Digital Marketing and How you can use it to Grow Your Business

Digital marketing, online marketing, internet advertising… whichever you call it, marketing your company online is a big deal these days. 

After all, internet usage has more than doubled over the past decade and this shift has massively affected how people purchase products and interact with businesses.

Digital marketing is like any other type of marketing—it’s a way to connect with and influence your potential customers. The real difference is, you connect with and influence those customers online.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing refers to any online marketing effort that uses an electronic device or the internet. Email marketing, pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing, and even blogging are all great examples of digital marketing—they help introduce people to your products and services, and convince them to buy.

While traditional marketing exists in print ads, phone communication, or physical marketing, digital marketing can occur electronically and online. 

This means there are far more possibilities for your brand to reach more customers through email, video, social media, and search engines.

Digital marketing is defined as the use of numerous digital tactics and channels to connect with your customers where they spend much of their time online. 

From your website to your social media content to your blogging activities, there’s a spectrum of strategies that fall under the umbrella of “digital marketing”.

Because digital marketing has many options and strategies associated with it, you can get creative and experiment with a lot of marketing tactics on a budget. With digital marketing, you can monitor the success and ROMI (return on marketing investment) of your campaigns more than you could with traditional promotional content — such as a billboard or print ad.

Digital marketing is a great option for any business. To be competitive as a business owner, you should welcome digital marketing.

How can you use Digital Marketing to grow your business?

Learning about digital marketing is important, but equally important, or perhaps more important is knowing how to effectively use it to give your business the striking advantage. The following tips will help you succeed in your digital marketing efforts.

1. Nail your Brand Identity: 

Branding is a way of defining your business to yourself, your team, and your audience, and brand identity is the way you convey this to the public using visuals (logo, colour, fonts), messaging (brand tone and voice), and experience. It’s necessary to set your brand identity firmly because it’s what makes you different from other brands in the mind of your audience. In addition, in the world of digital marketing where big shiny brands abound, it’s easy to get carried away and lose your own identity.

3. Be consistent: 

Having nailed your brand identity, you should be consistent with it across all platforms. Convey your brand identity consistently – this is the way your business becomes recognizable. Consistent brand identity enhances brand recognition and recall, so that no matter where your business appears online or offline, your audience feels that they actually know you.

4. Know your audience: 

Who is your product for? What age group? Working-class or students, or both? Men or women, or both? Old or young? Geek or non-geek? Getting this right is crucial. Knowing your target audience helps answer the question of where they spend time online, what language they communicate in, what influences their buying decisions, etc. This makes your ads targeting more specific, thus more effective. Knowing your audience helps you meet them directly at their pain points.

5. Build a comprehensive buyer persona: 

When you know your audience, it’s easy to build a buyer persona. A buyer persona is a detailed, research-based description of someone who represents your target audience. It is a semi-fictional representation of your potential customer and it ensures that online activities towards serving and acquiring customers are tailored to their own needs and not your idea of their needs. It keeps you focused on your buyer’s needs. 

6. Know your competition: 

This is important, especially if you’re a new brand. Knowing your competition and what they’re offering means knowing what they’re not offering. This helps you design a product or service that stands out. Knowing your competition means you can match or surpass their strength and take advantage of their weakness.

7. Make your message compelling: 

The attention span of an average human is 3 seconds. Not only that, the internet is full of numerous content and ads clamoring your audience’s attention, and only the most compelling message thrives. So, it’s important to make your message powerful, convincing, and irresistible – no matter the platform. It’s therefore advisable to employ the service of a professional copywriter or content marketer to get the right message across.

8. Always include a call to action (CTA): 

You should tell your audience what to do, or what you want them to do. If you don’t, they’ll do nothing. They’ll simply enjoy your content, or be impressed by your copy, and then they go on to buy from someone who tells them to. A call to action is an invitation for your audience to take a desired action. Whether an ad, a social media flyer, or a website, a call to action tells your audience what to do and gives them a reason to click a required link. For example – ‘Buy now!’, ‘Download here’, ‘Visit (website)’, ‘Start now’.

9. Stay updated: 

The online landscape changes frequently. To be successful in your digital marketing activities, you should be updated on the changing trends for all the platforms. This helps you stay relevant and more readily available to close a sale.

10. Complement your effort with an amazing product: 

It is important that your product (or service) meets and even surpasses your consumer’s expectations. If the consumer’s expectation is not met, you won’t have returning customers. With social media, it’s a lot easier for a dissatisfied consumer to bring down your digital marketing effort.

11. Outsource your Digital Marketing activities: 

This is perhaps the most vital tip of all. Digital marketing can be overwhelming; keeping up with changes in trends and policies and at the same time, running your business or organization is tough. Therefore, outsourcing your digital marketing efforts to an agency or an individual who is a professional will yield bigger returns for your business. 

Still not convinced about Digital Marketing, Read about the unique benefits of Digital Marketing to your business.

Get in touch with Progital to schedule a free content strategy consultation.