Why Businesses Must Embrace Digital Marketing
Overview
As businesses large and small continue to migrate to a remote work environment, the ability to connect and engage with their customers becomes even more critical. This blog will explain why digital marketing is the perfect vehicle to use to increase the power and reach of your business marketing.
Please note that this blog does not address digital marketing strategies and tactics, as there are many other blogs on those topics.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is a term that has been used more frequently over the last few years. But what does it really mean?
If you perform an online search for the term, you’ll likely find numerous articles, definitions and blogs on the topic, often with conflicting points of view. However, in reality, the definition of digital marketing is actually very simple.
“Digital marketing is leveraging the power of the Internet for your marketing efforts, so that you can provide information to and engage with your customers. In other words, digital marketing is any form of marketing that you’re doing online.”
That’s it.
Now of course, how you go about doing your online marketing and using the Internet to connect with your customers is where it gets much more interesting.
Why Digital Marketing and Why Now?
Due to the global pandemic, the world has changed. Along with that change, how businesses connect and engage with their customers has changed. As a result, regardless of the size of your business, how you interact with your customers on a daily basis has likely changed as well. This is where the power of digital marketing can make a significant difference for your business.
Why?
Because digital marketing allows your business to reach your customers in ways that traditional marketing does not. It provides your business with additional channels through which to drive awareness, provide information about your products and services, and interact with your customers.
Advantages of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing provides your business with many advantages over traditional marketing:
- It provides your business with new ways to engage with your customers that are not dependent on your physical presence or availability
- It allows your business to interact and engage with your customers on a real-time basis, regardless of geographic location
- It allows your business to have a 24/7/365 online presence that works for you even when your office is closed
- It allows your customers to find information about your products and services at a time and place of their choosing
- It puts your customers in control of how, where and when they interact with your business
- It lets your customers choose the type and format of content they consume
What is important to remember is that digital marketing does not replace your traditional marketing efforts, it actually supplements them. Working in tandem with your traditional marketing, digital marketing actually expands the channels your business uses to engage and interact with your customers.
This expansion of marketing channels not only gives your customers more control than they have ever had in the past over the type of content they choose to consume, but also puts them in full control of how, when and where they consume it. This is no longer outbound marketing (aka “push marketing”) where the business controls the engagement with customers. Instead, this is now inbound marketing, where the customer has full control.
In other words, digital marketing expands your reach, increases your presence, and provides your customers with the ultimate in flexibility.
Additional Benefits of Digital Marketing
In addition to the obvious advantages that digital marketing provides for your business, there are also several intangible benefits:
- Depending on the type of digital marketing you use, there may be very low, or even no, barriers to entry
- Digital marketing is often much more cost effective than traditional marketing
- Digital marketing often scales quicker and easier than traditional marketing
- Digital marketing allows you to try new and different strategies and approaches on a more limited budget than with traditional marketing
- Digital marketing has a variety of tools that make it easier to track and immediately measure the impact and ROI of your marketing
As you can see, digital marketing provides your business with greater flexibility in how, when and where you’re able to connect and interact with your customers. It also provides your business with more tools to accurately track, measure, analyze and report on the results of your marketing.
Summary
In summary, there are really only four primary reasons your business needs to understand to embrace digital marketing:
- Availability – Always on, always there. While your business hours may be M-F 8-5, your digital presence is available to your customers 24/7/365
- Flexibility – Your customers can engage with your business when and where they want to, on their schedule, not yours and in the format they prefer
- Portability – Your customers can connect with your business from a desktop, laptop, tablet or phone
- Accountability – Your business can quickly and easily track how effective your marketing efforts are
So with all these advantages and benefits, why wouldn’t your business want to embrace digital marketing?
© 2020 – Richard Hatheway / Catalyst Strategic Marketing
