Digital Marketing | Importance of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but it also includes social media marketing, mobile devices, display advertising, and any other digital networks. Digital marketing is a term used for marketing of products or services using digital means of communication. It is an umbrella term for marketing of products or services using digital technologies.

The term digital marketing was first used in year 1990. Digital marketing has developed since the 1990s and 2000s has changed the way companies and businesses use technology for marketing. Nowadays digital platforms are increasingly being used for marketing and everyday life, and as people prefer digital medium instead of visiting physical shops, digital marketing is becoming more prevalent and efficient.

Digital marketing methods such as search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, viral marketing, blog marketing, online marketing, social media marketing, e-mail marketing, display advertising are becoming more common in this age of technology. Digital marketing campaigns are becoming more prevalent as digital platforms have become an integral part of company’s marketing plan.

Importance of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing allows the companies to reach a broader more engaged and vast targeted audience much faster and easier than older forms of marketing. It has a wider reach and is cost effective as it can reach all over the world.

Today brands and businesses make the most use of digital marketing for marketing their products and services. There has been a drastic change in the concept of marketing. Digital marketing is becoming more and more common as the customers have a preference to use digital devices such as mobile phones, laptops etc. for shopping rather than going to the shop and buying the goods or services. They find it more easy and convenient rather than physically going to the shops. The invention of smart phones has made this a lot easier. As mobile phones are the first point of contact for the customer, the companies are focusing more on mobile marketing. People prefer to search for any product through their mobile phone as it is far more convenient and easy.

Here are a few reasons that justify the importance of digital marketing:

Equal Opportunity for all kinds of businesses: Digital Marketing provides equal opportunities for all kinds of businesses be it large scale or small scale business. Its scope is not only limited to big companies or MNCs but now each and every business can make the use of digital marketing. Small and medium scale businesses or startups now are able to perform digital marketing activities that were previously accessible to big companies.

Conversion rate is higher: The businesses that are using digital marketing activities are able to measure the conversion rate through real-time using a simple method. That is identifying the percentage of viewers who get converted into leads and then subscribers and in the end finally purchasing the service or product.  Another method is to analyze the clicks that an advertisement gets with help of web analytics. SEO, SEM Social media marketing and Email marketing are methods which have a high conversion rate as they are able to generate a quick and effective communication channel with the consumer.

Better ROI: Digital Marketing helps in providing better return on investment. It is cost effective and has a wider reach which helps in generating more income.  Web analytics helps the business owners to know whether their website is providing optimal ROI or not. The website may not be generating revenue for you directly but you can always track conversion rate of inquiries made through email and telephone calls to sales.

Personalisation: Digital Marketing helps in providing a personalized approach. If the customer database is linked to the website whenever someone visits the site he can be greeted with targeted offers. The more they buy from it, the more one can refine customer profile and market effectively to selected customers. It helps the companies to deliver the exact services that the customers are looking for.

Real Time Results: Unlike traditional methods Digital Marketing helps to find out in real time what is or is not working for business online. They can immediately adapt to improve results. Results of Digital Marketing are real time which makes them easier to measure. For measuring traffic to the site Google Analytics can be used. Marketers can easily see the number of visitors to the site, the clicks on the site, the number of views, average visit duration etc.

Greater Exposure: Digital Marketing provides good exposure to the company’s brand which can be seen anywhere in the world. The cost incurred to market a product using traditional methods would be very high also once the keyword search content in the website is optimized there is a long term ROI and low cost to maintain the ranking.

Consumer Behavior is trending towards Digital: Use of traditional media has declined over the past few years. Today customers are spending more time online and on mobile, therefore more of the marketing efforts need to be digital. The introduction of smart phones and internet has revolutionized the way people purchase products online.

I feel digital marketing definitely has huge potential and in the coming years it will be of great importance due to the growing number of users. However, you cannot ignore the fact that traditional marketing is here to stay for some more time. It would take a while for the new media to sink in and penetrate into the vast sphere of traditional marketing. The need of the hour is to educate business owners about the growing importance of Digital Marketing.