Why you need digital marketing for business It is important to utilize digital marketing for business in the 21st century

We live in a world where over 170 million people use social media regularly. Every operational business is expected to be acquainted with at least the main tenets of digital marketing. This article explains in simple terms, why you need digital marketing for business.

At some point in time, you must have heard the term digital marketing. This is because most activities nowadays have gone digital. Most of the things you do daily have a direct or indirect link to the internet world.

The entire world is going digital. A lot of people now depend on digital marketing as a skill. Some to grow their businesses, others to earn money by selling digital products or providing digital services.

You might have heard the term but do you really know the meaning? Do you need it to generate more sales for your business? Should you invest in it? What impact does digital marketing have on your business?

Having answers to these questions will help to fix the puzzle about digital marketing and your business. These answers, you will find in this article. Read on.

What is digital marketing?

Meaning of digital marketing

The first approach to digital marketing defined it as a projection of conventional marketing, its tools, and strategies on the internet. This definition can be attributed to Otero and Rolan, 2016.

Satya (2015) defined it as online marketing, web marketing, or internet marketing.

The term digital marketing became popular over time, especially in certain countries.

In the USA, online marketing is still prevalent and In Italy, it is called web marketing. In the UK and worldwide, Nigeria inclusive, digital marketing has become a common term, especially after the year 2013.

Digital marketing is the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the internet. Other forms of digital communication can as well be adopted.

You have accounts on different social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. So more understandably, digital marketing is the use of these accounts to promote your business. Bingo!

By utilizing digital marketing for your business, you can reach a larger audience in a shorter period. Employing the right marketing strategies, you will be able to generate more sales.

Below, you will learn 7 main categories of digital marketing and why you need digital marketing for business. Number 5 will blow your mind!

Types of digital marketing

Digital marketing is an essential factor in an organization’s total marketing strategy. It encompasses a wide variety of marketing tactics and technologies used to reach consumers online.

1. Content marketing

Content marketing is a marketing system of producing significant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience. This is to drive profitable customer action.

It uses storytelling and information sharing to increase brand awareness. Ultimately, the goal is to have a reader take an action towards becoming a customer.

This can be through requesting more information, signing up for an email list, or making a purchase. Examples of content are blog posts, digital videos, podcasts, infographics, or books

2. Social media marketing (SMM)

In 2014, over 80% of business executives identified social media as a fundamental part of their businesses. Business retailers have seen a 133% increase in their revenues from social media marketing.

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. It is used as a communication tool that makes companies' accessibility easy.

Examples of social media marketing websites over the years are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Myspace, LinkedIn, and Snapchat.

3. E-mail marketing

This is a form of digital marketing that involves the sending of promotional messages to people in mass quantities via emails. It can be part of a content marketing strategy providing value to consumers and over time, converting the audience to customers

4. Affiliate marketing

This form of marketing is centered on revenue sharing. It is the process of earning money (commission) every time you promote a company’s products and drive a sale.

If you have a product and you want to sell more, you can offer promoters a monetary inducement through an affiliate program.

5. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Remember I said that this will blow your mind? Here’s why.

When you search for something on Google, it brings a lot of options from different websites. The results you get are ranked according to how well the content on that page is optimized!

This means that the website which appeared first from the results has SEO-optimized content. If you can create such kind of content for your business, then your website will appear on the front page of google at the top every time. Amazing!

The goal of SEO is to get businesses to rank higher in search engine results. This will increase the search engine traffic of your business website.

75% of searchers don’t go past the first page, so ranking is important for the growth of your business.

6. Search engine marketing (SEM)

SEM is an umbrella term that refers to the process of increasing website visibility on search engine result pages. This process is done through paid advertising. The most commonly known and used paid search tool is Google ads. Bing and Yahoo may also be worth your money and time.

7. Pay per click (PPC)

PPC is a marketing model used to drive traffic to websites. In this form of marketing, the advertiser pays a publisher when the ad is clicked.

Simply put, it allows advertisers to place ads on search engines, social media platforms, and third-party websites, paying a fee whenever the ad is clicked.

There you have the types of digital marketing. This is about to get interesting as you will be moving on to the juiciest part of the article. The impacts of digital marketing on your business!

Why you need digital marketing for business

The digital marketing world is a gateway for potential customers to feel like a part of the brand. It offers the opportunity to feel connected with the business as clients see the content from the brand regularly.

Have you also heard the Pizza Hut story? Pizza Hut recorded a successful digital marketing campaign. They created an app that allows customers to create their own pizza by dragging their chosen toppings onto a graphical pizza base.

The iPhone would then determine which of the chains’ thousands of locations the customer appeared to be nearest. The company advertised the new app online, in print, and on television- even winning a placement in apple’s own iPhone commercial.

Within two weeks, the Pizza hut app was downloaded 100,000 times within three months iPhone users ordered $1m worth of Pizza. The app now has millions of users across the iPhone, IPad, and Android platforms.

Why this story? This is to tell you that digital marketing has a lot of impacts on your business. The following are some of the major benefits of utilizing digital marketing for business.

1. You can increase brand awareness through use of digital marketing for business

Today, more than half of the world’s population use social media platforms. It makes social media a natural place to connect with highly targeted potential buyers.

Employing SEO marketing techniques will find customers that you would have never encountered.

The higher you rank on search engines, the better your chances are of getting closer to your potential customers. This increases the brand awareness that your business deserves.

2. Lead generation

Lead generation is a way of expanding the customer base. This is done by enhancing web page optimization, customer experience, keyword updates, and mobile-friendliness of your website.

This generates leads or potential customers which can further be converted into paying customers.

3. Digital marketing could boost sales

You can see anything on social media. A great digital marketing strategy can bring in good business and opportunities for a brand.

4. You can create a solid online presence for your business with digital marketing

Your content gets exposed to new audiences when people start liking, sharing, and commenting on your posts. If you want to know how to create contents that people would love to share, see this article.

5. You can engage customers and business audience through digital marketing

Social media platforms are an opportunity for brands to directly interact with customers and vice versa.

6. Employ tools to target your core customers

Digital marketing provides invaluable data to a company on its customers. Through data analysis, you can know who interacts with your content and when.

This means that you can adjust your content and the channels that you use to display that content based on this information.

7. You can provide value to your customers by utilizing digital marketing for business

Consumers are 131% more likely to buy from your brand after reading or viewing educational content on your website. You can generate 3x more leads using a solid content marketing strategy versus paid lead generation. It also costs 62% less. This shows how important providing content with value is to your viewers and this will pay off for your business.

On a final note, digital marketing has completely changed the way brands communicate with their customers.

Benefits of digital marketing for business will continue to grow in the future as well. This is why it is essential to adopt digital marketing tactics to establish your business in the digital space.