If you had to choose between spending all your budget on classic marketing on billboards and magazines, or targeting the right people on social media and using strategic SEO methods to reach your audience, then you should probably opt for the second one.
More of the right people are likely to come across your brand and marketing methods when done digitally, than if they were to coincidently drive past your billboard.
A lot of the larger companies in your organisation’s field may have already mastered digital marketing and may be gaining a lot more traffic than your own business site. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t compete. Digital marketing can work with all budgets (even no budget!), and while companies such as Coca-Cola and Hilton Hotels may have deeper pockets than you, if you use your budget in an effective way then the exposure for your company will be hugely increased.
Here are 5 reasons why you should focus more on digital marketing for your business:
Cost-Effective
As mentioned previously, you can work with whatever budget you have, whether this is £0 or £10,000. In comparison to advertising in print which can be very costly to keep the paper/magazine running, advertising on social media and Google may be a cheaper and more effective option.
There are methods such as PPC (pay-per-click) where you only have to pay for each person that clicks through to your website, or options such as sponsored posts, where you can place content on other websites for a fee, hoping that people will click through to your business site.
Plus, you know people aren’t going to throw your advert in the bin and completely ignore it.
Targeted
Let’s say that you’re advertising a women’s clothing brand specifically for petite ladies on a billboard. The chances of a woman passing it is just 50% – as the other 50% will be male, and the chances of it being a petite woman are even lower as majority of people that pass could be over 5’3- that’s if they actually bother to look at it of course.
However, marketing your company digitally would mean that you are able to select who sees the advertisement, making sure that it is only seen by those that are genuinely interested. There are many digital marketing tools and options on social platforms such as Facebook that allow you to select the gender, relationship status and geographical locations.
Keep Track on What Methods Are Working
It is easier to keep track on what digital marketing methods are working for you. With programs such as Google Analytics and Facebook Analytics, you can watch users’ activity and see whether they interact, they click through to the website, how long is spent on the page and whether they invest in the product/service that you’re offering.
If you notice that one of your Facebook ads is getting a lot of interaction and click-throughs, but no conversions and time spent on the page is minimal, then you will know that perhaps the targeting needs to be changed.
Speedy
If you decide to advertise in your local paper, then you need to wait at least a week for it to be confirmed and for it to run. However, the internet is a pretty clever tool as you can post your latest marketing campaigns at a click of a button.
Digital marketing allows you to instantly spread your news, whether you’ve won an award, you’re doing something great for the community or you’ve got a new innovative product. People want to hear good things and I doubt customers will care about a product launched a month ago as much as they would on the day of the launch.
Brings in Organic Traffic
To bring in organic traffic, you don’t need a huge budget. Using relevant keywords that help describe both your business and your product/service will help bring in more traffic directly from search engines. Using strategic SEO can help you climb up the search rankings and increase site traffic.
Use your budget in an effective way and a blog can be your place to communicate to customers and an audience, and answer everything that they want to hear. If you keep an eye out on current trends in your sector, then you’ll see what is being talked about in the news and online. Customers often search for longtail terms such as ‘how do I’ and ‘what happens if’ so it would be a great idea to answer these questions in your company blog.
