As technology has become more integrated into our lives over the past decade, it has lead to the inevitable growth and significance of digital marketing. With integral facets of our lives getting deeply entwined with the Internet in sync with the digital age that is upon us, the importance of digital businesses remains incomparable.
Digital Marketing is used by many businesses for attracting targeted audiences on the Internet to their websites aimed towards generating more leads and sales through the targeted audiences that ultimately turn into website visitors. Most parts of our lives are now being dictated by the Internet along with our purchasing patterns and our chosen platforms to purchase.
Here are 15 of the most important reasons to understand why digital marketing is necessary in the modern era:
1. The Time is Now
It is the need of the hour and the future – Whether a business is online or offline, both business models are dependent on varying degrees on organic traffic (potential customers) to their websites which is integral for their sustenance and expansion. More internet users mean more potential customers for online businesses operating in various industries, and the digital market is the most immediate and effective way of reaching them.
No other form of marketing was arguably so powerful since the very advent of the advertising industry, as digital marketing is today. It is far more effective than other means of traditional marketing (paper and newspaper advertisements) in promoting products or services.
Hence, most businesses have digital marketing at the top of their agenda and invest substantial resources into it to boost their brand awareness, online reputations, and presence, the collective of which keeps them ahead of the competition. Unless of course, someone has been living under the rock for the last decade or so, it has dawned upon everyone else that the future is well and truly – DIGITAL.
2. Competition
It helps with survival in a hyper-competitive space – The discipline of Digital Marketing is replete with very effective tools, techniques, and channels that collectively can boost a website owner’s chances of surviving and succeeding in hyper-competitive online marketplaces.
It is even more imperative for brick-and-mortar businesses to maintain their online presence, many of which have seen the demand for their products fast diminishing, given the exponential expansion of e-commerce which has left many brick-and-mortar businesses across many sectors, fighting for survival. (Example – book stores around the world, following the rise of Amazon’s Kindle).
Conversion of traffic into leads, sales and subscribes is integral to the survival of an online business model and that is exactly what all techniques and strategies of digital marketing are designed for. Digital marketing strategies provided executed smartly and well, can deliver results for you as they have done for a lot of other online businesses, helping them not just to survive, but also to grow and expand their market share.
3. Level Playing Field
It levels the playing field – Digital marketing has proved to be very instrumental in leveling the playing field for all players competing in the space, regardless of the scale of their operations or the size of their marketing budgets.
That doesn’t mean that it is possible to mount a substantially competitive online marketing campaign without the infusion of any resources, but it rather implies that it’s possible to achieve quite a lot of your goals without having the need to allot huge resources for marketing objectives, which may be well beyond the spending capacities of small and medium scaled companies.
Digital marketing facilitates a lot of tools which can be used to build solid marketing strategies that have proven instrumental in helping even the smaller players attract a share of Internet traffic. The discipline of digital marketing is evolving every passing day, making it possible for smaller players to run and execute sales and marketing processes. .
4. Conversion Rate
It promises a higher conversion rate – Digital marketing provides many easy avenues to businesses to check their conversion rates. Online businesses can check in real-time the number of their viewers (quantified in percentage) which get converted into leads, subscribers, and sales.
Various types of effective digital marketing campaigns run by some of the leading digital marketing company in India like Search engine marketing, Social media marketing, and Email marketing, prove very effective in delivering upon a higher conversion rate. It is necessary to work with a solid digital marketing strategy because otherwise, all your attempts may eventually turn out to prove futile as can be observed from many websites which enjoy high organic traffic but still find it difficult to convert the visitors into leads and sales.
Digital marketing is the right approach to check this situation as it allows online businesses the ability to reach out to visitors who are more likely to be interested in your products or services than the others. This is ensured by using different forms of digital marketing which effortlessly facilitate effective communication channels with the visitors.
5. Return on Investment
It generates better ROI than traditional marketing – Digital marketing has delivered better Return on Investment (ROI) for many businesses, way better than the what the same businesses have got while using the services of traditional media.
It is common knowledge that the costs of accessing traditional media can sometimes get a little too extravagant for small and medium scale companies. Further, the results can sometimes be very away from being satisfactory and the worst part is that it remains very difficult to measure the resultant efficacy of traditional marketing campaigns. In stark contrast, it is effortless to track the resultant efficacy of digital marketing strategies in real-time.
A digital marketing strategy crafted by one of the many leading digital marketing company in India along the idea of generating a consistent flow of targeted traffic has higher chances of success by resulting in a higher number of leads, sales, and subscribers. There are packages available at different price points in the market, which promises a little something for everyone, giving online businesses a plethora of options to choose the package best suited to your interests and craft their strategies accordingly.
6. Brand Reputation
It helps in building a brand reputation – Since enticing targeted audiences are at the heart of most digital marketing techniques, tools and strategies, there’s every chance of building brand reputation constructively if and when these strategies are executed efficiently.
Targeted audiences likely already have a fair idea about what your brand stands for (ethos, principles, goals, culture) and what it offers (products and services). Pursuing them is a smart strategy since they would naturally be more inclined to purchasing your products or paying for your subscriptions/services than other sections of random website visitors.
Coming good on your principles and delivering great products and services followed by after-sale customer service, will inculcate a fair bit of loyalty in your customers and may further generate repeat business out of them. All this will substantially aid you in your goals of building a reputable brand through word-of-mouth.
7. Connects with Mobile Customers
It gets businesses connected to mobile customers – Mobile phones and tablets are increasingly becoming the most popular way for most people to access the internet, simply because it promises the Internet can be accessed from any location.
Since the Internet and all that the internet offers is ready to use ‘on-the-go’, people are more inclined to use smart-phones over any other device to access the Internet. Smart-phones replete with cutting-edge technology hitting the shelves every passing day at beaten-down prices is further driving this attitudinal and preferential change among users of all kinds. Digital marketing allows businesses to reach internet users while they use the internet on the go through marketing ads on various social media platforms.
8. Interactive
It is very interactive – Digital marketing is very interactive and allows businesses the ability to communicate directly with their visitors. Especially in social media marketing, which is quite a prominent part of digital marketing as we know it, direct communication with customers can be facilitated on various social media platforms through direct messages/in-boxes, website comments, reviews, and tweets/posts.
Direct communication is the best way possible to build an interactive community of your visitors whose collective preferences, attitudes, and reactions can be observed, studied and eventually used for bettering your marketing strategies in the long-run.
9. Attracts Targeted Traffic
It helps in attracting targeted traffic to websites and businesses – Digital marketing brings forth a lot of ways which can help you in attracting targeted traffic to your websites and businesses.
A decent SEO strategy combined with smart market research is often good enough to craft high-ranking content which can rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). Digital marketers around the world use specifically curated keywords geared towards a certain audience, which helps in driving highly targeted traffic.
10. Increasing Revenue
It helps in increasing revenues – It has been mentioned already as to how effective and instrumental digital marketing strategies can be substantially increasing the conversion rate of a particular business and the same effect results in increasing revenues for the said business.
There have been some reports confirmed by Google which concluded that companies using digital marketing are likely to expect near 3 times more revenue growth, as opposed to the companies who still don’t use digital marketing.
11. Engage with Influencers
It provides an avenue to engage influencers – When it comes to two of the most popular and extensively used social media platforms of our times, Facebook followed by Twitter out-rival all their peers.
Many of the most influential figures in various walks from life are active on various social media platforms today and digital marketing brings forth opportunities for businesses to engage them. If you have done subtly and smartly, chances of success are always around and that can work well for businesses in increasing their followers along with their conversion rates and further spreading brand awareness.
12. Increases Brand Trustworthiness
It helps increases the brand’s trustworthiness – The most important and integral parts of our lives are coming ‘online’ and it extends to most businesses. Not just online business but also offline businesses, who have their online presence in almost across multiple social media platforms.
It goes a long way in increasing brand awareness, even if the company is a very well-established and widely recognizable business. For up-and-coming businesses, favorable reviews left by customers go a long in way in building a brand’s trustworthiness as word-of-mouth remains a very crucial driving force in digital marketing. Most businesses have become effortlessly easier for businesses to reach out to through their various social media pages for inquires and issue resolutions.
13. Tracking
It helps businesses track the activities of their customers – Digital marketing campaigns gives businesses a lot of ways into checking the attitudes and preferences of their customers.
This can be done through studying and observing the advertisements they engaged with, shortly before making a purchase. Usually some advertisements and content are more compelling than the others and by studying which ones are doing better and why exactly are they doing better, it gets easier to narrow down on what methods to use to market and how to market.
14. Affordable
It is very affordable – Already having been credited with having leveled the playing field for all players in the hyper-competitive online space, digital marketing is considerably and substantially more affordable than other marketing methods. It also remains easier to track and monitor than other methods which also promises comparatively much better Return on Investments (ROI).
15. Increased Call to Action
It induces people into taking action – The discipline of digital marketing is replete of various strategies which when used effectively can allure people in taking actions requisite for converting visitors into purchasers.
There are a lot of clever and smart ways to psychologically allure visitors into making them do, what you intend for them to do, by making the use of various Calls-To-Action like asking from to sign up, to like, to download or to simply buy. Usually, all pointers into alluring people to react positively to a Call-To-Action are designed to be very aesthetically pleasing and gratifying for better effect.
Conclusion
The world of online shopping, also known as E-commerce has exploded exponentially in the past decade or so to become a multi-billion dollar behemoth, with one of the most popular e-commerce companies in the world (Amazon) also turning out to be also one of the richest.
As of July 2019, there were over 4.33 billion active internet users in the world which is more than half (56%) of the entire world population. The number of active internet users is expected to grow even further as the most basic means of getting digitized and accessing the internet universally (internet/data plans and the devices) keep getting cheaper world-over.
Today, a world without the internet is well and truly unimaginable and Digital marketing a crucial role in being the driving force behind the Internet that we know, experience it and use it.
About the Author
Neeraj Dabas – I am a Professional Blogger and Content writer. I am working with Ethane Web Technologies. In my professional life have written many useful articles about WordPress, social media, SEO and almost all about Digital Marketing.
