The modern era has witnessed a transformation and metamorphosis from the world of analog to digital. Digital marketing has become a part of the lives of marketers and customers. Digital marketing is the foundation in people’s lives. It keeps you updated from personal to professional use. It helps to connect and communicate with potential clients across the world.
Within a short period, the importance of digital marketing has gained a frenetic pace. The fast development of digital marketing proves that it is no longer enough to have some simple websites. These days customers spent a considerable amount of time researching online. They browse in a variety of stores, gathering adequate information on the products and services, searching for more options, comparing prices. With the several benefits of digital marketing, millions of users on the internet, the opportunities available to the business owners are even more. They have massive potential clients to create a network. Hence, marketers extend to more and more numbers of targeted customers across the globe. This mass communication is an innovative opportunity for both customers and businesses.
Hence, this is a huge reason for the global emergence of digital marketing.
So, what exactly is digital marketing?
Digital marketing refers to the marketing and promotion of products, goods, and services involving digital technologies and electronic media, mainly based on the internet. It may also include a mobile phone, digital campaigns, display advertising, or any other digital medium.
In a simple definition, it revolves around the efforts of online marketing. Digital marketing is much different from traditional marketing. It emphasizes and promotes brands, services, or goods via forms of the digital medium. It uses channels or methods to analyze real-time scenario marketing campaigns. Besides, it looks over the practical needs of the time. This analysis helps the organizations to come up with steps necessary for growth.
Digital marketers track issues like what are the most viewed products, how frequently, and how long. They look at what products and services are in demand, sales conversion. They also monitor what the reviews and faults are.
Besides, customers get a massive favor with massive options available to them. Along with that, they get the goods and see it’s results much faster than offline marketing.
Why does a business need such marketing shifts?
Every company has different specific goals to achieve. But regardless of everything, all companies try to reach out to the most targeted customers and potential clients. Here lies the importance of digital marketing in business.
The need for such marketing shifts include:
Affordability and less expense- Digital marketing requires an expenditure on ads. The best part is that it is a cheap marketing strategy compared to other marketing methods. Offline marketing involves the cost of a particular plot of land and the cost of maintenance.
Easy accessibility through mobiles- The majority of populations own a smartphone, and are very well accustomed to countless activities like surfing news, social marketing. Digital marketers can access via many mobile apps, ads, emails, social media posts.
Flexibility- Digital marketing strategies allows us to use many forms to market yourself. You can present yourself in many creative and digital ways. You enhance ranges of possibilities through banner ads, email marketing, social marketing, and social media posts for further publicity.
Multimedia- As wisely said, Content is King. Any marketing material combined with photos, videos, and audios tends to engage more customers. These can be easily fused in digital marketing strategies than in others.
Communications and interaction- Following digital marketing strategies, marketers to communicate directly to customers. They connect through website comments, messages, reviews, and social media posts. This allows marketers to gather information like customer’s reactions, preferences, and personal opinions.
Tracking- The benefits of digital marketing is that it lets you track the orders of the customers. They view activities like which, what type of content, how often, what are they preferring, and purchasing. Through these activities, you can always improve and hone your digital marketing strategies.
These are some of the reasons behind the shift from traditional to digital marketing.
Increase in brand awareness for small business
Small business needs more socializing and creating brand awareness.
These methods are more crucial and vital to them. Small businesses lack big budgets for advertisement. They should focus more on providing excellent customer services. This way, they can gain momentum in getting their name to reach most customers.
Ways to build brand awareness
Socialize- One of the main aims of small business should be to get more and more social. Adopting digital marketing strategies is the best and effective way to build brand awareness. They should try to spread their content and visions. They can do so through creative social media posts, blogs, videos, and contests. In this way that can engage customers interactively.
Local participation- Local participation in towns and cities will increase their visibility. Try to be everywhere in your communities. Try to be in any festivals or social work or awareness program. Try to partner with local teams; be it a charity or sports team or school fest. Adopting digital marketing strategies will help the event organizers to connect with more people who want to join the movement or the event.
Excellent customer service- The benefits of digital marketing in businesses is that it provides outstanding services to your customers. Try to get their issues resolved. If you treat your customers with respect and good services, they are likely to share their experiences with others. This way, you can build your brand awareness.
Increase in sales
With the boom in the growth of the internet, the expansion of digital marketing has reached its peak of glory.
Here are some schemes to increase sales with digital marketing:
Proffer a good website- A website with good content is the foundation for the best digital marketing strategies. You should be able to draw your customer’s attention to that particular website. Your website should not be a simple website to only “visit” rather consists of all components.
Make sure your website has high visibility to SEO. Most pages should have options prompting customers to download, check other linked pages or services. In this way, you can remain connected with them.
Start a blog- A creative, informative blog with attractive and posts is a good strategy. It will keep more and more customers glued to your blogs, looking out all your new products and services.
Remarketing- Remarketing is a technique to reach out to your targeted customers twice or thrice. An example of this technique is templates to bring back to those websites.
Maintaining the Brand Reputation:
A good impression does wonder.
The fate of your brand relies on the results of the first few online searches. Thereby, “Online Reputation Management (ORM)” is extremely vital. Maintaining a brand’s reputation and a positive image in the eyes of customers is critical for business growth.
Some strategies to ensure good and vibrant brand reputation:
Get enough positive reviews- Customers always go through the reviews and reactions of other customers before a buy. Good and positive reviews will boost the chance of a customer to buy the products. Along with that, post the positive and optimistic reviews of your concerned brand in all the popular customer review sites.
A strong presence on social media – Try to make a strong and influential position in social media platforms. Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Linked In. Informative and enticing posts has a direct and ardent impact on customers. Social media hence is a cornerstone of online brand reputation management strategies.
Observe brand mentions- Always keep track of what others are saying about your brands. Their positive mentions and feedback will work in favor. Any customers before even viewing the product check the brand’s reputation. Thus, it is important to control and manage all the information regarding your brands.
Get Ahead of Your Competitor
Before analyzing the aspects of your competitors, analyze your brand first. Do your brand’s research in the market, which will help understand what position your brand holds and what issues your customers are facing. This will help in developing a better digital marketing strategy.
Let’s look at a few strategies one can imply to get ahead of their competitor’s-
Thorough Research about Competitors
After doing your own brand’s search, have research on what your competitors are doing like their product qualities, having better sales, strategies they are using to market their products/services, their pricing strategies, etc.
Automated Marketing
Through automation and other digital tools like Google Analytics, you can reduce your work instantaneously, schedule emails, measure website activities, manage your content, etc.
1. INFLUENCER MARKETING
Today’s generation wants to buy whatever their fashion icons/bloggers wear or use. And with the help of such bloggers/influencers, selling your products/services have become considerably easy.
2. LOCATION-BASED MARKETING
You can easily discover those specific regions/areas where your products are selling the most, and you can target such regions or people. You can also use technologies like iBeacon, which are small transistors, to help detect how many devices are nearby.
Different Channels to Boost Your Traffic
Creating a website is an easy task but attracting traffic to your website is tougher. Here are a few tools that can help you attract the right customers-
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the best digital marketing strategy and the best solution for driving traffic to your website. It is time-consuming, but it has so many features like free advertisements, high conversion rates, more clicks, etc. which will ultimately help in your brand awareness.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, etc. are the best place for boosting traffic to your website. You can post about your brand, what it stands for, and gain the public’s trust and convert them into a potential customer. You can even run campaigns or events on such platforms.
Email Marketing
You can run email-marketing campaigns by sending out useful information like blogs, posts, or newsletters to your customers with intriguing subject lines.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
PPC advertising delivers significant results by directing your customers to your website, and you only pay when users click on your ads.
Blogging
Through blogging, you can share information about your products/services. You can keep people interested through features or inviting guest bloggers. Posting frequently can increase your chances of appearing in search engines.
Engagement with Mobile Customers
According to several types of research, most people today use their mobile phones for everything, be it shopping, checking emails, or even banking. This provides a great opportunity to engage with customers through their mobile phones only.
Here are a few ways to reach customers-
Customer Segmentation
By adopting the best digital marketing strategies, targeting specific customer segments/groups based on their behavioral data and characteristics is easy. Besides, you can easily reach your desired goals. You can even give a touch of personalization to your customers by mentioning their names or giving offers/discount coupons to them.
Optimize Messaging or Push Notifications
You can send scheduled messages/notifications to your customers to attract them. If customers are using your application, you can send out alerts related to special offers or countdown sales happening, or you can even share useful information related to your brand. This is a very effective strategy of directing your customers to your apps/websites.
In-App Messages
Just like getting a normal message, in-app messaging means getting messages on your application. While scrolling the app, you get messages related to suggestions on products you liked or the products you bought before. If customers need help, they can talk to you directly through the app or raise a complaint.
Take Your Business International
Through the benefits of digital marketing, you can take your business at an international level smoothly. But before taking this step, you need to be sure that you are ready for it because it will require certain changes in your strategies.
Establishing Relationships
Establishing relationships with international brands/markets could be tricky. But once you understand their needs, it wouldn’t take much time for you to set foot in their markets.
Communications
You cannot translate your overall website so why not just translate the keywords or marketing message you want to send out. Moreover, for that always ask a translator because a single word can change your entire message. There are several websites for translations like Meta Data, which helps you translate your data into various languages depending on your audience.
Content Marketing
Content marketing, one of the best digital marketing strategies, will help promote your brand. Readers are everywhere, and you can reach them through content like blogs, videos, or posts, based on the topics that might interest them. You need to market your products strategically attracting ample audiences.
Customizing Needs
The international markets are different, and you need to customize your needs as well as research, figuring out which payment getaways they use or how their logistics work.
High Customer Retention
After getting much customer attention, always stay prepared with strategies to retain them. Retaining customers takes effort, and customers appreciate that effort. It shows them you care about them.
Loyalty Programs
Customer loyalty programs are specially for those customers who want to stay with you. Getting rewards makes customers happy, and happy customers always return. That extra discount makes customers want to spend more, but this strategy should be carried out smartly.
Acquiring Feedbacks
Taking customer feedback plays a crucial role in your business. How customer’s feel with your brand, do they have any complaints, etc. You get to know what you are doing wrong, and you can correct it. You can send out surveys, or you can ask customers to rate you. You can analyze the data and work on your brand’s strategies for improving them. Customer satisfaction should be your priority.
Offering Personalization
Offering personalization is another way to keep your customers in the loop. It could be little things like Starbucks writing their customer’s name on the cup, offering tailoring services for the clothes they are buying, or sending out gifts on special occasions. Through personalization, you provide a positive experience for customers.
Conclusion
Digital marketing came with a boom, and it will stay forever. So why repeal it? Save your time and money and just try it out. Whether you got a small business or a big one, there’s no harm in going online and making more money through it.
Today’s generation wants quick and convenient solutions; they don’t want to go out and shop for groceries, clothes, or other things. Moreover, everything now being available online is just the solution they want. Through digital marketing, you can increase your footfall, showcase your talent, can form great connections, you can reposition your brand and can always increase your sales through promotions or advertising.
So, if you are looking for more customers, then do it online. You can learn and grow your business with limited resources and at affordable prices. Being so many websites online, you can do free advertisements, promote your brand, and you can take your business to the international level. Digital marketing can make your life easier and can fulfill your dreams. You only need a unique strategy to show your competitors that you’ve got what it takes.
Dilip Tiwari is an SEO Expert at Universal Stream Solution. Universal Stream Solution is a web development company in Atlanta. That helps startups to enterprise companies in mobile & web technology.