Over time, businesses have changed the way they do their marketing. In the past, banners and flyers were everywhere, with most people finding your business from a poster. Newspaper ads were also your best shot at drawing clients your way.
Today, we live in the digital era. Rather than looking for information in a newspaper, people are searching for keywords online. This made way for the digital marketing wave, which became a norm for every business. If you haven’t embraced the way of digital marketing, here is why it’s important to do it now.
1. All Your Customers Are Online
Around 63.1% of the global population has access to the Internet. This means that almost 5 billion of your potential customers are found online. These people are more likely to find your service through a Google search or a social media ad than through traditional methods.
Even if you still employ traditional marketing, you should also consider a good digital marketing campaign. Your business needs all of the exposure that it can get. Moreover, once people find out about your business, they’ll want to learn as much about you as possible.
If they do a quick Google search on you and barely find anything, there’s nothing to convince them that you exist. If they can’t find you, they won’t trust you enough to call, which means you may lose a potential customer.
2. It Is Cost-Effective
Businesses can be hard to keep afloat, especially if you have many expenses to cover. If you want to gain as much profit as possible, you need to reduce expenses.
If you have limited financial resources, even printing flyers can put a big strain on your budget. However, with digital marketing, the costs are reduced. While some marketing strategies require a certain initial investment, they will still cost less compared to traditional marketing.
3. Increased ROI
By moving your marketing online, you may also see an improvement in your ROI. As most of your clients are online, they will more likely turn from visitors into buying customers. An average of 59% of customers prefer buying online, so moving your business (including marketing) to this medium can increase your chances of getting sales.
Thanks to today’s technology, you can easily find out who your ideal customer is and where you can find them. This will help you come up with a strategy that will turn them into leads.
4. Better Customer Relationships
As a business owner, you need to build a good relationship with your customers. With traditional marketing, this can be very difficult to do. Responding to banners is not something that a client can do, and no one really calls companies for information anymore. They much rather prefer social media.
This is why digital marketing is important. For example, if you have a social media account, you can make posts where clients can interact with you. Whether they do so through comments or direct messages, digital marketing brings your clients closer and makes them more likely to purchase from you.
5. Your Competition Is There
If nothing else convinces you that digital marketing is the way to go, here is one good reason: your competition is already doing it. Almost every business that wants to succeed will have a website, regardless of the services that they offer. They are creating an online presence and are bringing more and more people to their businesses.
By not focusing on digital marketing, you are giving your competition every opportunity to stay ahead of you. When someone looks up what you offer and cannot find you, they will go for the next best thing: your competitors.
Plus, since your competition is there, you may easily keep an eye on them. You can see what they are doing, and you can create a better marketing strategy for yourself. Using your digital marketing strategy, you can even draw customers away from your competition and towards your website.
6. It Reaches Mobile Users
Nowadays, almost everyone uses a cell phone to some extent. Whether they scroll on social media, look for information or simply check their email as they commute, they will do so on their phone or tablet. By employing digital marketing, you can reach these people that are constantly on their mobile devices.
The Bottom Line
At this point, digital marketing is not something you can go without. Your competition is there, your customers are there – and if you want to succeed, you need to be there as well.
