Don’t be that guy, you know, the guy who refuses to accept the fact that the world is changing and the Internet isn’t going away. The entrepreneur who still won’t open a Facebook account because after all, “I’ve been doing it for forty year and it”s always worked just fine!” I’m talking about the business owner who seemingly knows everything and refuses to take the advice of others. The way we conduct business has changed since the birth of the Internet and with each passing year, digital marketing becomes even more important. If you’re in business today you absolutely have to use digital marketing if you hope to compete in the marketplace. Let us discuss 5 reasons why digital marketing should matter to you.
5 Critical Reasons Digital Marketing Will Help Your Business Avoid Disaster
We Are Going Mobile
You need to use digital marketing because whether you like it or not the world is going mobile and this trend will continue into the future. In fact, it will be even more prominent with each passing year. We are increasingly becoming a mobile society and accessing the Internet through mobile devices. If you’re not online then you’re missing out on a lot of potential traffic to your business. You’re missing on a ton of leads that can eventually be converted to sales. It’s not enough just to market through traditional media, you need to use digital marketing as well because this is the way of the future and the Internet is crawling with potential consumers! Please, for everyone’s sake, begin using the internet to market your business, even if you start small!
Social Media
In recent years social media has just exploded in popularity. Millions of people use sites such as Facebook and Twitter each day and this is another tremendous source of potential traffic, leads, and sales. Actually, it might be the best. If you’re not using these sites to market to your customer base, you are failing as an entrepreneur, I believe strongly in the importance of a social media presence.. Social media allows you to engage your customers and keep in close touch with them instantly. By doing this you keep your brand fresh in their minds and this can help you retain customer loyalty and drive more sales to your business. For example, you can answer questions on your Facebook page or send out a tweet about a new product you’re offering. Social media makes it easy to stay in contact with customers at all times. In addition, social media also allows you to tell your story! By having such an incredible platform to directly connect with potential consumers, you have a massive opportunity to tell a story with emotional ties which can lead to quite a spike in sales! On top of all that, social media is flat-out exploding. People are on their phones all the time and much of that is spent scrolling their news feeds! I feel bad for you if you’re not using social media at all for your business.
Saves Money
By marketing digitally you can save yourself a lot of money when you compare this to print advertisements or televisions spots. The amount of people you can reach per dollar isn’t even comparable to that of TV ads. This isn’t to say that digital marketing isn’t going to cost you anything because it probably will, but it’s also a lot cheaper than traditional marketing methods and is also very demographically targeted (if you do it right). There are many methods such as social media which we already mentioned or creating videos that are free and as a new business, this can help you when you don’t have a lot of capital to work with for marketing purposes. Digital marketing also allows you to stay competitive with other businesses in your industry or niche. It’s easier to stay competitive if you are marketing to your customer base online. The thing is, well-established companies can afford to take out advertising in major newspapers and magazines but you probably can’t. If you market online, you’re able to stay relatively competitive even with larger corporations because of the cost of marketing online as compared to traditional marketing methods.
It’s What Customers Want
If you’re not using digital marketing then you’re going to lose customers. It’s that simple. In today’s world customers expect you to be online, they expect you to have a mobile app for them, and they want to engage with you on the Internet. They enjoy it! If you’re not engaging with customers online, as mentioned above, you will lose customers to your competition that is using the Internet to drive sales. In fact, it’s not enough just to be online you have to actually engage your customer online through chat rooms, forums, social media, blogs, YouTube, and so on. Find out where your target consumers hang out and then start hanging out there too! If you use regular marketing methods you can’t engage your customers as much as you can with digital media because that engagement is instant and oftentimes very powerful. Customers want to be on social media so why wouldn’t
Immediate Engagement
By using digital media for marketing purposes you are able to engage your customers right away. Yes, instantly. Gone are the days of customers having to write a letter to a company or leave a phone message. Instead, they head to Facebook, find the fan page for a particular business, and of their message goes. Good or bad so you better be ready. However, this is actually a good thing in all aspects. If it’s bad, you can put out the fire right away before that customer tells everyone and their cousin about the horrible experience with your company. And from a marketing standpoint being able to reach potential buyers immediately is like pure gold. It just didn’t use to be like that. In today’s world with the right message, you can impact millions of people in a few days! Heck, some YouTube videos have been seen by millions within a few hours! Now that’s powerful! Using digital marketing has a number of positives from a customer engagement standpoint.
You must use digital marketing if you wish to reach your customer base in today’s world! Digital marketing allows you to engage your customers to like never before and can help you establish that relationship you need with your customers, something crucial to business success! Consumers have more options to buy from than ever before and unless you prove to them they can trust your brand and like your story, they will pass over your product for someone else’s. The bottom line is if you’re committed to making you’re being innovated and utilizing proven strategies, you won’t live in the past and you’ll start using digital marketing for your business immediately!