Digital marketing, whether we like it or not, has taken over our lives. We are living in an ever-changing digital hub, where standard forms of advertising and communicating just aren’t enough. There isn’t a single day that goes by where adverts aren’t creeping their way into our feeds or businesses into our DMs. But is the whole thing worth it?
Let’s take a trip down memory lane and talk about traditional marketing. The days are gone where businesses use direct mail, such as brochures and letters, as their main form of marketing to get in touch with consumers.
Similar to print advertising, like your magazines and newspapers, and also your radio and television ads, people just aren’t willing to invest in it as much as they used to do. Especially if there are, arguably, better ways they can promote their business.
One of the best advantages of digital marketing is its global reach. Its power to attract custom from the other side of the world in a matter of seconds blows traditional marketing out of the water in terms of its capabilities. A properly designed and managed website allows you to find new markets very quickly and trade globally, for just a small investment.
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On a similar vein, despite digital marketing having the larger potential, its bills are relatively low. A well-targeted marketing campaign weaves its way to the right customers with a much lower cost rate than traditional marketing methods. You can see why businesses would be all over this, a money saving method that brings in more money? Yes please.
A new wonder that wasn’t available in previous decades, is being able to measure your online marketing. Web analytics and other tools can now make it easier to see how effective your campaign has been, which makes it all worth your while.
If you use it properly, you can require detailed information about how customers use your website and respond to your advertising. Popular ways to manage this is to use analytics tools such as Google Analytics or MixPanel, the superheroes of their industry and masters at finding information you didn’t know you needed. Imagine how easy it would be to sell your product or service if you knew exactly who to sell them to?
If you link your customer database to your website, you can ensure that you target your offers to them. Ensuring you understand who your customers are is the key to finetuning your digital marketing and unlocking more possibilities. The more that you refine your customer profile, the more you can market effectively to them and as you could probably guess, the more money you can make back.
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One thing traditional marketing couldn’t do is build customer loyalty, a tv advert trying to reach out to as many customer audiences as possible has nothing on the openness that social media provides. Getting involved with social media accounts and managing them carefully gives you the chance to engage with customers and build a trustable reputation for the business.
Digital marketing allows for an improvement in conversion rates too. Unlike different media which need people to make phone calls or physically go to a shop, having a website means your customers are only ever a few steps away from making a purchase. Digital marketing can provide immediate effects for a business, meaning the money invested into it can be quickly returned.
However, for every cloud to have a silver lining, there must be a cloud. In other words, digital marketing does have its disadvantages.
One thing about digital marketing is that in order for it to work, you need to know how to do it. Although the costs aren’t high once actually executed, you must ensure your staff have the right knowledge and expertise to carry out digital marketing. This can rank the costs up high, especially when platforms and trends are changing rapidly, its vital you keep up to date.
Processes such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Pay Per Click (PPC) are just some of the trends to stay on top of. SEO is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website from search engines, whilst PPC involves a company placing an advertisement on a host website and only paying a sum of money to them once a user clicks on their advertisement. If you aren’t a tech-wizard before using this, it won’t be long till you are.
It can also be very time consuming. Creating marketing content and optimising online advertising campaigns can be costly tasks, with both money and time, which gradually adds up. Its important when going through these processes that you measure your results to ensure a return-on-investment, or you can find yourself hemorrhaging money quicker than you’d like.
Using digital marketing to reach a global audience comes with the consequence of reaching global competition. In this current culture it can be a challenge to stand out against the many competitors that are also fighting for the spotlight in this digital frenzy. Businesses must hold themselves accountable for coming up with creative and innovative ideas that can grab the attention of consumers online.
An expert in the creative field is Red Bull, their latest marketing video is located on the Ski Slopes, using drones and other equipment to record a variety of stunts and views. Now you may be thinking, what is the link between skiing and Red Bull? Well, there isn’t one, but the unusual nature of the video sticks with the consumer and gets them thinking about the brand anyway. It’s a clever technique of marketing but has set the bar for consumer interest very high.
It’s also very difficult these days to hide negative feedback or criticism. It can be found by your go to tattletales on the internet. You’ve got your classic Google search, your review websites or even worse, the comment sections on any social media platform. Tackling this feedback and carrying out effective customer service online can be challenging, but failure to respond successfully could lead to a damaged reputation.
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A tip to understand when handling feedback are; ensuring you know that negative feedback is not a personal attack on you and can actually be more useful than praise. According to LinkedIn Talent Blog, managers who received feedback on their strengths showed 8.9% greater profitability than ones who didn’t.
Another challenge that digital marketers must face is the array of security and privacy issues that come with the industry. There are many types of cyber security challenges that businesses have suffered such as phishing attacks, malware, and identity theft, which can affect the growth of the business and profits too.
Any company doing business with the EU must prove they have appropriate data protection or non-compliance could be another bill you have to pay. $20million or 4% of the business’s annual revenue (whichever is higher) is the price you must pay for not being up to standard.
Despite its disadvantages, and we may be biased…digital marketing outperforms the older, more traditional ways in many ways. It may be a little difficult to tackle at first, but with the right network of people, tied with some education, diving into the world of digital marketing will pay dividends.
Framework Marketing are a national digital marketing agency rooted firmly in the construction industry that helps construction companies grow further than they could ever imagine. Interested in knowing more? Get in touch here!
