Gone are those days when people used to watch television collectively or wait for the newspaper every morning. Now, the very first thing every individual does after waking up from sleep is checking notifications on mobile phones. Mobile phones & digital media have become one of the most important parts of our life after the surge of internet & technologies. Asserting this trend, billions of companies across the world have adopted this technique to avail the complete advantage of this digital era. Not only because a large chunk of people has access to digital platforms but also for the fact that 82% of the consumer search online for the product before making a final purchase and 79% people shop online.
When businesses have easy access to their targeted audience digitally why to spend hundreds of dollars in printing hoarders or clipping pamphlets inside the newspapers? Digital Marketing has brought the biggest cultural shift in the way businesses promote their product. You come across innumerable ad posts every time you unlock the screen of your mobile phone. Not only on phones, but we also see ads streaming on LED screens wherever we go- be it restaurants, airports, stores, shopping malls, metro stations, and everywhere.
Digital Marketing has the potential to transform the way you target and reach your customers and influence them to buy your product or service. It includes platforms like- Social Media -Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Xing, Business networking sites like LinkedIn, and Emails, Blogs, Paid Pop-ups, etc.
More and more businesses are seen leaning towards digital marketing strategies for effective customer engagement and to grab potential markets online. It is estimated that by 2021, the U.S digital marketing spend will rise to about $332 billion- which is really a big amount.
Let’s see what advantages does this emerging trend holds within and how it can benefit businesses on large scale
1.Cost-Effective
Where newspaper ads, television ads cost large sums of money, online ads can be streamlined at a very reasonable price if you have a good knowledge of SEO, SMO, Paid Campaigns, etc. or you can hire an expert digital marketing company. Even a small business can outstretch to 1000 people for its products and services for less than $3 using online platforms. Ubiquitous Internet has given Social media access to every one of us. About 3.8 billion people are on Social Media and 57% of brands found that social media stories to be effective marketing tools.
2.Real-Time Interaction
Digital Marketing enables the customer to directly interact with customers in real-time and vice-versa while in traditional marketing, businesses have to wait long to gain customer interest, engagement and response. For example, when a customer comes across an ad for weight gain protein powder, he can directly click on the link and get the necessary detail and even make instant purchases. Real-time helps to gain a complete insight of your customer like- impression, views, session, likes, dislikes, most active time of the day, conversion rates, bounce rates, etc.
3.Build Brand Reputation
While traditional marketing tends to be a very slow process, online marketing can boost your business and can build a strong brand image in short time. Credit also goes to website development companies. In this cut-throat competitive age of the digital era, your business needs a well-maintained website with quality content. Better content can drive traffic up to 2000%. It not just welcomes the audience but provides a significant value and lead generation opportunities.
While a newspaper gives you a small corner for promotion, using online techniques you can own a complete website with innumerable pages. It gives a way to make the consumer aware of your offerings through blogs, articles, profile creation, image sharing, social media postings, etc. Owning a website and promoting your products and services on online platforms contributes a lot in building brand reputation.
4.Higher Exposure
With the increasing number of digital device users, businesses today aim at targeting the customer with compelling marketing strategies for higher lead generation & conversion rates. By utilizing multiple channels and technologies a business can run campaigns to expose its product and service to a large group of people. You can’t say that a hoarding or magazine can cover the majority of the population. Unlike the traditional way, DM strategy is not limited to a certain location. Online ads widely spread its wings to cater entire world.
5.Greater Engagement
Traditional advertisement limits the audience whom we interact with. It does not give a clear way to interact with the targeted audience. Management needs to wait for the response to plan anything further, thereby makes the process tedious & time-consuming whereas digital marketing companies make it possible by building a strong strategy for greater customer engagement. Moreover business now allows customers to chat and place queries, share reviews and their experiences about business offerings.
6.Quick Publicity
Today, the world has become so interconnected with the surge of the internet that thing does not take time to reach large chunk of people. If you’re providing something different than your competitive brothers then there is 100% chance that your product will gain publicity within a much constraint time frame. But only if you are working on a proficient publicity strategy offered by a top digital marketing company. Social networking sites also offer likes, share, comment and refer which means if your product will be liked by online communities, it will automatically outstretch to a broader group through recommendation and mouth publicity.
7.Influence Psychologically
Did you know, 50% of people are more likely to tap on the brand name which appears more than once in their search result?
Earlier ads were visible to limited places like televisions, hoardings, magazines, etc but now you will find them everywhere. This has become possible only due to cutting-edge digital media. Imagine a situation when you’re dining with your family and enjoying a delicious meal in a restaurant. Meanwhile, the LED screen in front of you displays the ad saying if you visit restaurant 2 consecutive weeks and place an order above Rs. 1000; you will receive a coupon worth Rs. 500. Now even if you had no plan to have dinner in upcoming weeks, you are more likely to avail the benefit of this. This is what exactly happens.
Intentionally or unintentionally, we are being interacted with hundreds of ads every day that builds their image in our brain.
8.Easy Analytics
As discussed above, online promotions help us gain audience’s information in real-time thereby making it easy for analysis via tools like- Google Analytics. It gives a deep insight into useful information such as- how many people visit your website, your keyword rankings, inbound traffic, conversion rate, bounce rate, search locality, page view, etc. These insights help your business to make future strategies accordingly and grab customers smartly.
9.Cover large audience
If you’re looking to cover a large audience you make sure that you have a heavy budget planning. But with profound Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, and other DM tactics, you can easily optimize your website content on search engines to reach buyers in bulk. About 18% of all local searches result in a purchase every day and 28% of searches for ‘nearby’ lead to a sale. SEO of relevant keywords for your business can rank your website or page on Google first page- it’s a big thing. The higher the ranking, the greater is the exposure.
10.Greater adaptability and flexibility
The biggest advantage offered by online marketing is the adaptability and flexibility to market changes and consumer behavior. Unlike earlier, information nowadays flows at a much fast pace. Various tools like Keyword Planner, Google Analytics helps to know the changing trend and higher traffic keywords, peak site traffic days, etc. If a business knows these things, it gets easier to adapt to the changes. Let’s say you’re writing an article and meanwhile you check the blog analytics to know search volumes and competition on related keywords. Then you can mold your content as per changing figures. Checking and adapting with such insights helps to get the most out of your efforts.
