People often ask what are the benefits of Digital Marketing. So, there are several benefits of Digital Marketing over traditional marketing. In this post, we are going to discuss those benefits.
Real-Time Results Tracking
The first of the benefits of Digital Marketing is real-time results tracking. Digital marketing allows marketers to see accurate results in real-time.
For instance, if you put an advertisement in a newspaper or a magazine, you can’t get data off an accurate number of people who saw your ad and how much of your sale happen through that ad.
But, in digital marketing, you can accurately track the clicks, impressions, CTR, conversions, and ROI of your ad campaign.
Specific Audience Targeting
The second of the benefits of digital marketing is a specific audience targeting.
Unlike traditional marketing, a specific audience based on geography, gender, age, interest groups can be targeted in Digital Marketing which gives better ROI.
Cost Effective
Third of the benefits of Digital Marketing is its cost-effectiveness. You don’t need big marketing budgets for Digital Advertising like the newspaper, TV, Radio, or Magazine Ads.
You can start with a small budget and put in more money for more conversion later on.
Personalized Approach
Fourth of the benefits of Digital Marketing is personalization. Digital Marketing enables marketers to personalize emails, ads, content, etc.
Personalised communication is more likely to get a higher conversion rate than traditional advertising.
Personalization was practically impossible in traditional marketing, except sending personalized letters from the companies.
Higher Engagement
The fifth of the benefits of digital marketing is higher engagement. In Digital Marketing and Social Media to its aid, the customers are highly engaged with the brands than ever before.
They can practically interact with real people from the brands, write their feedback on social media about the brand, and get instant responses to the issues they face with products or services.
Brand Building
Sixth of the benefits of digital marketing is brand building. Branding and growing loyal customer base are comparatively easier in Digital Marketing than traditional marketing.
In Digital Marketing, the company knows a lot about the customer like their demography, geographical location, email address, phone number, shipping address, etc., and hence offer them event-based, season-based, interest-based discounts, offers, etc., which makes the customer repeatedly purchase from the same place and same website over and over again.
Remarketing
Seventh of the benefits of Digital Marketing is Remarketing. Unlike the traditional marketing where it was not possible to accurately track who visited their store, or saw their ads, in Digital Marketing, the company knows who visited their website, or subscribed for their newsletter, signed up for an offer, bought a product, and those users can be targeted back through email campaigns, display ads on the Google network, Facebook or Instagram.
Data Accuracy
Eighth of the benefits of Digital Marketing is the Accuracy of Data. Digital marketing offers digital marketers to play with accurate data to analyze, plan, and act.
Whereas in traditional marketing data was mostly based on a sample survey or a rough estimate.
How to Succeed in Digital Marketing?
The rule for success in Digital Marketing is to create meaningful, informative, and engaging content. Your content should also satisfy the search intent of the user.
Hence, the content should be created keeping in mind the buyer’s persona.
The content should resonate with their needs at the different stages of their purchase journey.
For instance, for the people who are at a lead stage, the content should motivate them to move to the next stage of the buying journey.
A discount on shopping within a specific period can be a part of the content as a call to action. For instance, Free Gift offer, cashback offers, etc., which motivates the lead to move further in his buying journey.
A customer purchase cycle broadly consists of six stages i.e., awareness, interest, consideration, purchase, post-purchase, re-purchase.
But we will discuss only the first four stages which complete a purchase cycle of the customer.
Also, we will see how content will play a significant role in moving the user from one stage to another stage systematically:
Awareness
The buyer becomes aware of the problem or pain point he might have. Here the company identifies the pain point of the customer and creates industry-focused content.
This content can be a blog post, a short video, infographic, which talks about the solution to the customer problem and is spread through social media, advertising, sponsorship, PR, etc.
Where the customer gets aware that this company or its products/service can help him with his problem or the pain point.
If you create shareable content for the awareness stage customers, you will have more than expected impressions for your content, which means way more awareness than you plan.
Videos and pictures are shared a lot on every social media channel, hence creating a great video or infographic image could help you create more awareness.
Interest
In this stage a visitor tries to find a solution, begins to discover trends, products, brands, etc. Here, the content should focus on solutions, educate, help prospects evaluate buying criteria. White papers, eBooks, webinars, events, analyst reports, videos, reviews, checklists, etc., could be of great help.
Consideration
In this stage, your buyer evaluates specific products and services, becomes willing to engage with sellers. So, the content in this stage should show what it’s like to work with you. Demos, datasheets, trials, pricing, case studies, references, vendor comparisons, implementation data are of great help. It inspires the buyer to make a decision.
Purchase
In this stage, the buyer commits to a specific solution; justifies reasons for purchase. Here, your content should validate their decision; make the buying process easy.
Case studies and testimonials are of great help in this stage. Here the buyer needs assurance of the purchase decision, that he is buying the right product.
Also, if required in this stage begin the implementation/service phase. Live training, recorded webinars, user guides, kick-off events, etc., are of great help for this stage’s customers.
After that, the Post-purchase and re-purchase stages come in the buyer’s purchase journey.
These should not be overlooked, as the customers expect good product performance and great customer service.
If they are served well, they might do advocacy for your brand. Focus on continuous learning, customer communities, loyalty/advocacy programs, feedbacks, etc. to keep your customers engaged.
Every product has a certain life, the buyer might want to buy a new product or may become interested in expanding the use of goods and services.
So, stay in touch, look for opportunities to upgrade, expand product use, or add new products. Newsletters, phone calls, emails are a good way to keep engaging with the customer.
How Long Does it Take to Get Results from Digital Marketing?
As we explained earlier, in Digital Marketing you can see and track the results in real-time. These results are way faster than the traditional marketing where you have to wait for months, and sometimes years to measure your ROI. In Digital Marketing, if you make your buyer persona map correct, you can see the results in days and weeks, however, it ultimately depends on the scale and effectiveness of your content and the digital marketing strategy.
You’re likely to see strong results within the first six months of your Digital Marketing campaign if you are not going for paid advertising. But, if paid advertising is part of your digital marketing strategy, then the results can be seen quickly. You might get conversion in the first few minutes of your paid campaign launch.
But I recommend everyone to focus on building your organic reach using content, putting in the right SEO strategy, Social Media management for the long-term sustainable success of your brand.
What Kind of Budget is Required for Digital Marketing?
Though Digital Marketing is much cheaper, specific, and effective than traditional marketing. But, if you want to get faster results you need to pay for the ads, etc. And that completely depends on the industry you’re working in and what your competition is spending to get the results.
But, if your focus on techniques like content marketing, SEO, Social Media Marketing, and Digital PR, you would only need the right strategy, strong and meaningful content, and your time. You may get results without even spending any money.
Summary
There are a lot of businesses that have done their Digital Marketing and have established themselves in the industry even without spending any money on advertisement. They got their success with the right Digital Marketing Strategy.
Word of Mouth Marketing has always been the best form of marketing. It not only gives a business new customers but also helps them build their brands. It will also help retain old customers at the same time. And the best part is Word of Mouth marketing is FREE.
All you have to do is delight your customer, and they will become your brand advocates to spread the brand’s reach in their community.
If you need help with digital marketing or branding to feel free to get in touch with us, and we would help you in every possible way.
