The importance of digital marketing is growing and your website serves as your storefront for new customers and clients. Therefore, if you aren’t incorporating your site with a strong digital marketing and design strategy, then you’ll likely get lost in the online crowd. It’s not surprising that the first five results on a search engine results page generate 67.6% of clicks, whereas the next five just receive 3.73% of clicks, and the numbers just decrease from there.
The benefits of digital marketing outweigh the benefits of marketing in any other form, although these core benefits of embracing digital marketing may not automatically be clear.
A marketing expert can help answer the question of, “how digital marketing can help my business?” But for starters, it’s helpful to have a foundational understanding of the key benefits and the different avenues available to make your web presence a beacon that provides business growth.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing refers to smart marketing initiatives and practices directly related to online connections. The underlying principles of digital marketing and conventional marketing are the same. However, the platforms are different, and the strategies that are deployed to reach a target audience are more complex in the digital world.
Different Types of Digital Marketing
Though there are endless options for businesses to connect with potential consumers online, a few of the main areas of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy are as follows:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – SEO refers to the keywords, phrases, images, page titles, URLs, and other website and online content features that are specifically designed to enhance your organic search engine rankings on Google and other search sites.
- Pay-Per-Click – This form of online advertising allows you to display your website in results for specific search queries (like Google Ads.)
- Social media marketing – Social media has its unique guidelines for marketing, from building a fan base through incredible content and posts to exploring ads and post-promotion options that will reach your target audience
- Content marketing – Utilizing the principles of SEO, content marketing helps you establish a voice of authority in your field while naturally enhancing your online presence through blogs, newsletters, webpage content, social media posts, press releases, and more.
- Email marketing – Email marketing allows you to send personalized emails to your established connections to stay on your audience’s radar and convert casual interest into sales.
- Mobile marketing – Mobile marketing is focused on the activities conducted on the phone, such as SMS, MMS, push notifications, and other instances where you can directly connect with mobile users.
- Video marketing -Video marketing is steadily on the rise via platforms like TikTok and YouTube, and it’s an opportunity to engage new users and demographics through videos that convey your brand identity.
The Characteristics of Effective Digital Marketing
All of the above digital marketing types have a common thread – if launched successfully, they can provide stellar data and results.
Some characteristics are distinctive to digital marketing, and these unique characteristics highlight the benefits of smart digital marketing and design strategy.
Measurability and Concrete ROI
Consider the last time you posted an ad in a newspaper or highlighted your business on an interstate billboard. You may know how many subscribers a newspaper has or how many vehicles roughly travel that interstate every day, but how many people took notice of your advertisement? How many folks contacted you minutes, days, or months after they paid attention to your ad? Also, how many of those connections turned into transactions?
With digital marketing, you’ll know these answers as you will have access to a wealth of data that outlines your precise ROI. You’ll know how many people clicked on your website, liked your social media post, or clicked on links within your emails. You’ll also know how many of these clicks turned into action. This is a valuable insight into the return on your investment, and helps you fine-tune your message by identifying what works and what doesn’t.
Personalization
In our modern era, you can tailor your digital marketing efforts to a very specific audience that is most likely to turn into lifelong fans. This builds brand loyalty and ensures you’re not wasting your hard-earned marketing dollars on a demographic with no interest or need for your products or services.
Brand Loyalty
Digital marketing also relies on two-way communications to succeed, allowing your audience to engage with your company and your brand by fostering heightened brand loyalty in the process.
Budget-friendly and Versatile
One of the best aspects of digital marketing is that it can coincide with any budget. It can also be tailored to instantly change based on your current financial situation, upcoming promotions, or other revenue-related events. For example, instead of running a monthly ad in a magazine, you can increase your digital marketing budget when there’s a special event, product launch, or promotion that is designed to increase revenue and attention.
Digital Marketing for Continuous Improvement
One of the best aspects of digital marketing is that with all that data that you accumulate via click-through rates, social media likes or comments, website visits, email opens, and much more is that you have an endless source of information on your target customer, and how to get their attention.
The more you adopt digital marketing strategies, the more information you’ll inherently receive on your demographic, and allowing all your marketing efforts to perpetually improve over time.
Keeps Your Current Customers Engaged
It’s much easier to retain current customers than to seek out new ones, and digital marketing gives you a constant opportunity to stay in touch and create loyalty through consumer engagement.
Embrace the Benefits of Digital Marketing and Design with C1M
When it comes to digital marketing, it’s crucial to have a detailed plan in place before you get started. Don’t just buy a couple of online ads; make a few splashy videos for social media, and hope for the best.
A successful digital marketing plan requires in-depth research, advanced technological knowledge about SEO, search algorithms, and a comprehensive strategy that leads to transactions.
Reach out to the experts at C1M to learn more about the backbone of digital marketing and design and start crafting your strategy.
With an expert behind the scenes, you can ensure that your long-term digital marketing efforts become the cornerstone of growing your business.
