Updated, July 2024: | Let’s begin with the understanding of “what is digital marketing” and then explain further, “why digital marketing is important”.
Digital Marketing is the use of online channels to connect with a target audience through the internet and other digital platforms. It can include, strategic planning, content creation, delivery and exchange of valuable content to attract, acquire and retain an audience.
Key Components Of Digital Marketing
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): To improve your websites visibility on search engine results pages, also known as SERPS.
Email Marketing: Send targeted emails to future leads and retain customers.
Mobile Marketing: Optimizing your marketing efforts for mobile devices.
Content Marketing: Creating valuable content such as articles, blog posts and videos.
Social Media Marketing: Creating and sharing content for social media platforms to connect with your audience, build brand awareness, and drive traffic to your website.
Mindset: Ways to share valuable content with your target audience.
One of the major benefits of digital marketing is that it streamlines processes that have the potential to quickly connect the communication between the marketing messages of your business directly to current and/future customers.
Daily Percentage of Purchases made online using mobile devices:
eCommerce Mobile Stats – source OuterBoxDesigns.com
- 79% of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile device in the last 6 months
- 77% of American’s own a smartphone
- Over 230 million U.S. consumers own smartphones
- Around 100 million U.S. consumers own tablets
Now that we have identified the influx on mobile purchases, attracting the attention of a society that has a limited attention span is the next challenge. According to Microsoft the average human being now has an attention span of eight seconds. So your overall digital marketing plan needs to have an ability to focus and sustain your audience. To grow your business today, automating digital processes is a smart way to go. You can slowly adopt elevated levels of digital marketing into your marketing process by testing first and implementing only the best performing tactics. Remember the alternative to thinking digital is slow profitability and ultimately being pushed out of business.
As a business owner your goal should be to insert your brand into the lifestyle of your target audience. The way to successfully accomplish this is to “be where they are and engage with them often”. This truth will help you to get new business and create loyal brand ambassadors. It is the responsibility of all brands/businesses to share relatable experiences and stories with your target audience that evokes emotion and encourages likeability. To do this successfully today requires engagement tactics and consistent actions with deep data integration.
YOUR GOAL: Answer the Google search query with information on your website.
The Difference Between Digital and Traditional Marketing
The two primary differences are time to delivery and the medium to reach your audience. (social media vs postcard).
Traditional Marketing
- Medium:Offline channels: direct mail, outbound telemarketing, television, radio, newspaper, magazines and billboards.
- Measurability: Difficult to tract ROI and measure campaign effectiveness.
- Cost: Often high, especially for television and print advertising.
Digital Marketing
- Medium: Online channels, website, search engines, online directories, social media and email.
- Measurability: Easy to track website traffic and email click through rates.
- Cost: Generally more affordable, with options for all budget levels.
Since AI is quickly changing the face of technology and human interactions are becoming more distant, traditional marketing can still be considered a more viable option for service businesses. Overall both are needed to meet different business goals and depends on who you are targeting and your business goal.
With the right strategic plan in place, you can have an effective digital marketing plan that is set to keep your business on track to meet your annual business goals. There are many lead source funnels that can generate a pipeline of new business opportunities for your company that have the ability to enhance your customer service engagement, by setting up a system for follow-up and lead source evaluations. Every new prospect that interacts with your business gives you a chance to adequately add value and grow your business simultaneously. This is the mindset your marketing campaigns must adopt since movement is fast and frequent, your processes must be efficient.
By delivering the right information at the right time to the right person, you will get new business. When is the right time? That is the big question that can be best answered by exploring historical data, surveying customers, having competitor intelligence and knowing your market well. If selling more products and services is a part of your business goals, adding a digital marketing component will help you to accomplish that set goal.
How To Use Digital Marketing To Increase Sales
Once you have a refined keyword analysis, target audience outline, marketing median and geography you are ready to create a process of activity to generate leads.
Digital Conversions To Track
- Web form
- Downloads
- Webinar sign up
- Previous Purchase
Digital Marketing Significance Answered
Social media is the single most easy platform to build your online presence. If your business does not have any active social media accounts, we recommended you get started today after first planning who you are targeting to determine which social media platform to start with.
Online Benefits of Social Media Marketing
- Highly visible SEO
- Brand Awareness
- Share valuable content
- Engage with your target audience
- Goal: Bring context to the conversation –“WHY” “WHO” and “WHAT”.
Facebook Statistics – source Sprout Social
- Average time Facebook users spend daily: 20 minutes
What that means for you: You have a short time period to make an impression.
- Highest traffic occurs mid-week between 1-3 pm
What that means for you: You have the potential to reach more people and drive higher traffic to your site.
- 68 % of Americans use Facebook
What that means for you: Facebook should be a top choice to reach a broad audience.
Instagram Statistics – source Hoot suite
- Average time users spend on Instagram: 24 minutes a day.
What that means for you: You have a limited time to make your impression.
- Top three highest traffic times to post: Sunday 5:00pm, Monday 7:00pm & 10:00pm, Tuesday 3:00am & 10:00pm
What that means for you: This is your best chance to grow your audience and maximize engagement.
- There are 1 billion Instagram users
- Age 65+ 118.3 million (2%): Age 55-64: 30 million (3%)
- Age 45-54: 68 million (8%): Age 35-44:131 million (15%)
- Largest number of users: Age 25-34: 270 million (32%)
What that means for you: Your prospects are likely on Instagram – don’t overlook this platform for business.
Top Performing Social Media Platform
- Instagram is the largest visual platform in the world.
- Retails brands like Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Tiffany, Nike, and Reebok are pushing more products to people who came to their site from
What’s next:
Having a plan in place will help you determine the next steps, we recommend you focus on the most popular search engines, Google, Bing or Yahoo.
Email marketing is also important, you can explore low cost or free options like, Constant Contact or Mail Chimp. Upload videos, YouTube are the usual digital marketing high performing suspects.
When your business places technology at the forefront of marketing decisions you will notice a difference in the engagement from customers and prospects.
There are many aspects to Digital Marketing, below is a list of where to focus.
1. Reach a Wider Audience
- Niche targeting: Digital marketing enables precise targeting of specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. To best understand your market potential, consider adding a population distribution to your marketing plan.
2. Cost-Effective
- Barriers to entry: Compared to traditional marketing, digital marketing has a low barrier to entry which can create more competition because of the small initial investment.
- Measurable ROI: Digital platforms provide detailed analytics, allowing businesses to track the effectiveness of their campaigns and optimize where to allocate additional resources. In 2024, most marketing platforms offer reporting. Google Analytics is the best place to track website traffic.
3. Enhanced Customer Engagement
- Two-way communication: Social media and text marketing channels offer a direct interaction with your business and your customers.
- Personalized experiences: Digital marketing allows you to tailor messaging and services based on customer behavior. By speaking directly to said target, will enhance your ability to connect.
- I.E. Attention to Baby Boomer, Hi Millennials, Parents, Doctors, etc….
4. Measurable Results
- Data-driven decisions: Digital marketing provides actionable insights into campaign performance. The ability to quickly change the direction of a marketing campaign can save a ton of money.
- Optimized campaigns: By tracking key metrics that align with your business goals businesses can refine their strategies quickly to maximum the impact.
5. Increased Brand Awareness
- Consistent messaging: Digital platforms offer opportunities to share brand stories and values consistently.
- SEO and content marketing: Improving search engine rankings is a very important ongoing process. Consistently creating valuable content in a blog post or YouTube video can increase the visibility of your service business.
6. Competitive Advantage
- Staying ahead: Businesses that embrace digital marketing can gain a competitive edge over those relying solely on traditional methods.
- Adaptability: Digital marketing allows for quick adjustments to market trends and customer preferences.
7. Improved Customer Experience
- Convenient access: Digital channels provide customers with easy access to information and support.
- Personalized interactions: Digital marketing enables businesses to offer tailored experiences, building customer loyalty.
To successfully integrate a digital marketing strategy it is recommended that you map out a plan, allocate a budget and establish key metrics that are clearly defined and aligned to your business goals. The budget allocation is very important since the resource to continue a process once started is crucial. Many of our clients at Marketing 4 Real Results have asked us for advice on the best method to implement a digital marketing strategy and we always assign a sales and marketing funneled approach and attach to effort to a key metric that has the ability to push the needle forward, not merely brand awareness. The goal for all marketing campaigns should include simple and efficient ways to grow. By combining your target customer data with ABM (account based marketing), cloud based/automated (CRM) customer relationship management and assigned benchmarks, your digital marketing campaigns are off to a good start.
Top Trending Digital Marketing Tactics To Consider
- Mobile friendly website (SSL certificate)
- Social Media Channels FB/Instagram/ LinkedIn
- ORM Online Reputation Management–Review Sites
- Google | Yelp | Facebook
- Videos –create stories
- SEO Search Engine Optimization
- Automated Email Marketing
Search Engine Optimization Matters To Your Digital Strategy
Your digital strategy should be aimed at increasing your online presence with search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. By leveraging the combination of organic SEO (search engine optimization) your online presence will be improved over time and the content on your website will be an add value to those seeking to do business with you.
There is no easy solution to accomplish a successful digital marketing strategy, although beginning with the end in mind is the best way to ensure success. By consistently adding content to your website your organic search results will increase over time and begin to drive your business closer and closer to the top of the first page of search results. It is crucial that you know the relevant keywords and search terms/keyword phrases that are driving your new business and this can be found with the free Google Analytics tool. Doing this successfully requires research and consistency and frequent changes overtime. Your digital marketing efforts beginning from your websites copy and coding extends to an ongoing commitment to quality content that answers your target audience questions and makes a direct connection.
How To Track and Identify SEO Keywords?
- Track SEO tools: BrightEdge
- Identify SEO tools:Answer the Public.com
- Define a specific list of SEO keywords based on terms that matter most to your brand (think product, service and industry).
Digital Marketing with Marketing with Real Results
At Marketing 4 Real Results we allocate an adequate amount of time to all new campaigns to ensure our clients are successful in their digital marketing efforts. The advantages we offer are a lot different from the contemporary approach to try everything – we only try what we know works based on proven results with other clients. We shun away from the shiny object syndrome and focus on revenue generating activities that produce results. We recommend both traditional and digital marketing initiatives to maintain an integrated marketing strategy that support your entire business. We maintain a goal to attract customers, build brand awareness and brand ambassadors simultaneously. We work with you to find the perfect duo of content, platforms and processes that will take your business to the next level.
Take the lead in your industry with a Digital Marketing Campaign from Marketing 4 Real Results.
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