Curious why you and your business need digital marketing? We explain the top five reasons and how to make it work to your professional advantage.
Before Google, Facebook, and WordPress, there were phone book listings, newspaper ads, and massive highway billboards.
And, given we’re several decades into the “digital age,” it’s only fitting that digital marketing is outpacing those old-school tactics.
But you’re still not convinced your business needs to splurge on online ads.
… right?
Reconsider your marketing tactics forever with these five reasons:
Nearly Five Billion People Call the Internet “Home”
As eCommerce sales outnumber in-person shopping sprees, the business world is constantly evolving. The internet now supports over 4.66 billion users worldwide. In America, 93% of the adult population browses the web.
What does that mean for you — a business owner?
Follow your customers wherever they go!
Build a Larger Audience
Old-school advertising tactics aren’t entirely dead. A highway billboard can still put your brand in front of thousands of drivers during evening rush hour. And, door-to-door mailings can catch the attention of entire city blocks.
Yet, traditional marketing falls flat in three areas:
- Physical boundaries
- Time
- Chance
Digital marketing fills those gaps by nature.
Online ads and content are accessible 24/7. They can reach an audience in the next town over or across the nation with no extra planning or fees. Digital marketing also doesn’t rely on “happenstance” to get the right eyes on your brand.
Attract the Right Eyes
The trouble with public ads is that you cast too wide a net. When you have a niche audience or unique customer avatar, a thousand views may translate to a handful of sales. It very rarely pays off to invest in a pricey newspaper ad in a confined area.
With digital marketing, you can choose who sees your ads.
Target keywords and industry content draw likely customers to your website. And, on social platforms like Facebook, you can even select an audience by age, location, and interests.
Don’t just hope the right people see it; guarantee it!
Digital Marketing Isn’t Just Online Ads
The biggest fallacy about digital marketing is that it’s nothing more than sidebar pop-ups on random websites. Or that online advertising begins and ends with Google PPC (pay-per-click) ads.
Let’s break through the stigma!
In addition to PPC ads, digital marketing also includes:
- Written content, like blog posts, articles, listicles, and press releases
- Educational and how-to videos
- Gated content, like whitepapers, ebooks, and digital webinars
- Infographics
- Social media posts, including text and videos
- Email campaigns
Perhaps the most significant perk is that digital marketing isn’t always trying to sell something. At least that’s not how it looks to would-be customers!
Instead of roping visitors in with a 15% discount ad, an educational how-to article can build trust in your brand and attract a loyal following.
Access to Real-Time Analytics
Let’s face it:
Old-school marketing tactics leave plenty of questions unanswered.
How many people drove by your ad? What percentage of your EDDM route thinks about your brand favorably? Did your BOGO offer catch some attention?
Traditional marketing is a guessing game. Digital marketing and analytic tools allow you to keep a real-time pulse on how your advertising methods perform.
By linking your website to tracker tools like Google Analytics, you can learn:
How Long Visitors Stay On Your Site
If they do an immediate about-face, you might desperately need a website overhaul. Slow load speeds or overly sales-y content could send customers running, often into the arms of your competitors.
Where Visitors Are Coming From
Find out who’s sending you traffic, whether it’s your Facebook ads, organic search traffic, or a partnering company. If you’re A/B split testing, you can learn which campaigns and approaches are most effective.
Which Pages Drive the Most Traffic
Discover which products in your line-up grab the most traffic. Give lagging products a much-needed marketing boost. Or allow these traffic surges to guide future product development to what captivates the masses.
Who’s Giving You Traffic
In the Audience tab, you’ll get a glimpse of where these would-be customers live and when they’re most active on your site.
Learn what works.
Discover what doesn’t.
And nudge prospective buyers and clients through your sales funnel with a little more intent.
Cut Costs Without Cutting Corners
Nothing blows a budget quite like conventional marketing techniques. You may hire a marketing team, printing company, and graphic designer. And with that, you’ll wind up spending more on the ad than you’d earn through the sales it drives.
Digital marketing doesn’t have to shatter ROI.
In fact, it can be as cheap or as expensive as your business budget can afford.
Even if you have no marketing expertise, you can run a Google PPC ad or boost a Facebook post on your business account. All you need is a payment card number and a little SEO or advertising know-how.
But digital marketing can also be free.
Yes, FREE.
If you target the right keywords and land on Google’s front page — which collects 71% of all clicks — you don’t have to spend money running ad campaigns. Searchers interested in your niche will find you organically, delivering free traffic.
Everybody Else is Doing It
As a business owner, you need to keep a close eye on what your competitors are doing. And, when 92% of your peers see websites as practical marketing tools, it’s your job to follow suit.
But think about it from a potential customer’s perspective.
Twenty years ago, you’d visit the local strip mall and limit your purchase decisions to whatever’s on the shelves. Now, you can compare dozens of brands side-by-side (or tab-by-tab) to find the highest quality products.
Position yourself right next to the competition.
Simply put, digital marketing can:
- Broaden your reach
- Help you build an online reputation
- Prove how you stack up against your fiercest competitors.
Plus, everybody else is already doing it.
Conclusion
The average small- or medium-sized business reserves $30,000–$145,000 a year for digital marketing alone. But it doesn’t have to be a revenue-gutting investment.
Start small and slow.
Run a $50/week Google Ad campaign, publish 1,000-word blog posts weekly, or create a share-worthy infographic on Facebook.
When the traffic begins booming, you’ll see once and for all (1) why it’s reasonable to ramp up your ad spending and (2) why your business needs digital marketing.
What more convincing could you need?
Author bio:
Caitlin Sinclair is the Business Manager at Anson. With over 5 years of property management experience, she begins and ends each day loving what she does. She finds joy in helping current and future residents and makes Anson a place everyone loves to call home.
