Digital marketing is big business in the USA with over $40bn invested each year by companies eager to get ahead of their competitors online.
But when you include the vast number of free digital marketing interactions and paid services, the importance of digital marketing becomes even bigger than anyone first imagined.
Are you asking yourself “what is digital marketing?” Our helpful guide right here has you covered as we list 15 of the most impressive benefits of digital marketing for your business.
1. Automates Repetitive Tasks
Suppose you don’t have time or resources to commit to promoting the business. In that case, digital marketing can help automate the process and make it almost effortless. With digital marketing, you can automate routine tasks like sending out emails or creating reports.
The secret to implementing automation in digital marketing is looking at it from a productivity level. It might be tempting to automate all your processes. Still, you might find that automating some processes can harm your personal circumstance.
For example, a business specializing in custom-made-to-order items best has a customer care team that involves human interaction. Yet, a large retail store with many products can automate most customer service interactions through an AI chatbot without damaging reputation.
2. Increased On-Site Conversion Rates
Improving the conversion rates on your site can be an important goal for many businesses. This, in turn, can lead you to make more sales. It also increases their Average Transaction Value (ATV).
The better your site is at converting visitors into customers, the more successful you’ll be as a company. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is an often-used technique that you can use to help increase your on-site conversion rates.
3. Increases Search Engine Visibility
More exposure means more people and businesses are going to find you. With more people finding your business, you’ll increase the number of people shopping on your website.
Having a higher search engine ranking will help you to get more sales. As your search engine ranking increases, your exposure to potential customers is going to increase as well. This is one of the most attractive benefits of digital marketing because it can lead to increased sales and increased traffic for your website.
Many companies offer SEO tips, tricks, and advice to improve your website’s organic and paid search performance. Consider hiring a consultant to help you with this process.
4. Boosts Lead Generation
Digital marketing generates leads for your business at an incredible rate. Your sales growth is likely to increase when you use digital marketing as a part of your strategies.
Building a solid list of targeted contacts is an essential part of any digital marketing strategy. Your list should be small but effective. And, if it’s a large list, there’s a wealth of customization available.
This means you can break this list up into targeted marketing campaigns. That way, you aren’t bombarding all your network at once with what they think is irrelevant information.
5. Improves Site Usability
Ease of use is essential for any business. And, with digital marketing, you can guide your customers around the site in a way that suits their personal needs. You’ll have a higher chance of attracting more customers when you make the sites easy to navigate and use.
Some tools even allow you to customize site usability on a granular level. You can serve different versions of the same website to different visitors based on their demographic customer profile.
6. Cheaper Alternative to Print Marketing
The great thing about digital marketing is that you don’t have any of the overheads of running a physical print campaign. Yet, cheap marketing solutions don’t always come with quality.
You need a company that will focus on quality over quantity. And there are various outlets you can use to help achieve this. For example, you may use a PPC or SEO company but then want to have them manage your social media channels as well.
Having a low budget may make it difficult to keep track of everything. Thus, make sure your digital marketing company can meet the needs that you present to them upfront in the process. Take time to explore the low costs of digital marketing, and consider if they could give your business the edge it needs to succeed.
7. Fosters Customer Loyalty and Retention
Your customers invest in your business. So you can create a digital community that gives them a voice. You can use this to listen to your customers’ feedback and ideas about your products and services, which can help you improve them in the long run.
When people are happy with your products/services, or they feel that they’re getting their money’s worth from what you offer, then they’re likely going to keep coming back. A good way to promote this loyalty is to give them discounts on your product or service based on their past purchases.
This can also be an effective means of generating repeat custom from your existing customers. If you know that they have had a good experience with your company, then giving them a discount is a great way to keep them coming back for more.
8. Promotes Higher Customer Lifetime Value
If you only look at the one-off purchases that your customers make from you, then you’re missing out on a lot of money. A loyal customer will spend more and buy more over the rest of their lifetime. It would help if you tried to encourage this behavior, and digital marketing is one way to help you do that.
Many techniques are available that aren’t as well suited to traditional marketing media. Automated target marketing software allows you to pinpoint the exact moment someone drops off your site. With this information, you can tailor a marketing solution based on their site interactions. Or, you can send emails if they’ve added something to their basket and left it there!
9. Builds Trust and Credibility
When people see that you are loyal and reliable, they’re likely to feel more confident in your products or services. Digital marketing can help foster this reliability by providing useful content, such as blog articles or videos.
Digital marketing also allows you to garner reviews and customer feedback. You can use a mixture of techniques, including lead generation, email marketing, and social media.
These techniques build up a list of reviews (5 stars we hope!) that showcase your customer sentiment. That way, they can trust you and become regular customers over time.
10. Enables You to Reach a Global Market
Traditional marketing is still a great way to reach a targeted market for your business. But digital marketing can help you reach a more global and diverse audience. Search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, and content marketing are all good strategies for spreading your message far and wide.
Take SEO as an example. If you want to reach a more global audience, your site must appear on the first page of relevant search results. Google takes SEO keywords that exist on your website and looks at their usage, and puts this in the context of other ranking sites.
Many countries use online services, so taking advantage of digital marketing means that you could reach new customers worldwide.
11. Increases Brand Awareness
You can boost your brand awareness with digital marketing, which is important for increasing sales and leads. Plus, it’s a great way to attract more people to your business! For example, you can try out social media marketing or content marketing to see how they can boost your brand awareness.
Social media is a top priority for many businesses these days. Having a solid social media presence can help you spread your brand and market to new audiences.
It’s unlikely that people will take the time to look up your company unless they know something about it. Official websites are a great way of getting people up-to-speed with your brand. Other forms of digital marketing can help promote your business.
12. Helps Target the Right Prospects
The internet is perfect for data gathering. And, digital marketing is the perfect method of channeling this collection of data analysis to allow more specific advertising. Gone are the days when you have to send dozens of researchers into the field to conduct market research.
By leveraging digital marketing campaigns to provide an aftercare service, you can encourage reviews and customer feedback. You can understand the exact demographic of your most popular and loyal customers in more detail than you can imagine.
13. Boosts Total Sales
With the rise of e-commerce, traditional marketing methods are no longer as effective as they once were. In some ways, this is because many companies now sell digital products in nature (e.g., downloadable ebooks, online courses) instead of physical items like DVDs or CDs.
Some don’t even sell them as physical products. Instead, they provide what’s called Software as a Service, allowing the user to subscribe to a business model that suits their needs. You should consider this when choosing a digital marketing strategy for your business.
13. Allows You to Measure Results
Traditional marketing often requires a lot of guessing on your part. You could be spending money on traditional advertising, and you won’t know for sure if it’s effective or not.
Digital marketing, on the flip side, gives you more insight into how your business is performing based on the digital marketing campaigns that you run. The data that you gather will allow you to make more informed decisions about future marketing efforts.
Reaching the right audience is one of the most important aspects of digital marketing strategies. By doing so, you can increase your chances of converting a new customer or lead.
Digital marketing allows you to reach more potential customers than ever before. Not only that, but it allows you to run many campaigns at the same time. This technique makes it easier for you to reach the target audience that is most receptive to your products or services.
14. Reduces Operational Expenses
To grow your business, it’s tempting to hire more employees. But, hiring extra workers can actually make you less profitable.
Digital marketing allows you to spend less on marketing expenses. Rather than requiring a large staff of employees, digital marketing allows you to draw upon the data and analytics that you gather to increase the efficiency of your campaigns over time. This makes your advertising more effective while saving a lot of money at the same time!
Automation, increased efficiency, and productivity are all ways digital marketing can save you money. Why hire someone to do in-the-field market research when technology can do all that for you!
15. Get to Know Your Customers Better
Knowing your customers goes beyond targeted marketing. It gives you tremendous insight into who is buying your products and why, not only from a commercial perspective but also from a social one.
And this data also allows you to predict future trend patterns. You might find that your business is surging in demand every season. Or, a recent surge in revenue may be down to a positive recommendation from an influencer.
All this information that’s obtained within the digital marketing process allows you to get to know your customers on a more personal level than ever before. For the right reasons, of course!
Use the Full Benefits of Digital Marketing
It’s easy to think about the increased revenue that comes with a high-quality digital marketing strategy. Still, too often, the cost-saving benefits of digital marketing go unnoticed. A good business model will focus on both sides of the profit margin, so it’s good to take note of.
So, what’s it going to be? Are you going to stick with the traditional marketing route, or are you going with digital marketing? If you’re still erring on the side of traditional and still wondering “How does digital marketing work?”, then put aside some of your budgets to try digital marketing and hire a professional to do the work for you!
If you want more information about different digital marketing benefits and how they can help you save money, please contact us today and see what we can do for you!