Why Do I Need Digital Marketing? Part 1

When running a business it is important to save costs by avoiding spending money where it doesn’t need to be spent. Marketing has a history of being seen as a business function that is less important than other key functions such as Sales, Management and Finance. But with the rapid growth in many of the world’s largest businesses being down to successful marketing in its many forms, marketing is now widely recognised as an integral driver of business growth and profitability. While you as a manager or business owner may question if your business can afford digital marketing, the real question you should be asking is if your business can afford NOT to invest in digital marketing? In this blog, we will discuss exactly why your business needs digital marketing and why modern technology makes it one of the most effective, monitorable and cost-effective methods of growing your business (any business).

Helps your business to survive and thrive

If you have a website with millions of users but you fail to make a single conversion or monetise your visitors in any way then your business will suffer. With various digital marketing methods,  you can convert your website visitors to paying customers, enquiries, calls and other key conversion metrics that will drive your businesses growth and profitability.

Improve brand awareness

Maybe you have an amazing brand, a stunning product, or provide the best service in your town, but if only a handful of people know about you then you are not making the most of all of your hard work. Digital marketing techniques can help you capitalise on what you do best and what you offer by helping you to be seen. If I asked you to help me find where I can buy a Babolat Pure Drive VS tennis racket I’m sure your first action would be to turn to Google and the internet? With Google receiving over 63,000 searches per SECOND you are not alone in turning to Google for answers to your daily questions. And with so much traffic to Google, there is a wealth of opportunity for businesses to take advantage of. If you were selling a Babolat Pure Drive VS tennis racket wouldn’t it be nice to come up when I make this search on Google?

Or how about if your business sells bed linen, think of all the traffic and brand awareness you could get if your website was amongst the first a user would see when searching for bed linen. We can even use digital marketing to target your competitors’ traffic, imagine if you could have your ads show on Google when someone searches for your competitors. If you’ve read this far then I’ll remind you at this stage to pinch yourself, you’re not dreaming and this is not fantasy, this is all real and possible with digital marketing.

More targeted

Do you want to capture the people looking for your products just as they are about to make their purchase? If you are selling sports gear you could hire a billboard for 2 months with your business details in a fancy text to let the world know why you’re different and why your equipment is the best. Alternatively, you could send leaflets door-to-door with your business and who you are and what makes you unique to as many people as possible, or maybe take an ad out in the local newspapers? The problem with these and other traditional marketing methods is the lack of targetting. Out of the hundreds of people who drive by your billboard how many will be looking for trainers actively? In comparison with digital marketing, you can target users based on specific search terms that are related to your product. Someone searching online for “running shoes” is the person you want to target as they are more likely to make a purchase, not the masses of people returning home from work and glancing at your pretty and expensive billboard. With audience targetting you can spend your marketing budget on those who will actually make a purchase.

Advanced analytics 

You have just put out a TV ad on national TV. After spending a small fortune on the whole production you sit back, relax and enjoy knowing that the sales will be rolling in.. but how many of your sales are now coming from that TV ad? Which of your customers are buying your products based on the ad and which are buying because they were referred by a friend or saw you on Instagram? It is extremely difficult to track traditional methods of marketing. With digital marketing, you can use advanced analytics tools to see who visited your site, where they came from, what were they searching for, what did they buy. All of this information is data that can be used for further marketing and targetting, making digital marketing an endless loop of gathering information, sales, more data and more sales, constantly streamlining your business and helping you to find out the most valuable pieces of information that will help your business to thrive.

Working as a digital marketer I am in the fortunate position of having front row seats to see just how influential good digital marketing practices can be for a business. I have seen exponential growth in clients’ sales, website traffic, profitability and other KPIs that safely allow me to say that long gone are the days where marketing would be seen as a luxury business function that a business could operate without, instead, marketing and digital marketing particularly, are now very much essential to any business’s survival and long-term success. At WDL we offer a host of digital marketing services if you would like to discuss more digital marketing and how it can help your business in particular then feel free to get in touch with us today. If you enjoyed this blog then keep an eye out for the next part where I will discuss even more benefits of digital marketing.