The Top 10 Benefits of Digital Marketing for Your New Business
After years of hard work and dedication, you’ve finally secured the funding for your great business idea. Now all that’s left is to open your business and wait for the public to flock to your company.
Except that’s not how things work in today’s market at all.
If you’re working with a small team, it’s understandable to get so caught up in the founding of your business that you forget to market your new company in an effective fashion.
But people aren’t going to find your business by happenstance. It’ll take a whole lot of effort and ingenuity on the part of yourself and your team to spread the word about your brand.
And without a doubt, the best way to reach your audience — no matter who they may be — is through digital marketing. Read on to discover the 10 biggest benefits of digital marketing that can take your company from invisible to well-known around the globe.
1. Digital Marketing Is The Most Powerful Form Of Marketing Today
We’ll start with what is perhaps the biggest reason to leverage your digital presence. Simply put, digital marketing is the most powerful form of marketing today.
Yes, television and radio ads are still alive and kicking. And print ads are somehow generating a return on investment (ROI) for advertisers.
But those platforms pale in comparison to the sheer potential that digital marketing offers. By marketing your brand online, you bring your business to the world — not a small section of it.
And brand developers are taking note of these trends. According to Statista, companies spent almost 3% more of their budget on digital marketing from February 2012 to February 2018.
In comparison, spending for traditional forms of marketing plummeted by quite a bit and are expected to continue dropping. As time goes on, companies are only going to allocate more funding to digital marketing and continue to move away from older forms of advertising.
Take note of what these brands are already learning: digital marketing is far more powerful than any other form of branding.
2. Internet-Based Advertising Allows You To Market Your Brand Your Way
If you’re a new business owner, you’re probably full of plenty of great ideas. Maybe you’ve even started a business before! But one thing most business owners don’t have is an excess of funds.
For the overwhelming majority of business owners, every penny counts. Therefore, you may not have thousands of dollars to throw at a hot new digital campaign.
But that’s one of the biggest benefits of digital marketing: You don’t need thousands of dollars. You just need to be clever and careful and have a clear understanding of who you’re trying to reach
Online marketing lets you adapt your marketing plan in accordance with any number of variables, from budget to audience to the amount of time you can spend on your plan.
It’s simply a more accessible form of marketing. So while crafting a digital campaign may sound like the equivalent of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, the fact of the matter is that you’re in complete control.
Your budget no longer has to define the boundaries of your marketing anymore. Whether you have $10, $100, or even $1,000 to toss at your campaign, know that there’s a marketing strategy that will work for you.
3. Beat The Competition At Their Own Game
Of course, that last benefit comes with a pretty hefty caveat. The fact of the matter is that if you’re just starting out, you have a whole lot of catching up to do.
By no means should that deter you from starting a business. But understand that you’re starting out as a small fish in a very, very big pond.
It’s important to understand that your competition has likely already implemented digital marketing strategies. But as it turns out, their head-start may not be as much of a disadvantage as you’d think.
Performing what’s commonly referred to as a competitive market analysis can provide you with some key information to better inform your marketing efforts.
With some assistance from a marketing firm (or a whole lot of time on your end), you can learn what the competition is up to and beat them at their own game.
A competitive market analysis usually includes elements such as:
- Which advertising channels they favor.
- What topics they cover.
- How much of your demographic they share.
- Their audience growth.
- How much they post.
- How engaging their content is.
To sum it up, you can learn a whole lot by starting a few steps back from the competition. While it’s true that you’ve got some catching up to do, using their data to better inform your marketing decisions can help you pull ahead.
4. Digital Marketing Offers Better Engagement Opportunities
The Internet more or less disrupted the entire advertising industry, and it’s fascinating to see how much things have changed.
Traditional advertising follows what’s known as a one-channel model. This means that the advertiser is talking to the customer with no room for interaction (unless you want to shout at your television, but that’s on you).
But the decline of traditional marketing highlights another of the great digital marketing benefits: Engagement.
Advertisements aren’t as cold or boring anymore. Now, audiences can interact with their favorite brands directly, giving way to a conversation instead of a monologue.
And make no mistake, the more personal and friendly your marketing is, the better the results. Audiences, especially if they’re younger, are overwhelmingly skeptical of advertisers, so use your personality to your advantage.
It’s important to see your customers as people, not walking wallets, as was the case with traditional advertising. The more engaging your advertising is, the more at ease your audience will be.
Best of all, engagement is super simple to implement. It can be anything from a call to action at the end of a blog post to asking for feedback on a social post to facilitating a conversation in your comments section.
Customers want engagement, so deliver what they’re asking for. Be friendly and open and you’ll see the benefits immediately.
5. Gain More Control Of Your Campaign
The problem with most traditional advertising metrics is that they take weeks or even months to receive. As a result, there’s really no way of telling whether or not a campaign was a success or a flop until after it’s finished.
In comparison, digital advertising lets you monitor your campaign and tinker with it accordingly.
Not seeing as much engagement on your social posts as you’d like? No problem, just try something else and see how it works without spending a fortune.
Notice that your website’s visitors tend to bounce off of your blog after the first few paragraphs? Adjusting your writing strategies can fix that in a jiffy.
There’s no doubt about it, digital marketing offers far more customization and immediacy than other forms of advertising. And that may not seem like the biggest deal, but put it into perspective.
Let’s say you’re opening up a local bakery and take out a few thousand dollars to fund a 30-second TV spot. If that spot doesn’t generate enough traffic, you’re more or less out a few thousand dollars.
Now had you spent those funds on digital marketing, you could monitor your marketing in real time and make on-the-spot decisions about how to proceed and course correct your marketing efforts. You’re saving money while gaining control.
6. Discover And Target Your Ideal Audience
Speaking of control, digital marketing lets you tailor your advertising to your liking. Whether you’re after a certain age, gender, income level, or region, you can find your audience with a few clicks of a mouse.
And once you have that information, you can begin to pinpoint your advertising to that market, further increasing your ROI. So not only will you effectively save money with digital marketing, but you’ll get more bang for your buck since you have better access to your audience.
7. Your Customers Rely On The Internet
Today’s customer is smarter and more tech-savvy than the customer of yesteryear. The modern customer prefers to have every bit of information possible to make the best financial decision.
That’s where your company’s marketing efforts come into play. It’s true that your customers are already searching for a business just like yours. But where your business ranks on the coveted front page of Google has a tremendous impact on that customer’s decision.
That decision is often formed through customer reviews. Yes, as it turns out, your customers are the best form of advertising for your business, so make sure that your brand is on any and all review sites.
As it turns out, you may not need to spend all that much on your marketing after all. Just encourage customers to leave reviews (remember how we talked about engagement earlier?) and you’ll see a huge boost in traffic, as well as an increase in your company’s search engine results.
8. Digital Branding Lets You Tell Your Brand’s Story
Every company has a unique story driven by vision and innovation. Understandably, it’s hard to convey that passion for your industry in a small newspaper blurb or a short TV spot.
But digital marketing lets you go above and beyond to tell your brand’s story and help endear yourself to customers. Have no doubt, narrative-driven content is all the rage right now and you can take advantage of it without spending a fortune.
It’s time to introduce your brand to the world. While there isn’t a wrong way to go about this, we recommend making a blog post or short-form video.
Video, in particular, is a great choice, as there are certain elements you can include to heighten the emotion of your story. Add background music, graphics, and photos to draw your audience into your story.
Story-driven content is a form of marketing you can feel good about. No marketing tactics needed. All you have to do is be honest and friendly and tell your story.
9. Advertise Anywhere, To Anyone, On Any Platform
Not only is the modern customer smarter than their predecessors, but they’re more active in their consumption. This goes hand-in-hand with that one-channel marketing method we talked about earlier.
For today’s market, that one-channel method just doesn’t cut it. They want their content and they want it whenever and where ever they want.
For a perfect example of how on-demand content is shaping the industry, look no further than the massive boom of mobile searches.
A few years ago, we officially reached the point where mobile browsing surpassed desktop browsing.
But this gives you so much more freedom! Your content isn’t a one-and-done type deal anymore. Now, your content can generate traffic as long as it’s live.
And if you make sure they can access it in an easy manner, be it on their phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, or even smart TVs, even older content can bring in new traffic, giving your library of content a longer lifespan.
10. It’s A More Diverse Form Of Marketing
Finally, digital marketing allows for more creativity and flexibility. There are dozens upon dozens of fantastic channels and methods you can use to reach your audience no matter what type of content they prefer.
From podcasts to video blogs to social media posts to email campaigns and Snapchat branding, digital marketing lets you flex your creative muscles.
So don’t be afraid to experiment. One of the greatest advantages of digital marketing is that you can try a little bit of everything to see what resonates most with your market.
Get creative, think outside of the box, and most of all, don’t forget to have fun! Whoever said that marketing has to be stuffy and impersonal must’ve forgotten that marketing is a creative endeavor.
There Are Dozens Of Benefits of Digital Marketing
We could go on and on about the benefits of digital marketing, but these 10 are our favorite benefits that track time after time.
So now that you have a fantastic, world-changing business, it’s time to tell the world about it. Make sure that you implement these strategies into your digital marketing plans and you’ll see tons of benefits in no time.
Want to learn more about how you can start your own business? Get in touch and let us answer any questions you may have.
Whether you’re an experienced business owner looking for a great business name or want to find out how you can get started, we’d love to chat with you and find a way to help your business succeed.