The Importance of Digital Marketing and How It Can Help Your Business

The way in which businesses advertise their products and services is changing. Rather than using outdated marketing tactics like billboards and direct mail, many businesses are now using online tactics. Known as digital marketing, it involves pay per click (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing (SMM), email and blogging.

If you’re looking to take your business to the next level, you should consider a digital marketing strategy for the following reasons.

Highly Targeted

Digital marketing is highly targeted, meaning you can target specific audiences with ads. Using a PPC network like AdWords, for example, you can create ads that appear in the search results when someone searches for a keyword related to your business. If your business sells personalized engagement rings, you can target keywords like “personalized engagement ring” and “personalized wedding ring.” This allows for highly targeted ads that drive sales. There are even PPC campaign management companies that can handle the legwork or set up and optimize PPC campaigns.

Easily Measurable

You can’t expect to optimize a marketing campaign without measuring its results. Unfortunately, traditional marketing tactics are difficult or impossible to measure. You can advertise your business via direct mail, for example, but you won’t know how many customers it attracts. This isn’t a problem with digital marketing, however. Most online marketing channels have analytics for tracking metrics.

When promoting your business on social media, you can see exactly how many followers it attracts as well as how many sales or conversions it drives. When promoting your business via email, you can measure performance metrics like open rate, click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate and more. This data is invaluable when optimizing your digital marketing strategy for better performance.

Cost-Effective

Digital marketing allows you to get the most bang for your advertising buck. According to Experian, the return on investment (ROI) of email is 20 times higher than that of traditional, offline marketing tactics. SEO is also cost-effective as it involves optimizing your business’s website so that it ranks high in Google’s and Bing’s search results. With higher rankings, your website will attract more clicks and traffic, some of which may convert into sales.

Mobile Friendly

Using digital marketing, you can reach smartphone and tablet users with your marketing messages. This is important because statistics show that 77 per cent of Americans now own a mobile device. In comparison, only 35 per cent of Americans owned a mobile device in 2011.

To reach these users, you should create a mobile-friendly website using a responsive design and target users by device with PPC and other online ads. Another idea is to develop a mobile app for your business though this tactic requires a little more work and technical knowledge. Nonetheless, you can easily reach mobile users with digital marketing, introducing them to your business’s products or services and encouraging higher sales volume.

It’s Fast

You don’t have to wait long to see the results of digital marketing. The Search Engine Roundtable explains that Google typically approves new AdWords ads within 24 hours, after which the ads are displayed in Google’s search results.

For email, results are even faster. Some sources claim that emails can travel more than 10,000 miles in just one-tenth of a second. In comparison, direct mail ad campaigns can take several weeks or even months. In the fast-paced world of business, that’s a lifetime.

Embracing digital marketing can help your business succeed in multiple ways. Regardless of which platform you choose, though, you should create relevant, targeted ads for the best results.