In today’s technological world, the ways in which businesses market themselves is changing. Traditional means of marketing have become secondary to new methods like social media and content marketing. With businesses projected to spend €110 billion (around £95 billion) on digital advertising by the end of 2021, it’s clear that adapting to these changes could be vital for survival.
In this post, we’ll discuss exactly why digital marketing is so important.
What is digital marketing?
As the name suggests, digital marketing is any marketing that is carried out electronically. If marketing involves digital communication, it can be classed as digital marketing. This includes any form of advertising encountered on a computer, tablet or mobile phone.
There are multiple forms of digital marketing, and each brings its own benefit. It’s recommended that a business incorporates a mixture of approaches when marketing digitally.
But why is digital marketing important? Here are five reasons why digital marketing is vital for growing your brand.
1. It can save you money
It can be a satisfying experience for a business to see its branding on the side of billboards or on posters. But it’s also extremely expensive. Think about the costs of printing, leasing and distributing your marketing materials.
With digital marketing you can use analytics to find the less successful parts of your campaigns. You can then restructure your marketing, removing any deadwood. This will save money and boost the effectiveness of your campaign.
If a digital campaign isn’t performing, you can also cancel it. This means you’re no longer saddled with underperforming and costly campaigns. Try doing that with a 200 square foot billboard.
2. You can track your ROI
One of the big disadvantages with traditional marketing is the difficulty in tracking performance. With digital marketing, this barrier doesn’t exist. There are numerous aspects of your marketing that you can track. This includes cost per click, average sales price, and customer lifetime value.
All of this information is delivered in reports which can be broken to simple summaries. It can also be formatted as data visualisations. This all ensures that you get the information you need. With this information, you can understand more about your audience, and improve future marketing.
3. You can engage with your audience
Audience engagement is an important factor when marketing a product or service. The more you capture an audience’s attention, the higher your ROI. With digital marketing, you can create more versatile marketing materials such as live video and also utilise user generated content.
Digital marketing also allows you to receive instant feedback from your audience. This means you can alter your marketing materials as you go along, based on real-time feedback.
Mobile marketing also opens new ways of engaging with your audience. On average, people now spend 4.5 hours each day using mobile apps. There is a fantastic opportunity to reach and engage these users. This could be creating tailored ‘in app’ adverts or even creating your own app.
On average, digital marketing generates 50% more interactions than traditional marketing.
4. It can help you to reach more people
The ability to reach people that are likely to respond to a product or service is a vital part of marketing. It’s also one of the big advantages of digital marketing. You can easily locate your audience at the click of a button. There are many ways digital marketing can help you reach people.
SEO
If search engine optimisation (SEO) is a focus in your digital marketing, you will be able to reach your audience more directly by climbing up the search results.
A by-product of tuning your site to be SEO friendly is improving the overall quality of your site. That means better content on display, a more responsive website, and an interface that is accessible to mobile users. This means that when people do find your site, they are more likely to stick around.
Influencer marketing
One of the great benefits of influencer marketing is that you can receive direct access to your target market. Influencers build up trust with their audience, which means they are more likely to respond to your product.
By doing the research and picking the right influencer, you’ll begin to see big returns. In fact, 89% of marketers say ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels.
Email marketing
Although it is often wrongly associated as a dated practice, email marketing is actually one of the most effective ways of reaching an audience. With email marketing you can build a mailing list and have access to your audience, even after they’ve placed an order.
You can send them discounts, newsletters, even wish them a happy birthday. This helps you to remain in a customer’s mind and builds brand loyalty.
According to research, 59% of marketers say email is their biggest source of ROI. There’s no denying the effectiveness of email marketing.
5. It helps small businesses
If you’re running a small business, digital marketing can help level out the playing field against your competitors. Whilst a larger company may be able to put more finances into marketing, everyone can access the same digital resources. This means new opportunities to compete and grow your brand.
Digital marketing also allows smaller businesses to reach a worldwide audience more easily. It means they don’t have to worry about the logistics of organising advertising space and focus more on campaigns.
It all comes down to having a focused and creative digital marketing campaign. With the right tactics, a small business can arguably have a more effective campaign than a larger business, even though a larger competitor could have double the funds.
Calling all accountants: start working on your digital marketing today!
From cost-effectiveness to audience engagement, digital marketing can be highly beneficial to almost any business when it’s utilised properly. That’s where Rapport Digital can help.
At Rapport Digital, we provide expert digital marketing services for aspiring accountancies in the UK. We offer a range of digital marketing solutions to radically improve your campaigns and results. From SEO to email marketing, we can give you a boost to reach new audiences, grow your brand, and create effective and memorable marketing materials.
Get in touch today and see how we can help.