What is Digital Marketing? Types, Benefits

If I tell you the number of people who go online every day has increased by 5% would you believe it? It’s True! Internet usage among adults has increased by 5% in the last three years, according to Pew Research. Also, the way people shop, and buy has changed along with it. Offline marketing isn’t as effective as it used to be.

The Internet is the gateway to a new world of information and technology, and life in the digital age is full of fascinating developments. Digital marketing is the most effective way to sell your product in a world dominated by the Internet and social media.

Marketing your company online is a big deal these days. As a marketer, it’s critical to take advantage of the digital world by creating a brand, providing a great customer experience that attracts more potential customers, and more, all while implementing a digital strategy.

What Is Digital Marketing?

Essentially, digital marketing refers to any online marketing efforts or assets. It is the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the internet and other forms of digital communication. This includes Email marketing, pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing and even blogging as a marketing channel. It is a new age concept to introduce people to your brand and convince them to buy.

Types Of Digital Marketing Strategies

Some of the most promising Digital Marketing techniques are given below:

Pay Per Click | Pay Per Click or PPC is based on the internet marketing model. It buys visits to your website through various methods. Each time a user clicks on your Ad, you have to pay Google.  Important keywords are auctioned to the highest bidder.

Social Media Marketing | One of the common techniques used in digital marketing is social media marketing. Millions of users around the world spend a major portion of their day scrolling through social media applications. The best way to reach these people and connect with them is while they are scrolling away on social platforms. You can insert ads into their news feed and build brand awareness and market your business. Just like SEO, social media marketing is the free, organic way to market your business but it takes a lot more time and effort, but in the long run, it can deliver much cheaper results.

Content Marketing | It’s a broad marketing term that focuses on creating informative content for customers to consume. Content types can vary from blog posts, infographics, eBooks, videos, etc. The content produced is intended to assist businesses in increasing website traffic and initiating conversations around their products. Content marketing has a proven track record that shows that it creates 54% more leads than traditional marketing.

Email Marketing | Email marketing is one of the most reliable forms of digital marketing. Most digital marketers use email marketing to send emails to prospective customers and existing customers to remind them of your brand name and quality. It’s a cost-effective way of advertising special deals, highlighting content and promoting an event via email.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | SEO is the simplest form of organic marketing. If you don’t want to spend money to rank higher in the SERPs you can use SEO to rank pages or blog posts organically. It is one of the most effective methods for increasing a website’s visibility for relevant searches. Based on the target audience, SEO directs more traffic to a website.

The Benefits of Digital Marketing

Now that you know the types of digital marketing strategies let’s go further and see why it is important for business.

Digital marketing has grown in popularity due to its ability to reach a large number of people, but it also has a number of other benefits. Following are just a few of them-

Vast Geographic Reach | When you post an ad online it is there for the world audience to see it. This makes it easy to grow your business’s market reach.

Cost Efficiency | Not only does digital marketing reach a wider audience it’s also cost-effective in comparison to traditional marketing. Also, traditional marketing mediums like television spots, newspaper ads, etc give you less control over whether your target audience will see your Ad or not.

You can use digital marketing to create just one piece of content that will draw visitors to your blog as long as it is active. You can set up an email marketing campaign to send messages to specific customer lists on a regular basis, and it’s simple to change the schedule or the content if necessary.

When all is said and done, digital marketing provides you with far more flexibility and customer contact for your ad spend.

Quantifiable Results | If you want to track your marketing strategy, you need to find out how many customers it attracts and how much revenue it ultimately drives. It’s difficult to achieve that with a non-digital marketing strategy. You can’t keep going to every customer asking, “How did you find us?”

On the other hand, monitoring results with digital marketing is simple.

Whether it’s email open rates, visits to your home page, or direct purchases, digital marketing software and platforms automatically track the number of desired conversions.

Easier Personalization | The most significant reason why businesses switch to digital marketing is that it allows them to gather customer data with ease. Data collected digitally tends to be much more precise.

With traditional marketing, it is impossible to gather data by looking at phone records or going through customer profiles. Also, you can’t be sure who has or hasn’t read the brochure you sent out?

With digital marketing, you have all this information and more ready at your fingertips.

More Connection with Customers | It’s the age of the internet and digital marketing is the way to connect with your customers.  It allows two-way communication between you and your customer in real-time. For example, when you share a post on social media it’s great to see your target audience like your post but it’s even better when they comment or share your post.  It means every time you share a post you create a buzz around your product or service, as well as increased visibility every time someone joins the conversation. This interaction somewhere or the other benefits your customers too. With an increased level of engagement, they become your loyal brand ambassadors with a sense of brand ownership.

Easy And Convenient Conversions | Digital marketing reduces the action time. Customers are likely to take immediate action after viewing your ad or content.

Unfortunately, this ease is not there with traditional advertisements, people can’t immediately book a service or buy a product as soon as they view your ad.  Digital marketing has a longer shelf life and people can always go back to the blog they read or a link they opened and move along the sales funnel right away. They might not make a purchase immediately, but they’ll stay connected with you and give you a chance to interact with them further.

Summing-up

Digital marketing creates growth and is easily the marketing of the future. Digital marketing should be one of the primary focuses of almost any company’s overall marketing strategy. There has never been a better way to stay in touch with your customers consistently, and nothing compares to the level of personalization that digital data can provide. In addition to all the benefits discussed above digital marketing can easily track the results of your digital marketing efforts with incredible accuracy, helping you make an informed decision. You’ll be able to realise your company’s growth potential the more you embrace the possibilities of digital marketing.

We are hopeful that this article has convinced you that you need digital marketing, but if you’d like some help identifying the right approach, contact Shergroup. We love helping businesses grow with digital marketing. You can send us a message at [email protected] to set up a message with our Business Experts. We will find the right resource or team for your business and work out all the fine details about how you want this to work.