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5 Reasons to Start with Digital Marketing
Let’s start by defining digital marketing. Digital marketing is marketing using digital tools, such as paid advertising, social media, video, email marketing and blogging. Conversely, traditional marketing includes avenues such as tradeshows, print ads, radio, tv and direct mail. Digital marketing is cost efficient and also easily allows you to measure, monitor, analyze and test your efforts. Here are a few reasons why you need to think digital before allocating your budget to traditional marketing.
Cost efficient
Digital marketing through social media, paid search (e.g., Google), and digital publications is the most cost-efficient way of advertising as you always pay per view or click. You have the power to decide how much you want to spend and what a lead is worth to your business. If your digital marketing campaign is doing well and you are seeing results, you can spend more money or extend the life of your campaign. It’s quick and easy. You just need to monitor and allocate resources to your campaigns.
Interact with your clients
Unlike TV, print or radio advertising, you can instantly interact with your clients and build relationships through digital marketing. For example, one can ask his/her audience to leave you a comment at the end of your blog or ask them to rate your services or products right on your website. There are other ways of interacting with your clients like creating a community of followers and customers through social media pages such as Facebook and LinkedIn. You can communicate live with you customers and answer questions right from your website. This is the era where interacting and building relationships while receiving feedback has become possible through digital marketing. Take advantage of it!
Advertising on multiple platforms
The key to digital marketing is being present in multiple platforms. B2B researchers do 12 searches on average prior to engaging on a specific brand's site.[1] Be sure to allocate funds to digital magazine or paid search while also being active on social media platforms (e.g., LinkedIn and Facebook). Do your research and learn where your clients are, what they are reading and how they can be reached. Check out some of your industry publications and local digital newspapers and blogs, and find out what their advertising opportunities are. Make sure you follow your clients where ever they are.
Analyze the data
One of the best aspects of digital advertising is that the data and associated analytics are available in real-time. Analytics are the key to monitoring your campaign and understanding your clients and their needs. You will need to experiment with your campaigns and learn how your clients react to your messaging, when they click on your ads and if the end results you are expecting is achieved.
Competing with the big guys
Traditional marketing is expensive and most of the time SMEs can’t compete with multimillion dollar marketing budgets. They can’t afford to purchase big print advertisements or buy time on tv and radio. With digital marketing, you gain an advantage with a more targeted approach by zeroing in on your target audience through mobile targeting or social media. You no longer need the customer to pick up a magazine to see your ad, or have them turn on their tv or radio. You can place your ad to where they are already looking and have your message show up on their mobile devices. In fact, Facebook continues to have the most engaged users -- 70% log on daily, including 43% who do so several times a day[2].
Digital marketing provides the best mix of efficiency and effectiveness for your business. Digital marketing works because there are many tools available to measure your efforts and you can adjust your campaign and interact with your customer like never before. So don’t wait, and start with your strategy of where you need to be and how much you will need to spend. Or give us a call and we would be happy to set up the right path for you and provide you with the highest return on your investment.
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