The Future Of Marketing – 5 Reasons Why Digital Marketing Is Important
“Almost overnight, the Internet’s gone from a technical wonder to a business must.” – Bill Schrader, businessman
Why is it so critical for companies to embrace digital marketing? When your audience is out exploring the online world – where they can always be connected, consume content and compare services – you need to be able to reach them and to understand what they’re interested in.
The sheer volume of new digital trends can be overwhelming – from the horizon-expanding technology of Google glass to hot digital currency Bitcoin, which allows you to buy a burger in east London using just a phone and QR code – but here at Sofarbeyond we like to keep things simple.
So, here are our top five reasons why we think digital marketing is important and how you can embrace it.
Reach your audience. Whether you’re in B2B marketing or B2C, the first place a visitor goes to find out about you or to find a company like yours, is online. In fact, 92% of B2B buyers will visit a technology website before buying (IDG tech buyer report 2013).
Understand your audience. The power of digital marketing means that you can gain more knowledge about your audience and learn what they’re looking for, in real time. Once you decipher a visitor’s digital body language, you can use these insights to build a relationship with them based on what they’re interested in. This means marketing can finally become a service – not just a sell.
Grow your audience. Digital marketing is a fantastic way of growing your audience quickly and effectively. Why? Because we all love great content, so if yours is engaging, interesting and relevant, your audience will spread the word for you, allowing your business to reach more prospects than before.
Know what’s working. As marketers, we spend time investing in many different marketing activities, but do we always know what’s working for us? Digital marketing will always give you a valuable insight into which marketing activity is driving people to you. Once you have this knowledge, you can begin to work out your ROI and your cost per lead acquisition (e.g. what spend did you put in to get a new potential prospect back?).
Be reactive. We’re often told that it’s better to be proactive rather than reactive in marketing. With digital marketing, which includes search, social, online PR and content, we say that it’s best to be reactive. By this we mean once you know what your audience is interested in, you can feed those interests back into your marketing plan and respond to them effectively.
Tell us what you think – we’d like to know on LinkedIn.