Online channels are relatively new, but the benefits of digital marketing are so present that this type of advertising is already the most popular in the US. It’s estimated that 93% of Americans access the internet on a regular basis and many of these digital users look for products as well as services in their areas. Digital marketing allows you to connect with these prospective customers in an interactive way, something that other forms of advertising can’t offer on a consistent basis.
At Fannit, our goal is to help businesses build and implement a digital marketing plan that allows them to achieve their goals.
In this article, we’ll go over the definition of online marketing and some of the different digital techniques you have at your disposal. We’ll also share 12 advantages of digital marketing and discuss a few signals indicating that you can benefit from working with an digital marketing agency.
Defining Digital Marketing
Before going over the digital marketing benefits, let’s take a moment to define this form of promotion.
Simply put, digital marketing is a form of advertising that focuses on promoting your products and services through your website, social media profiles, and other online channels.
Digital marketing refers to reaching people through any internet-capable device, albeit the most common being smartphones, tablets, and computers.
It’s important to understand that digital promotion techniques change according to consumer trends and preferences.
In other words, you need to monitor the evolution of the virtual advertising industry to ensure that your strategies are updated based on the latest information.
- More helpful reading: https://www.fannit.com/blog/what-is-digital-marketing/
How Does Digital Marketing Compare to Traditional Marketing?
While online promotion techniques have become the golden standard, there are still many businesses that focus mainly on traditional marketing methods.
Traditional marketing, such as print advertising, television ads, and radio spots, is still effective in some scenarios. That said, traditional channels tend to be more rigid, which means that companies don’t have as much freedom once their content is published.
It’s also important to understand that online techniques are not only compatible but actually complement each other.
Combining traditional methods has always represented a challenge that requires constant monitoring to ensure symmetry. While companies have to ensure consistency, creating digital cross-channel campaigns is easier and tends to yield better results.
Let’s take a look at a few more characteristics of traditional and digital marketing.
Traditional Promotion Techniques
The main issue with traditional offline marketing techniques is that they are more expensive than online methods.
Companies that focus heavily on traditional approaches tend to have higher marketing costs.
Since the results of a traditional marketing campaign are impossible to accurately track, it’s also difficult to assess how much money these actually generate.
Traditional marketing is also designed to transmit your message to the market.
For example, if you purchase space on a billboard or in a newspaper, every one in its vicinity will be able to see your ad. This may be great in terms of raw volume, but there’s no telling how many of these individuals are prospective customers.
Digital Marketing
We’ll go over the main online marketing advantages later in this article, but it’s worth noting that the main difference between traditional and digital marketing is that the latter is interactive.
Unlike traditional marketing methods, digital users have the option of interacting with a piece of marketing content in a few different ways.
Not only this, but digital marketing also lets you develop highly-targeted strategies that let you see exactly how many people interacted with your ads.
Users constantly share information about their interests and preferences in the digital world, and digital marketing makes it possible to use this information to build conversion-based ad campaigns.
Types of Digital Promotion Strategies
Before learning about the advantages of digital marketing or how to build effective online campaigns, you need to familiarize yourself with the different methods you can opt for.
New digital marketing techniques are always being developed and these new approaches help companies stay connected to each target market. This means that you need to adopt new techniques and adjust your marketing efforts in order to build effective online campaigns.
Online marketing strategies can be divided into many different groups, but the two main categories are organic and paid approaches.
Organic approaches consist of marketing products and services through websites, social media posts, and other channels that drive traffic without charging for each visitor.
Paid advertising techniques allow you to drive a large volume of engaged visitors quickly, but these channels require additional payment depending on how many visits were generated.
Let’s take a look at some of the different marketing techniques you have available
Organic Marketing
The name “organic marketing” comes from the idea that consumers find products and services they like organically or without any outside influence.
Therefore, organic marketing revolves around the idea of creating great content that is valuable to your targeted audience.
If your target audience members find your content when they need to solve an issue that’s related to your industry, they are more likely to contact you when they need to hire professional services.
One of the keys to digital marketing is to always deliver value while also promoting your brand online.
In addition to showing your logo and other branding elements, your content needs to provide practical information that helps users answer their queries.
With the above in mind, here are some of the main forms of organic digital promotion techniques you have available.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
When most people think about organic marketing, they think about SEO. This type of marketing focuses on improving all elements on your website in order to get the best rankings on Google whenever a prospect conducts a relevant search about your industry.
That said, search engines like Google take countless variables into consideration when determining their rankings. So, you need to understand the different elements that impact your rankings and make the right adjustments.
Moreover, because so many people rely on search platforms to find new businesses and products, you can attract a huge amount of prospective customers and enjoy a huge return-on-income.
Social Media Marketing
Search engines may still be the first place where people look for new products and services, but social media is not far behind.
As a matter of fact, social media is the best way to reach prospective customers in certain industries. So, it’s essential to develop a strategy for Facebook, Instagram, and other networks that your potential audience uses.
While all social media platforms are unique, remember that many consumers use multiple platforms daily.
This means that you need to have a general social strategy that ensures continuity and symmetry across all platforms. However, you also have to adjust the content of each network based on how users behave on that specific platform.
Email Marketing
While it’s known as one of the oldest forms of digital promotion, marketing via email is still one of the best ways to produce leads and sales.
Email campaigns can also be used to build awareness as well, which makes this type of marketing extremely flexible. But, also note that your prospective customers are extremely used to getting promotional emails, so you need to understand what your audience wants and get creative to stand out of the crowd.
Some business owners are not aware of this, but companies can have multiple email campaigns running at once.
To achieve this, you need to create different segments within your mailing list, set a goal for each customer base, and build an email sequence designed to achieve these objectives.
Content Marketing
Content promotion strategies are not only organic, but they are customer-centric.
In other words, businesses that implement these strategies build their content based around their target audience’s needs and requirements, rather than the products or services themselves.
One of the biggest advantages of content marketing is that it works well with all other forms of digital promotion, regardless of whether it’s paid or organic.
By having useful, optimized content, you can get better rankings for your site and attract a large number of organic visitors. If you decide to run paid ads, you can use the content you develop as landing pages that contain specific CTAs designed to move users down the funnel.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound promotion is also a form of customer-centric marketing that works well with all other digital techniques.
But, rather than being a specific strategy, inbound marketing is a general umbrella term that encompasses all forms of promotion that seek to attract interested prospects (warm leads), rather than general consumers (cold leads).
Even though the technical definition of inbound advertising includes offline channels, this form of marketing is usually implemented on a strictly digital basis.
It’s the only way to ensure that the prospects being targeted are actually interested because they can be tracked, targeted, and qualified prior to being engaged.
Paid Online Strategies
As the name suggests, paid online strategies refer to any online platform that allows you to purchase adverts. Companies can leverage a wider range of paid online platforms.
But, it’s important to understand that the quality of the traffic depends directly on the partners you choose. If you choose a platform that provides quality traffic, you’ll have a higher chance of getting the right results.
- More helpful reading: https://www.fannit.com/blog/how-to-do-digital-marketing/
The biggest advantage of paid advertising is that, if your campaigns are built properly, they will provide immediate results. Organic methods, on the other hand, provide results gradually.
Therefore, a healthy marketing mix should contain a combination of organic and paid strategies from the get-go.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
It’s impossible to discuss the advantages of digital advertising without mentioning paid ads.
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a form of digital promotion that allows companies to purchase online spots across different websites and platforms. There are dozens upon dozens of PPC platforms, but the most popular and reliable is Google Ads.
Developing a Google Ads marketing campaign is possible without assistance.
That said, paid ads are a marketing science on their own and the learning curve is usually long.
To get results fast, businesses can team up with knowledgeable online promotion agencies like Fannit that can build and manage successful campaigns from scratch.
Social Media Advertising
We’ve covered the organic side of social media channels, which consists of sharing posts and similar content.
However, most social platforms also offer the ability to boost posts and leverage other forms of paid ads. While these technically fall under the mantle of PPC, paid social ads have provided such great results across different industries that they deserve a category of their own.
Although Facebook is still the most popular social media network on the planet, Instagram has become a close second in terms of paid social ads.
Not only this, but alternative platforms like LinkedIn also give business owners the ability to promote their B2B companies to organizations that are looking for similar service providers.
Lead Generation
Lead generation encompasses a wide range of paid advertising techniques, but they all revolve around generating qualified prospects.
The process of generating leads is either done through an in-house team that specializes in this process or by hiring a professional agency.
Having an in-house team requires a hefty budget and a lot more attention, whereas the right marketing firm can integrate right into your promotion strategy and help you produce quality leads without adding more to your plate.
Note that the only way to evaluate a successful lead generation process is by the number of prospects you get.
For this, you need to have a lead qualification system in place and monitor the quality of the prospective customers you get in contact with.
Benefits of Digital Marketing Campaigns
Now that we’ve covered some of the most popular forms of digital promotion, let’s take a look at the advantages of online advertising.
Internet-enabled devices are so popular that the web has become the best place to promote your products and services.
In addition to looking for businesses and products, your prospective customers also use online resources such as review platforms, forums, and comparison sites to get the best results.
If you have a solid promotion strategy for these online channels, your company will have a great reputation and be available to your prospective customers when they need it most.
Moreover, some of the advantages of running online campaigns for your business include:
Builds Stronger Bonds with Your Customers
Customers turn to search platforms and social media platforms because they understand that these platforms work as a filter.
This is because search platforms and social networks present results based on relevance and quality. So, if a user looks for information using Google search, they know that the first results will likely contain the information they are looking for.
One of the keys here is to build a site with local SEO in mind.
The local branch of SEO focuses on creating content that’s ultra-targeted to people in a specific region. This marketing strategy can help increase customer loyalty in a certain region, but companies need to ensure that their localized content doesn’t clash with their main pages.
Keeps Customers Engaged at Every Stage
One of the biggest digital advertising advantages is that it keeps customers engaged at every step. Engagement is an area where traditional marketers struggled mightily because most traditional methods were not interactive.
The internet has changed that forever.
Today, companies can leverage online advertising platforms that allow them to develop interactive ads and use platforms like Google Analytics to truly see how engaging these ad campaigns were.
Note that you can measure interactions through every channel you use, even if some of them are not compatible with Google Analytics.
For example, you can specifically see your social media engagement levels and compare them to the metrics of your other virtual marketing channels. With that said, you have to keep your digital marketing goals in mind if you want to get the most from a highly engaged audience.
Ensures that You Reach Your Target Consumers
Almost all marketing strategies can be targeted in one way or another. So, if you have a comprehensive online strategy, you’ll always reach the right consumers.
The definition of an “ideal customer” varies from one business to the next. This means that you need to adjust your target based on your goals and marketing channels.
For instance, if you own an online store that sells products across the country, your target audience will focus more on demographics like age and spending power, rather than location.
- More helpful reading: https://www.fannit.com/blog/digital-marketing-strategy/
However, if you provide services to one set of nearby cities, you’ll probably want to develop a plan that includes an email marketing strategy that increases customer loyalty in a specific area.
Creates Predictable Funnels
Like any other marketing strategy, it’s impossible to implement digital promotion techniques without a clear plan.
Now, the most efficient way to monitor, manage, and measure the success of your plan is through a funnel system.
Marketing funnels allow you to visualize the customer’s journey or the decision-making process that most consumers go through before making a purchase.
Once you have collected enough data through your digital marketing analytics platforms, you’ll be able to create accurate projections and know how much potential revenue you currently have.
Instead of working like one big funnel, you should break up your customer’s journey into smaller funnels. This may require a bit more effort, but it will help you segment your content and define clearly where your future campaigns should kick in.
Achieves Better Conversion Rates
Before going over this point, it’s important to note that it’s not possible to accurately measure the conversion rates of traditional advertising channels with consistency.
Promotion codes and similar alternatives provide some data. But, the fact that only a percentage of consumers employ these, the data will always be incomplete.
With that said, digital marketing helps companies achieve better conversion rates than traditional techniques.
This, in turn, results in a better return-on-income (ROI), which makes marketing through digital platforms more cost-effective. Additionally, digital marketing tactics are scalable, so you can start relatively small and grow as you start seeing results.
Allows You to Measure Results Accurately
One of the biggest digital advertising benefits is that it allows you to track and monitor your results accurately.
As we mentioned earlier, there are certain techniques that help traditional marketers gauge their success. But, these can’t be used to measure the performance of an entire strategy.
Digital marketing analytics give small businesses the ability to track and monitor the performance of their content.
Not only this, but these analytics tools provide extremely granular data at different levels. For instance, digital marketers that work for small businesses can see the location and other demographic data of every conversion that’s generated.
Boosts Brand Credibility and Visibility
One thing that conventional tactics and digital channels have in common is the need for a good reputation. Fortunately, appearing on reliable digital platforms like search tools, social networks, and review sites can boost your brand credibility and visibility.
Companies that claim the top placements in Google, have a great social presence and amass high ratings on Yelp instill confidence in their current and future customers.
Besides improving your reputation, this can also become a closing tool for your sales team or a new source of traffic for your online store.
Increases Your Return-On-Income (ROI)
ROI is a crucial metric in your entire promotion scheme, not only your digital channels.
Calculating the exact ROI of all your efforts can be challenging, but this metric almost always increases after implementing a solid digital promotion strategy.
There are many promotion tactics that have superb ROI averages, like content marketing. That said, remember that the success of these campaigns depends on how well they were built and how often they are maintained.
By working with a reliable digital marketer, you can ensure that your promotion machine continues to provide results while you focus on creating the best possible experience for your customers.
Helps You Compete with Bigger Brands
One of the unsung benefits of digital advertising is that it has leveled the playing field for smaller brands.
The exorbitant cost of running television ads and putting up adverts in the best locations limited the number of businesses that could truly leverage conventional tactics.
Digital marketing enables smaller companies to compete because quality and value are major factors in most channels. Since smaller companies usually deliver personalized service and have in-depth knowledge, they can produce content that’s good enough to compete with leading brands.
- More helpful reading: https://www.fannit.com/blog/digital-marketing-tips/
With that said, remember that every digital marketing tactic has a distinct take on quality. You need to customize your content based on your target audience and make sure that every dollar in your marketing budget is spent engaging these users.
Lowers the Marketing Spend
On the topic of budgets, digital marketing strategies almost always lower the promotional spend of a company.
The reason for this is that digital marketing strategies have a high ROI, which automatically allows companies to reduce their budgets.
Additionally, most strategies use a combination of paid and organic methods to start. However, paid methods can be reduced as the organic digital marketing strategies start producing more and more results, leading to a natural decline in budget.
Can Be Adjusted at No Cost
Another reason why online advertising is extremely cost-effective is that it allows you to update content without incurring additional costs.
In contrast, updating non-digital platforms always require an additional payment. For example, if you want to reshoot a television ad or change the time at which it runs, you’ll likely spend a decent chunk of money.
- More helpful reading: https://www.fannit.com/blog/traditional-marketing-vs-digital-marketing/
Digital marketing offers the ability to update a lot of content at no cost, like your blogs, operating hours, service pages, and more.
Even if you need to hire content writers, graphic designers, and digital marketing services, these are often more affordable than generating a brand new ad for traditional channels.
Offers the Ability to Connect Through Multiple Channels
There are many different digital marketing methods available, all of which focus on specific channels. This allows you to connect with your potential customers at different points during the decision-making process without skipping a beat.
If you choose the right digital platforms and study your audience carefully, you’ll be able to identify consistent turning points during the customer journey and entice your potential leads at these specific times.
Signs You May Need to Improve Your Digital Marketing Campaigns
Now that we’ve analyzed every common benefit of digital marketing, let’s go over signs that you may need to work with a professional agency.
- You can’t grow your revenue
- There are no leads coming through your social profiles
- Your site gets a lot of traffic but generates no conversions
- There is no content strategy in place
- You abandoned marketing because it’s not cost-effective
- You’re in your marketing and sales processes are synced
Want to Enjoy the Advantages of Digital Marketing? Contact Fannit Today
We hope that our article has helped you understand the great benefits of digital advertising and promotion.
If you need help building a comprehensive marketing strategy or want to know more about the benefits of digital marketing, get in touch with our team today and we’ll be glad to help.
