Change is the only constant thing in the world.
This is some sort of a cliche but it is how everything works. So as in business.
Decades ago, the future of brick and mortar stores seemed bright and promising. Local businesses thriving with only a few competitors out there to compete with and you can turn a hefty profit with hard work and dedication. Today, your blood, sweat, and tears aren’t enough to cut it. Although these are some fundamentals when starting your business, these efforts aren’t enough to keep your business afloat.
Let’s go back to the topic of change. Years ago, nothing seemed to threaten local businesses (well, let’s step aside economic stability). You build your brand or company where you your market is, use some traditional marketing tactics if you have a budget such as TV commercials, newspaper and magazine ads, radio, and other advertising efforts and you can secure a good range of potential customers.
Now as the world progresses specifically on the aspect of how technology makes it possible to make everything convenient for people, the behavior of consumers has also shifted towards doing things that make their life easier.
Out with Old In with the New
One of the main premise as to why businesses should exist in the first place is making life less difficult for consumers. This is why businesses must strive for innovation and greatness in order to stay afloat and competitive in today’s business world.
And speaking of the present business world, going digital is one main factor that keeps businesses thriving in this competitive market. In today’s business world, any smart business owners would realize the importance of online presence in an ever-changing market. This serves true for all businesses across every industry.
Businesses, regardless of how small or big they are, now recognize that without digital marketing, their brand will get lost in the sea of competitors in the market that people won’t even know that their business ever existed. Some small businesses may still succeed using traditional marketing efforts but if you’re trying to capture younger audiences through TV commercials and even newspaper or magazine, it’s unlikely that you’ll succeed in getting them to know your brand through those channels. The generation today are spending more time on their computers and mobile phones than any other generations combined.
Not only the millennials but the majority of the people now rely on the Internet for almost anything from sharing information, file sharing, for entertainment, socializing, availing products and services, and more.
As an entrepreneur what does this say to you?
You need to adapt.
Digital marketing is the future of marketing, therefore, you need to get familiar with its concepts if you want your business to survive.
With all the opportunities that the Internet has been presenting, business owners must be quick enough to catch on to the trends that the online market has and be opportunistic enough to adapt to whatever changes there will be, for the basic reason that nothing is permanent.
Your business strategy may be working for a good few years now and may have already established your business through it, but how about in the future? The business world has already been changing steadfast that many businesses have already failed to stay afloat after failing to adapt to the new norms in business. And it seems that being a digital company is the best way to do business today.
How Digital Marketing Is Transforming Your Business
The majority of the businesses today are now adapting to the new ways of marketing and that is bringing their business to the online platform. A digital business strategy is now viewed as a way of transforming a business making use of technologies to improve operations, engagements with their customers and employees, and deliver efficient customer experience all at the same time.
See how you can take advantage of the power of digital marketing to take your business to greater heights:
The Power of Social Media to Harness Your Business Reach
DataReportal analysis shows that more than half, accounting for roughly 51% of the world’s population use social media. That’s about 3.96 billion people in numbers (and counting) with people spending roughly 15% of their time logging in to social media. Knowing such details, it is no denying that social media platforms are one of the best places to look for your target consumers. Of all places online, it is where most people are today regardless of demographics.
Social media is a great tool for businesses to find their target audience, conduct consumer surveys, build brand awareness, and more importantly, engage with their consumers about their brand or services. It’s rather an informal gathering place for consumers and marketers wanting to do business and socialize all at the same time.
When people search for products and services online, they expect a company to have a website, if not, at least social media profiles such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc that they can explore. The key to leverage the power of social media is identifying which platform works for your type of business. For instance, you are running a street fashion brand, the most appropriate platform that your SMM strategies should focus on are Instagram and Facebook, where creativity is your limit when it comes to presenting your brand. On the contrary, such a type of business will not have success in marketing when you center your marketing in LinkedIn since most of the people there are from the corporate or professional side of the market.
What is great about social media is that there is two-way communication between consumers and brands. Through effective campaigns and constant engagements, you can facilitate an info-generating platform that both benefits consumers and you as a business. You can hire an efficient social media marketing agency as part of your digital marketing strategy to help you achieve your social media marketing goals more effectively.
Reach Target Audiences
Instead of aimlessly reaching your campaigns to various consumers that do not guarantee customers, you can utilize digital marketing strategies that allow you to target particular customer groups easily. So if you are running a makeup company, then you can target a specific age or interest group to promote your products. You can choose a platform where it is appropriate to advertise your products.
Digital marketing can aid you in many ways to know and relate to your customers better. There are tools such as Facebook Insights and Google Analytics that can present your online usage patterns of your customers such as online purchase behavior, demographics, loyalty, and other important factors that affect consumer behavior. This info will aid you in planning your marketing strategies and campaigns, and most importantly help you understand your customers better.
Now that you know where you can drive your campaigns to, you can focus your resources, curate your campaigns intended for the audiences that will most likely give a competitive conversion ratio instead of creating generic ads that may not effectively lure your real customers to you. By helping you in knowing your customers better, you can improve the quality of your products and services. That is only one of the best offers of implementing Digital Marketing to your business.
Scale Up Much Faster Than Traditional Marketing Ways
For a long time, traditional marketing has always been the preferred means of advertising for many businesses. With broadcast, prints (posters, magazines, and newspapers), direct mail, and outdoor ads like billboards, brands can reach their target consumers. While they do the job for brands, it is most likely that big companies or those with flexible marketing budgets can afford to have various ads on different platforms.
At present, the trends in marketing seem to be changing fast with many entrepreneurs choosing digital marketing over traditional marketing because it is much cost-effective. The huge difference between traditional marketing and digital marketing does not only matter in the cost but also its potential to do more than just advertising such as the level of interaction that each offer. Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing offers a two-way interaction between businesses and consumers since they can easily get feedback from their target audience.
When entrepreneurs venture their brands online, online marketing allows them to have the chance to be on the same platform as their big competitors. So gone are the days where only big companies are able to project their brands successfully in the market.
Cost-effective for Marketing
With digital marketing, even small businesses can leverage the power of social media, SEO which improves your online presence, content marketing such as doing blogs, guest posts, and more which have all been proven to work if implemented properly. These are also cost-effective compared to paying for some print ads that can be easily tossed out, and costly commercials that only run for a limited time.
If you want to scale up faster without breaking the bank, you can effectively use marketing strategies like PPC and SEO. Pay-per-click is a targeted form of advertising in which you can place ads on search engines against specific keywords. The reason why PPCs are cost-effective is that you can advertise to a vast audience without having to pay for it unless the ad is clicked. This allows you to filter out those who are most likely to be interested in actually purchasing or availing of your service.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on the other hand helps your business get found in search engines by acquiring better ranking on SERPs by making sure your content and website are of good quality and are gaining organic traffic. At this point, it is better to hire a digital marketing expert to do this The result of SEO may take some time but once it takes off, the returns are long-term for your business.
Digital Marketing has been shaping up the future of businesses today and it’s rather promising for the next years to come. Marketing strategies will continue to change over time but with the opportunities that digital marketing offers, it is most likely that digital marketing itself will thrive as an effective form of marketing that many businesses can benefit from in this digital age.
