Benefits of Digital Marketing

Now let’s look in detail at the benefits of digital marketing:

Boost Online Brand Visibility

As consumer use of digital media has grown rapidly – from search engines to Facebook – companies and organisations need to invest in growing their brand online.

Save money – improve marketing spend efficiency

Back in the early 20^th Century, a leading businessman once said ‘you know you are wasting half your marketing budget, you just don’t know what half’? Well now businesses can gain a much better idea of how effective their marketing spend is through online channels. Online marketing methods such as Google Advertising, SEO, email newsletters and social media all feature great data insights so you can measure your marketing spend and find out what your return on investment is!

Improve customer retention

Online media allow businesses to significantly improve customer retention and re-market to customers. With email newsletters you can update your current customers on new products, sales and news about your products and services. Email marketing is one of the most popular online marketing methods because it’s so successful at encouraging customers to take actions – including purchases.

Become more globally focussed

Targeting people and consumers from around the globe who want to buy your products or services has very distinct benefits compared to an over-reliance on local markets.

Internet marketing strategies including search engine optimisation and email marketing and online channels such as Linked In allow companies to reach wider and more diverse markets. Ultimately if you are targeting new markets then your main objective is to drive sales. Sales software, use of online affiliates and internet retailing in particular has really opened up global retailing opportunities.

Learn from Data Insights

As a business you need to measure how successful your website and marketing activity are. Free web analytics tool such as Google Analytics allow you to test the performance of your website so you can find out the volume of visitors and what they are doing on the site. By analysing this data you can start to learn valuable information including:

· The most popular / unpopular pages on your websites

· How engaging your websites is with visitors

· Which geographic areas your visitors are coming from

· The main sources for your internet traffic – social media sites, search engines

· Impact of marketing and advertising campaigns

Next Steps

Every business and organisation is at a different point in terms of their online marketing use. However many are at the point where they have limited knowledge and use of online marketing channels. I recommend that businesses and organisations that are at the beginner’s stage look at three areas:

· Review Business and Marketing Objectives

· Draft an online marketing strategy

· Resourcing

Review Business and Marketing Objectives

Identify key organisational or business objectives that could be achieved / approved through online marketing. These will differ according to the type of business or organisation and might include the following:

B2B

· Grow exports in target markets

· Promote brand / spokespersons online

B2C

· Sell more online – through business website and third-party sites

· Promote brand online

· Increase customer engagement

Public Sector

· Protect and promote the organisation online

· Engage with stakeholders through online and social media

· Gain feedback on services and initiatives

Develop an Online Marketing Plan

Although there is no harm in testing different online channels, if you want to make the most of your online presence you need to plan and produce a suitable strategy. In essence this process isn’t really any different from traditional marketing planning and you might want to consider some fundamental areas such as:

• What do you want to achieve online – sales, brand promotion, etc.?
• Target markets
• Online methods (website, internet advertising, online PR, etc.)
• Measurement (web analytics)

Resourcing

Resources remain another critical part of digital planning and you might want to consider the 3Ms: men (and women), money and minutes.

The most common issue faced by companies when implementing an internet marketing campaign is whether to outsource or insource. Outsourcing remains a popular choice as internal marketing personal often lack the specialist expertise to manage online marketing tools. One recent development is the move towards bringing in online marketing specialists who can provide practical and targeted expertise in online campaigns rather than web designers and traditional marketing companies who often lack distinct digital marketing skills.

Reference: http://paulmcgarrity.hubpages.com/hub/Making-a-Business-Case-for-Digital-Marketing

For further inquiries, mail on: dsdm@delphicomputech.com