Learn About the Importance of Digital Marketing Now

The answer to reaching a wider audience, communicating with them, and making them loyal customers today is digital marketing.

No doubt, digital marketing is here to stay. It is cost-effective, measurable, and allows real-time communication with a much larger audience. Businesses in the current marketing environment allot more than half of their advertising budget to digital marketing activities. If you are still not convinced, let us show you the importance of digital marketing. 

Reasons Why Digital Marketing is Important

The following reasons will highlight why businesses depend on digital marketing now more than ever. 

Business Growth in the Competitive and Crowded Online Space

About two-thirds of the global population will be using the internet in 2023, according to DataReportal. It is not wrong to assume that a majority of customers rely on one or more digital channels to gather information about a product or service. Even Forbes has earlier mentioned that 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. 

So, what do the above stats mean for businesses today?

Put simply, without digital marketing, it will be much more difficult to reach a wider audience and gain trust. Even if you consider a scenario where a brand does not have an online presence, it is losing out on many potential customers. One survey from Salesforce showed that 85% of customers research online before even buying a product. 

Search engines aside, 78% of consumers want brands to use social media to connect with people (Sprout Social). Based on this research, more than half of consumers believe that a brand connection is important for their willingness to increase spending.  

As you can observe, a strong digital presence is necessary. Brands today cannot afford to overlook how competitive the global market is. In recent years, businesses have been actively spending more on digital marketing. According to WebStrategies, 72% of the marketing budget goes to digital marketing channels. 

Improvement of Customer Journey & Engagement

Customers today expect more personalisation from brands communicating with them. Without accurate audience segmentation and preferences, it is nearly impossible to communicate to the right person with the right message at the right time. 

Good customer experiences are as crucial as a business’s product or service, as per 80% of customers in a Salesforce survey. Modern businesses need to be customer-centric, i.e., give customers more control. This is possible when businesses understand consumers on an individual level instead of considering one to be a part of a focus group. 

A KO Marketing study showed ‘51% of marketers who say personalization is best across multiple touch points earned 300% ROI or more.’

Now there are multiple digital channels through which customer journey can be made smooth. 

Related: Trends to check for your new content marketing strategy

Let’s say, you posted about your product or service on social media. The post can be linked to your website which has more information on a blog for resolving the customer pain point. But the prospect is not ready to buy it. 

What you can do is send a welcome email once they sign up for your newsletters. With follow-up emails, or sending personalised offers, you are covering all touchpoints across the buyer journey. There are dedicated platforms for marketing automation that help you schedule posts across different customer touchpoints. 

And, once they make a purchase from you, you can continue maintaining a relationship with your customer by offering special discounts and offers. You can also directly ask for feedback from the customer and provide any timely customer service proactively.  

Such steps help in nurturing a long-lasting relationship with the customer. Further, the customer will be loyal and even spread awareness about you through user-generated content on social media or word-of-mouth. 

Measurement of Results Accurately in Real-Time

All marketing efforts online can be monitored. You can know exactly which metrics are behind increasing or decreasing your ROI. There are several tools for web analytics that draw various important online data of your existing and potential customers. 

This is one of the biggest advantages of digital marketing over traditional marketing. In the latter form, no offline metrics determine which demographic checked out the ad in the newspaper and if it interested them. 

On the other hand, if you have posted a blog on your website, you can measure the demographic data, find out how much time the user has spent on the page, and if the page has been shared on other digital platforms. 

Another use case to consider is the analysis of your website and pages. Digital marketing tools such as Google Search Console clearly show how your pages perform against keywords, queries, and countries. 

Read more about the best digital marketing tools. 

This useful tool also shows what users are searching for on the Google search engine results page (SERP) to find your specific page. You will know clicks, impressions and ranking. Based on such data, it is easier to update the page (s) using SEO guidelines.

Increase Return on Investment (ROI) 

The importance of digital marketing lies in the fact that it has better ROI than traditional tactics. Email marketing is highly affordable. Litmus says email ROI is $36 for every $1 spent. 

Apart from that, you can run campaigns with digital advertising on Google Ads with a small, flexible budget. You can even tweak them if you need to revise your strategy, all at no cost. Compared to traditional print advertising, you have to spend a lot less. 

Marketers globally are realising the importance of digital marketing even more, in terms of improved ROI. A CMO survey mentions that by 2023, marketers are going to allocate 73% of their marketing budgets to digital marketing. 

Parting Thoughts

Marketers all over the globe spend on digital marketing. Now that you know a little more about its importance, read about digital marketing strategies.