Digital Marketing – The present & future of Marketing
Contents
- What is Online Marketing?
- Digital Marketing strategies
- Digital marketing benefits for businesses
- Why digital marketing is a necessity
Online marketing, digital marketing, internet advertising … Whatever you call it, digital marketing is one of the most important functions of a business.
After all, internet usage has more than doubled in the last decade and this change has massively affected the way people buy products and interact with businesses.
Marketing has always been about connecting with the target-audience, in the right place and at the right time. Today, with digital marketing, this means that we can connect with the audience where they already spend most of their time: online.
What is Online Marketing?
Online marketing or digital marketing includes all the promotional activities used through an electronic device on the Internet. Businesses use digital channels, such as search engines (eg Google), social media (eg Facebook & Instagram), email and other websites to connect with current and potential customers.
Digital marketing is constantly changing. Day by day, a new marketing trend enters the market and what is considered effective today, tomorrow may be considered obsolete.
That is why marketing companies or digital agencies, which specialize in this form of marketing, have the right marketing tools and are constantly evolving, so they can serve their clients.
Digital Marketing strategies
The list of digital marketing strategies is constantly growing. Below we mention some of the basic ones.
PPC Marketing
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is actually a broad term that covers all types of digital marketing, where the advertiser pays for each user who clicks on an ad. For example, Google Ads is a form of PPC advertising.
Social Media Marketing
Social media promotions can be either organic or paid.
In the organic form, the online marketing plan concerns the use of social media, such as Facebook or Instagram. This takes a lot more time and effort, but in the long run, it can reward you.
In the paid form, most social networking platforms allow you to create and run ads in order to increase brand awareness to a wider audience.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is the oldest form of digital marketing and is still strong. Most businesses use email marketing to advertise special offers, highlight content, or promote an event.
SEO
SEO – search engine optimization is an organic digital marketing strategy, which allows the respective website to appear in the first places in the search results of a search engine (Google). Organic ranking of a website usually takes time and effort, but the results are impressive.
Digital marketing benefits for businesses
- Only users who are more likely to buy the product or service are targeted.
Digital marketing enables the necessary research to be conducted in order to determine the characteristics of the buyer. It allows the marketing strategy to be improved over time to ensure that the target audience will be converted into customers. Also, online marketing helps businesses promote in subgroups of the larger audience. - It is a more cost effective method than traditional marketing methods.
Digital marketing strategies make it possible to track campaigns on a daily basis and reduce the amount of money spent on a particular channel, if the return on investment is not proven to be high. - Digital marketing allows businesses to compete with bigger players in each industry.
A small business is very difficult to compete with big brands in the industry, which have millions of dollars to invest in TV commercials or national campaigns. Fortunately, through digital marketing there are many opportunities to overcome these obstacles. - Digital marketing actions give a complete view from the beginning to the end of all the metrics that may be relevant to a company – including impressions, notifications, views, clicks and page time.
This is one of the biggest benefits of digital marketing. While traditional advertising can be useful for specific purposes, its biggest limitation is measurability.
Why online marketing is a necessity
Some digital marketing statistics that prove its importance:
- The average user sees 5,000 ads per day. (G2, 2020)
- Over 75% of consumers showed new interest in online activities in 2020. Of these, 21% bought a product online for the first time. (Qualtrics, 2021)
- 80% of users prefer to buy from brands whose actions are in line with their values. (KPMG, 2020)
- The companies that excel in cultivating a lead with inbound marketing make 50% more sales. (Marketo, 2020)
- Mobile video advertising spending is about 72% of digital advertising spending in 2021. (G2, 2020)
In conclusion
Online Marketing is the future of business. There are many possible reasons for implementing a proper digital marketing plan that will take off the sales and brand awareness of your business.
Marketing companies and digital agencies, with specialized professionals who use all the necessary tools, can implement a marketing plan, with all the required strategies, always based on the needs of a specific business.
