The American Marketing Association defines marketing as: the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. (Approved 2017)
I have once heard a teacher say that digital marketing is not much different from traditional marketing, just that as audiences have moved their attention online, marketers have also had to adapt accordingly, and move their communication and messaging online.
This, in theory is true, as digital marketing still includes many of the fundamental concepts of traditional marketing, reaching out to customers to satisfy a need or a want, influencing consumer behaviour, and ultimately getting the right product or service in front of their customers at the right time, price and place for them to make a purchase.
The difference?
Digital marketing allows businesses to achieve all these objectives in a quicker, more efficient and cost effective way. The speed at which you can scale your campaigns and business is pretty remarkable, but I will explain more about this in the future.
So what exactly is digital marketing and why is it important for all businesses to utilize digital marketing to maximize their sales?
Digital marketing is the component of marketing that utilizes internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services. – Definition from Wikipedia
I do recognize I am quoting from Wikipedia, and some academics and teachers would probably shake their heads at this, but I think it is an appropriate definition nonetheless.
Digital marketing makes use of the world’s most adored platforms and technologies – Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, Spotify etc to connect or capture the attention (hopefully in a subtle manner) of your audience. Let’s look at it from your own perspective. Spend a lazy afternoon in bed watching YouTube and you find a video ad that pops up, telling you about the most exciting spin classes available on ClassPass.
A tad disruptive, but hey, you were just looking for HIIT workout classes a few days ago.
Or imagine sitting in the bus on the way home from work, catching up on your friends’ latest Instagram stories on their trip to Japan, and suddenly discovering inspirational holiday destination images by Expedia on your feed. Could it be a coincidence?
This is often the result of carefully researched and targeted ads that allow advertisers to get in front of their customers at the right time and place where it is most relevant to the user.
Let’s look at the reasons why most companies require digital marketing practices.
1. Your Customers Are Online
On Social Media
Facebook has 2.5 billion monthly active users, while other social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube and WhatsApp have more than one billion users each. YouTube is also considered the 2nd largest search engine in the world, processing more than 3 billion searches a month.
These numbers are huge – there are 7.7 billion people in the world, with 3.5 billion of us online. This means social media platforms are used by one-in-three people in the world, and more than two-thirds of all internet users.
On Search Engines, Email and Websites
Google owns about 80% – 90% of the search engine market share worldwide, Gmail dominates consumer email with 1.5 billion users, and Google’s Display Network is a group of more than 2 million websites, videos, and apps where your ads can appear. Display Network sites reach over 90% of Internet users worldwide. That’s 9 out of every 10 of us. If you really want to reach out to the 10th person, you could probably do it through programmatic display via a demand side platform like Display & Video 360 or MediaMath. More on that at a later point in time.
The conclusion is simple.
Utilize these digital marketing platforms efficiently and you can reach out to almost all of your prospecting and existing customers and clients.
2. Lower Advertising Costs
You need good marketing to promote your products and services. Especially for startups and small businesses with a tight budget, digital marketing through SEO, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads etc have leveled the playing field drastically.
You can reach your audiences through the search engines and social media platforms without having to buy expensive TV spots, magazines, newspapers or even direct mail. There are different pricing models available, you can choose to pay every time your ad is clicked on, every time your ad serves an impression or whenever someone watches 30 seconds of your video. This ensures that you are able to keep your advertising costs in check and only pay when someone interacts with your ads.
3. Appear In Front Of People Already Seeking Your Services
While paid advertising online is more cost effective for small businesses, the bulk of online traffic is actually driven mostly by search engines. Organic search is most often the primary source of traffic for businesses online.
Instead of trying to spend money to advertise your services to people, you can optimize your website based on existing best SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practices and drive free traffic from people who are already looking for you or your services.
Seek to understand what people are searching for online and the keywords they are using, and connect with them by providing them with the content that answers their inquiries.
SEO is not exactly free, but it is one of the most important digital marketing channels that will continue to provide returns in the long run. It is definitely a long term strategy for any business and it has the potential to provide a higher brand awareness, coupled with a positive user experience.
4. Target A Specific Audience
Wouldn’t it be great if you could show your adverts to specific groups of people who were your intended target audience?
Let’s say you are a personal trainer and you have established that your clients are mainly males aged 25-35 who are interested in gym and sports, or you are an interior designer looking to reach out to females aged 35 – 45 who are interested in home decor and renovating their houses. Or perhaps you want to target anyone who is interested in business and finance.
All these options are possible with the help of advanced interests and demographic targeting features. Mix and match audience segments and run split tests based on customer profiles to see which audience group provides the best return on ad spend or the lowest cost per action, depending on the goals of your campaign. Take note of that audience group, and you may have just saved thousands of advertising dollars spent on distributing flyers and brochures. Use this approach to control costs and maintain a lean approach to prospecting new customers.
5. Understand Your Target Customers (With Free Tools Included)
For startups and small businesses, what if you just started out and do not have a clear idea of who could be your customers yet?
Utilize free analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel to gather data regarding web visitors and converters, including what pages they visit, how long they spend on average and what your top selling products are.
Use Google Tag Manager to track event clicks on specific call to action buttons or to track scroll depth to observe engagement with your content.
Make use of Google Trends and Keyword Planner to plan and run search campaigns on Google Ads to find out what keywords people are searching for.
Use Google Search Console to look for technical issues impacting your website and identify top keywords queries leading to organic traffic, and use Google Data Studio to visualize important metrics on a dashboard, to give you an overview of your performance.
This data is crucial and valuable for optimizing future campaigns.
6. Measure Performance
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
Famously quoted by John Wanamaker, a very successful United States merchant, religious leader and political figure, considered by some to be a “pioneer in marketing”
Although there are still various attribution limitations in digital marketing, the advancement of technology has helped immensely in constructing more measurable digital marketing campaigns.
Combine the creative ideas of copywriting, storytelling and design with the analytical and technological aspect that advertising platforms have provided, you now have free reign over the art and science of digital marketing to deliver the optimal experience for customers.
Plan your budgets, calculate your costs, including cost per click, cost per action and conversion revenue to determine your ROAS (return on ad spend) and accurately measure the ROI of dollar spent.
Get started today!
If you are keen to deep dive into the benefits that digital marketing will bring you, you can reach out to us at digitsim@gmail.com.
