Digital marketing, internet marketing, online advertising… call it whatever you want, promoting your business online is a huge deal. The number of people online has doubled over the last decade, and it has profoundly affected how people buy products or services. What is digital marketing then?
Well, it is very similar to other types of marketing - it helps you to connect with people and bring potential customers into your business. However, the difference is that the process of promotion and connection is done online.
Why Is It a Must?
Digital marketing can mean online marketing assets or efforts. It includes social media marketing, pay-per-click advertising, email marketing, blogging, and so on. Those are excellent examples as they do a great job at helping you to connect with consumers and convert them into your customers. There are countless ways you can market your products or services through digital marketing.
If you are asking yourself why you should be bothered to create a marketing plan, I can give you dozens of reasons why. First of all, as mentioned above, a lot of people are getting online and using the internet for hours on a daily basis. Just think about it, more than half of the world’s population is online and this type of marketing offers you a way to connect with your potential customers. This creates a chance for you to increase productivity and attract more customers over time.
Target Audience
Second, you can reach target consumers according to their age, gender, interests, hobbies, etc. Targeting the audience is one of the best characteristics of this type of marketing because it is super effective. You can advertise your product or company for people who have more chance of being your customer and buying your product. Targeting the audience can help you save money, reduce waste on marketing your business, and most importantly achieve a better return on investment or ROI. Every business owner carefully considers ROI before investing in marketing. Digital marketing has proven to get businesses a better ROI than any other form of marketing. It will be used more in the future so it is important to start now.
How Does it Work?
In a lot of ways, it is not much different from traditional marketing. Smart businesses are trying to build mutually beneficial relationships with leads, prospects, and customers. However, most traditional tactics were replaced because digital marketing tactics are specifically designed to reach today’s people.
Just think about the last item you bought. Probably you purchased a nice pair of sneakers, a phone, or hired someone to fix your air conditioner. Whatever you bought, the chances are you started to search the internet to know your available options, who provided them, and what was the best solution. A lot of buying decisions begin on the internet. Therefore, an online presence is unquestionably vital regardless of what kind of product or service you offer.
Difference Between Digital and Traditional Types
As explained above, both of these marketing types help you to connect with people, create beneficial relationships with them and sell your products. However, there are critical differences between those two.
What is traditional marketing? Traditional marketing is the promotion of a product or service through ads on journals or newspapers, commercials on TV or radio, business cards, posters, brochures, and billboards. Traditional marketing has been used for a long time now, but it has a lot of disadvantages when we try to compare them.
Traditional marketing cannot target a specific audience; it markets your business only to the general audience. It is usually limited to local consumers whereas you can promote your business wherever on Earth you like using the digital one. Also, traditional marketing offers a one-way interaction only meaning consumers cannot interact with you. You are just throwing information at them and hope that they decide to buy your product. It is hard to measure how many people you could reach and is traditional marketing is also costly compared to a digital one.
Building a Brand Reputation
The key to creating a fantastic brand reputation is to keep your customers happy and satisfied. Providing a great customer experience is about attention to details. It mainly involves the delivery of your services and products. You should always keep in touch with your customers, making sure that they can reach you whenever they wish. Greeting your customers with an honest smile and a warm heart will always keep them doing business with you.
You should answer negative feedbacks instantly. This way you will be able to solve customer’s problem and will show him and others how you care about the customer experience. You will gain customers’ trust so they can keep doing business with you without a hesitation or a second thought.
Practicing transparency is also a great way to build a brand reputation. If you lie to the people, it will eventually be known to everybody because there are journalists and spreading information online is easier than ever. Therefore, you should show people how trustworthy, ethical and transparent your company is making your customers feel better about the business you are doing.
Online Advertising with an Affordable Way
The cheapest way of advertising is through social media websites such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. You can start advertising your product or service on Facebook for as much as $1. The same goes for other social media websites. There are a lot of people using social media scrolling down posts. Putting your ad among other posts for as much as a dollar sounds like a great investment.
Pay Per Click Ads is also a fantastic option because you will be paying only when a user clicks on your ad. The most common pay per click provider is Google AdWords. Your ad might be put alongside search results or on other sites in Google’s network.
How to Get Organic Search Results?
To get great organic search results, you need to focus a lot on your website. Building a site and optimizing it for search engines such as Google takes a considerable amount of time.
You probably noticed that when you search for something on Google it usually gives you two types of results - organic and paid search results. Paid search results are the type of results that were paid for. They often appear on top of the results. Then the organic search results follow those. Organic search results are not paid to appear on the first page of Google. Google bots picked them according to specific algorithms. Google takes into account your content, keywords, backlinks, relevancy and other factors to determine if you qualify for the first page.
Loading times of your website are essential because if your webpage does not load fast, people will click the back button and won’t bother to wait. Also, you should optimize your website for mobile phones and other devices. It is advised to use Responsive Web Design to ensure that your webpages will be comfortable to interact with different types of devices. Responsive web design will help your webpage flow and adapt according to the width of a browser or device.
Digital marketing, internet marketing, online advertising... call it whatever you want, promoting your business online is a huge deal. The number of people online has doubled over the last decade, and it has profoundly affected how people buy products or services. What is digital marketing then?
Well, it is very similar to other types of marketing - it helps you to connect with people and bring potential customers into your business. However, the difference is that the process of promotion and connection is done online.
Digital marketing is the best type of marketing in the 21st century and deserves a lot of attention. It does not matter if you sell online or at your physical store, having an online presence will always be beneficial to your business and your interaction with your customers.
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