Digital Marketing offers a great extension to traditional marketing for better targeting and improves reach to the audience. It introduces new online marketing channels. Also, customers leave a track of their digital data that enable storage, tracking, and monetising marketing campaigns through channel analytics. With enormous amounts of data coming from various digital channels, businesses can make informed decisions. Particularly in the current times of the pandemic crisis of COVID-19, digital marketing is being witnessed as the game-changer to keep the businesses alive and the economy stable.
Today organisations can be classified into two groups. One of the industries that are overwhelmed with orders, such as groceries, essentials, pharmacies, pet-supplies, etc. and the other that is losing business and lacking interactions, such as luxury, appliance, automotive, hospitality, travel and tourism etc. All the changes brought along with the Covid-19 pandemic might or might not stay. But what is crucial is to be prepared for whatever comes and the best bet is taking the business online, increase and improve digital touchpoints for consumers and depend lesser and lesser on the existing physical touchpoints.
Customer’s buying journey and touchpoints
Digital Marketing helps the brands to be present at customer touchpoints throughout the sales cycle. In the discovery and evaluation stage, the popular touchpoints usually are the search engines, social media feeds, and influencer pages. These lie outside the brand properties and bring in the most organic traffic to the brand’s properties.
The buying part of the sales cycle witnesses a different set of touchpoints that include e-mails, mobile wallets, and social media.
Digital Marketing Shapes Industry Leadership and Competition
Digital marketing improves the overall effectiveness and efficiency of a company’s marketing strategy and activities. The organisations that rapidly evolve and are flexible in adapting to the new realities of the economy have a huge advantage in becoming industry leaders. The other organisations who fail to do so usually follow their lead.
Digital marketing is essential for bringing in new customers, and more business, and strengthens customer loyalty with constant brand recall. Here are some ways that digital marketing helps transform businesses, and on a larger scale, a whole economy.
Business Size Doesn’t Matter
Digital Marketing helps level the playing field in a marketplace that is highly competitive. Online marketing rewards focused efforts more than the budgets assigned to campaigns. Certainly, large enterprises can put more funds and resources into digital marketing. But if executed intelligently, the small companies with fewer resources and funds could easily turn their business around with the help of digital marketing. In either scenario, those with a degree or certification in digital marketing can find jobs with either full-service digital marketing agencies catering to small or mid-size businesses, or even with larger companies. If you are new to digital marketing and wanted to start it from the scratch then enroll in this Digital Marketing Course offered by Great Learning.
Importance of Data
Data is the key to successful marketing. Collecting and analysing data from various sources could be used in multiple ways. Digital marketers possess the expertise to use data for multiple applications, especially the three mentione below:
Customer segmentation – With the help of data, marketers can sub-group their customers and audience based on demographics and behavioural patterns. This in turn leads to creating targeted marketing campaigns for different segments of the audience.
Analytics – Website analytics show the importance of certain web pages, and other aspects of user journey such as:
- how are people entering a site
- how are they exiting a site
- whether landing and conversion pages are working, etc.
Success rate – Data can provide answers to many business-critical questions and can suggest success rates of specific marketing initiatives after measuring the results against set goals and parameters for each specific campaign. Learn ai in digital marketing for free and get to know the importance of data.
Social Media
Social media sites are where many of today’s customers spend a great deal of time – some of it spent communicating about the products and services they buy. It presents a golden opportunity to start a conversation with customers and potential customers, rather than just speaking at them with a marketing campaign.
Creating a social media presence and using it to launch conversations with customers is now crucial to success. But it requires time, commitment and the expertise of digital marketers. The payoff is having satisfied customers online, evangelizing your product or service with their social media circle.
Reduced Cost
As compared to traditional marketing, the costs are reduced substantially when companies choose to depend heavily on digital marketing techniques. Advertising and promotional costs are slashed to a great extent. For example, areas such as content management and search engine optimisation do not require any spending and still bring in customers.
Reputation Management
Of course, the digital world can cut both ways. While there is almost unlimited potential in getting free advertising by “word of mouth” means online, one disparaging review on Google, Yelp or the many other review sites can hurt a business’ reputation. Smart digital marketers know to monitor this situation. Answering customers complaints – and acknowledging their praise – is a hallmark of sound online reputation management.
These are some of the areas where digital marketing is changing how businesses approach reaching consumers. As more increase, their spending on digital marketing, those with an MBA in the field will position themselves for some of the most challenging and rewarding careers that marketing has to offer.
If you wish to pursue a career in the domain of digital marketing and ensure a rewarding career in the domain, then become a certified digital marketer with a postgraduate certificate in digital marketing.
