.
1. Digital Marketing Levels the Online Playing Field
Gone are the days when business owners still welcome the notion that Digital Marketing is only for the likes of multinationals and large corporations that have the sufficient resources required to mount an online marketing campaign. Digital Marketing actually levels the playing field, providing small and medium enterprises the chance to compete against bigger sites and attract their share of targeted traffic.
With Digital Marketing, small companies now have the resources to perform sales and marketing processes that were previously available only to large corporations. Without a call centre, small businesses can engage effectively with multiple customers, even to customers from any parts of the world even if they don’t have physical stores or branches in these locations.
2. Digital Marketing is more Cost-Effective than Traditional Marketing
Small businesses have very little resources and even capitalization. This is why Digital Marketing provides them with a better and much more cost-effective marketing channel that delivers results. You can considerably save by using Digital Marketing methods of promotion.
It is recommended that you shift marketing budget allocations from traditional media channels and invest them into digital online marketing tools and techniques.
3. Digital Marketing Delivers Conversion
Businesses marketing products and services online measure success by the percentage rate of incoming traffic gets converted into leads, subscribers or sales, depending on the intended purposes of your website. Without conversion, all your traffic would mean nothing and all your marketing efforts will simply go to waste. That is why business owners are streamlining their Digital Marketing campaigns towards conversion optimisation, making it a top priority above everything else.
There are several tools and techniques that you can use for your Digital Marketing campaign such as Search Engine Optimisation, social media marketing and email marketing.
4. Digital Marketing Helps Generate Better Revenues
High conversion rates generated by effective Digital Marketing techniques will deliver loads of profitable benefits for you and your business in terms of better and higher revenues. Google confirms this in a study with IPSOS Hong Kong, claiming 2.8 times better revenue growth expectancy for companies using Digital Marketing strategies to those who do not.
With better revenue growth expectancy, small and medium enterprises using Digital Marketing techniques will have 3 times better chances of expanding their workforce and business – opening their doors to better, larger and farther reaching markets both locally and abroad.
5. Digital Marketing Facilitates Interaction with Targeted Audiences
One of the reasons why Digital Marketing is taking over traditional marketing channels is the ability of Internet marketing tool to interact with targeted audiences in real time. Engagement in any form is what your customers expect to receive when interacting with your brand or business. How your business handles such engagements and interactions will spell the difference between business success and failure.
Interacting and providing your customers with proper engagement points can give you an insight of what your targeted audiences want. This vital information will steer you towards making the right set of next moves, provide your customers with an even better experience, develop good relationships with them – gaining their loyalty and trust that you will need when your business begins to grow.
6. Digital Marketing Caters to the Mobile Consumer
Undoubtedly, mobile internet will be the next wave of information dissemination and communication channel, brought about by the rapid proliferation of smartphones, tablets and other internet-enabled devices. These mobile devices have become a central part of life.
Now would be the best time to have Digital Marketing campaigns intended towards mobile consumers, paving the way for them towards achieving better growth and faster expansion. Mobile gadgets have evolved from being mere alternative for laptops and personal computers, into something that is influencing their purchasing decisions.
7. Digital Marketing Builds Brand Reputation
The power of Digital Marketing lies in its ability for attracting targeted traffic. These types of audiences for your content are most likely already ready to know more about your brand, products or services and may be interested enough to purchase what you have to offer. Delivering on what you promised will help you develop a better relationship with your targeted audiences, help them transition into paying customers that will go back and interact with your site some more – on a regular and continuous basis.
This will prove beneficial for your brand reputation, as satisfied customers will most likely tell other people about their experience with your brand, product or service. Your brand reputation will go viral as expected, further opening new doors of opportunities for reaching bigger markets and attain business growth.
8. Digital Marketing Provides Better ROI for your Marketing Investments
With better revenues and better branding, Digital Marketing can provide a better Return on Investment (ROI) than traditional media and marketing channels. With traditional media, the cost is too exorbitant for small and medium enterprises to leverage on, and the results received are somewhat vague and difficult to measure.
Digital Marketing on the other hand can be easily tracked and monitored, with results immediately realized and measured as soon as targeted audiences provide contact information, subscribe to a newsletter or training program, or make a purchase. The key to success in Digital Marketing, however, is to generate a steady flow of targeted traffic that converts into sales and leads. The more your business generates this kind of traffic, the faster you can realise your ROI.
9. Digital Marketing Earns People’s Trust
Digital Marketing rides on the current online trend that focus more on social media signals resulting from direct and more personalized interaction between a brand or business and their targeted audiences. Someone is most likely to trust information about a particular brand, product or service if the data comes from people they know.
Digital Marketing leverages on social media signals, social proof and testimonials from actual consumers who have previously purchased, joined, or availed of a product or service marketed by a particular brand or business. The more reliable these social signals are, the higher the trust rate it can generate from targeted audiences – most of which can be potential customers.
10. Digital Marketing Entices People to take Favourable Action
While social signals and testimonials help earn trust from targeted audiences, Digital Marketing makes use of effective strategies that will entice people to take a favourable action your brand or business intends them to make. Conversion to leads or sales is still initiated and under full control by the website visitor. They are not compelled to do so but Digital Marketers can make use of clever and innovative ways to entice conversion using Calls-To-Action.
Calls-To-Action specifies what your web visitors should do next – either to sign up, like, download something, call or buy – specific steps that will entice them to perform a favourable action. Innovative forms, buttons and texts are optimised according to copy, colour scheme, graphics and even positioning on the page to generate the best results in terms of generating favourable action.
11. Digital Marketing Makes you ready for the Internet of Things
The “Internet of Things” is a global ecosystem of interconnected devices – tablets, smartphones, gadgets, appliances and more – that can interact with each other through the Internet. Digital Marketing will prepare your business towards this eventuality, an interconnected ecosystem that will permeate through every aspect of people’s lives. Survival for your business in the era of the “Internet of Things” means inclusion in this interconnected grid – giving you an access window to reach out to targeted audiences belonging to this online grid.
12. Digital Marketing Ensures Business Survival Online
It is a normal occurrence for brick-and-mortar business establishments to encounter visitors entering their store, skimming through and inspecting products, then leave without buying anything. Many kinds of people like these come and go, but a targeted few will actually make a purchase and if satisfied, will come back for more on a later date. If you get less of the later and more of the few, sooner or late your brick-and-mortar business will cease to exist.
Your business can be likened to this. Even if you have tons of website visitors but none of them ever convert, your business will also cease to exist. Digital Marketing helps you make use of proven strategies and techniques that attract not necessarily more traffic – but highly targeted traffic that delivers results. Targeting the right kinds of people that deliver the right kind of results is what Digital Marketing is all about – ensuring survival for your business.
