The Benefits of Digital Marketing

It’s abundantly clear that digital marketing, social media, and technology is having a significant impact on every aspect of day-to-day life.  It affects how consumers behave and interact with every business they encounter and every product they are interested in. While traditional marketing is still beneficial, it is truly digital marketing that is the future – and the now – of the industry. There are a lot of benefits to digital marketing. Most people know of one benefit or another, but many people don’t know just how helpful it is. Here is a list of the benefits we feel are most relevant.

Level Playing Field

In traditional marketing, the little guy loses. Massive corporations have the funds and ability to buy TV spots, billboards, and radio time. They have the sheer reach to send flyers and mailers to every address in the book within a 50-mile radius of their business. Small companies just don’t have that ability. With digital marketing, though, the playing field is level. This is a huge benefit to digital marketing. Digital marketing methods generally have a much lower cost associated with them (we’ll discuss this a little more later on). The use of digital marketing eliminates the ability for large companies to drown out smaller businesses. When you’re on the same playing field, consumers have equal access to you. This gives them the chance to choose you, rather than opting for what appears to be the only available option.

Reduced Cost

Another huge benefit is the lower cost. Digital marketing strategies such as social media marketing are significantly more cost-effective than traditional strategies such as broadcast or direct mailers. According to seriouslysimplemarketing.com, a digital campaign on social media that reached 2,000 people costs, on average, around $75. In contrast, a broadcasting campaign to reach the same audience can cost around $150, and a direct mailer campaign can cost as much as $900.

A huge reason for this benefit to digital marketing is that on social media, generally, people have elected to see your information. They’ve subscribed to your mailing list, or followed you on Facebook, or done something else to initially indicate that they’re interested in seeing your information. In contrast, when your company chooses to send a direct mailer to every address within, say, a 30-mile radius of your store, you’re sending to people who haven’t told you they’re interested. You’re wasting money by contacting people who don’t need or care about what you have to offer, rather than targeting those who have told you they’re interested.

Real-Time Results, Customer Service, and Tracking

With digital marketing, you don’t have to wait weeks to find out if a new marketing strategy is working. You no longer have to wait for those coupons you mailed out to be cashed in, or for people to come in asking about your magazine ad. You can see real-time results with tracking software. A huge benefit to digital marketing strategies is that you can see the immediate spike in people visiting your website, or the immediate increase in email click-throughs, or the immediate increase in form submissions through a particular page.

The new immediacy of digital marketing can also do wonders for your customer service. With reputation management software in use, you can now see when someone leaves a review for your business online. If it’s bad, you now have the ability to address that person directly and deal with the issues they’ve raised. You can see an immediate drop in engagement when something isn’t working, and reach out to customers to find out what they didn’t like about it.

Greater Exposure

When you use traditional marketing methods, you’re limiting who you can actually reach. As an example, think about a radio advertisement. When you pay to play your ad on the radio, you typically only pay for it on one station. That immediately limits you to people who are within range of that radio station. Let’s say 1/10th of those people actually listen to your ad instead of changing the station, and 1/10th of those people actually remember it, and 1/10th of those people actually follow up on the ad. You’d have to reach 10,000 listeners to get 10 leads.

When you employ a digital strategy instead, you can reach across the entire country by placing ads on commonly visited sites. You can place your ads all over the internet for relatively cheap compared to what a traditional mailer would cost. Even if you only engage 1/1,000th of the people who have seen the ad, you’re reaching 20 or 50 or 100 times the number of potential customers!

Connects to Customers Better

Perhaps the most important benefit to digital marketing is the increased ability to connect with customers. Software is available to target your digital ads to a more specific customer. Your business can now ensure that the only people you’re spending money advertising to are those who will engage with your product. You can make use of systems like the DoBizLo co-op environment, which allows our clients to share customers without selling their data.

Your company can also better reach the mobile customer through digital marketing. Nowadays, the vast majority of people have some sort of smart device that can access the internet. It lives in their pocket, and they’re never too far away from it. People are far more likely to notice your ad if it’s on the little device they have all the time. Additionally, shopping and service booking has become progressively more digital in recent years. Now, people are more likely to find another provider than to hunt down a way to reach you. You have to make it easy to contact you, access your products or services, and purchase them.

These smartphones also give you access to the customer at all hours of the day, seven days a week. This greatly increases your likelihood of reaching them when they’re receptive to your advertising. Again, this saves you money by not advertising to people who just don’t care.

The Future is Digital

To make a long article short, a digital campaign is the way to go. The future is now, and it’s digital. There are so many benefits to digital marketing, from the price to the accessibility. As our world moves to more and more digital reliance, you simply cannot afford not to have a digital strategy. That’s why DoBizLo is around, actually. The services and reach that you as a business need are all available under the DoBizLo umbrella. Are you interested in learning more about us? Go ahead and click that button. We’ll set you up with an appointment to meet one of our savvy consultants!