Welcome to our first Quick Questions post! Every week, we will be answering a common question about marketing, or an aspect of business.
This week, our question comes from a fan who entered our giveaway contest for a Fire 7 Tablet. Today, we will answer the following question: “do I need digital marketing?”
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies. That means the Internet and mobile phones, as well as display marketing. Any time you sell something to somebody through email, social media, or an online store, you are a digital marketer.
Let’s not mince words. If you want keep growing your business today, you need to have an online presence. Period, point-blank.
Our society is driven by technology. Ninety-five percent of Americans own a cell phone. Seventy-seven percent own a smartphone.
That’s a staggering statistic! How many things do more than three-quarters of Americans own? Really let that sink in.
Marketing is a broad term, so digital marketing – by its nature – is also a broad term. Digital marketing includes:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Online digital ads, also known as pay-per-click (PPC)
- Conversion optimization
- Web and social media analytics
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Content creation – both in written and video form
Each of these subcategories could easily be its own article, and this is by no means an exhaustive list.
Significance of digital marketing and your business
In order to keep growing your business and stay competitive within the market, you need an online presence. You can then market your business in many ways in many different places online.
To drive our point home, let’s think about the basics first. Email marketing, for example, is a great way to reach your current audience. Email is a reliable way to stay in touch with existing customers. What’s more, setting up a “drip marketing” campaign gives you the ability to convert leads into customers in a systematic way.
When thinking of digital marketing, many people think of social media. As they should – it’s a dominant force in today’s digital marketing landscape. Having a strong presence on social media allows you to communicate with customers, build brand awareness, and market your products and your brand easily and for an affordable cost.
Having a steady presence on one or more social media platforms is one of the best ways to actively communicate with your customers and your target audience. Facebook and Instagram, in particular, are juggernauts in the social media world.
Facebook Business Pages and Instagram Business accounts are incredibly feature-rich, providing not only accessible ad systems but also useful data for understanding your audience.
Even now, we’re just scratching the surface. Lead generation is a major subset of digital marketing in its own right. It’s all about taking actions to drive more people to your online channels. Then you have ads, which play an important role in raising brand awareness on many different channels. What’s more, you have content marketing (like what you see here), which is focused on producing quality content to keep your audience engaged and informed.
(And this is us keeping the article short!)
Does it make sense to hire a digital marketer?
In many cases, yes!
Digital marketers can provide you and your business with a tremendous amount of help in digital marketing. In fact, so as not to flatter ourselves excessively, we’re going to focus on just four reasons why you should consider hiring a digital marketer.
Digital marketers can generate revenue. A lot of marketing comes down to getting your name out there. That means generating awareness, finding good prospects, and getting people ready to either buy or request a quote. Digital marketers know the best ways to reach your target audience and help you earn more money.
Having a digital marketer will save you time. Running a business is hard work. Countless hours go into making everything run smoothly. Having someone to take care of the marketing aspect for you makes this easier. Less time spent on marketing products or content means more time spent on creating quality work and running your business.
Marketers will help you create goal-driven strategies. Working one-on-one with you to find out what your needs, wants, and goals are, digital marketers are there to help you identify and meet goals.
Finally, digital marketers can make sense of all of the marketing data you have. Facebook, Instagram, Google Analytics, and countless other tools create a deluge of data which is hard to contextualize. Good marketers help you understand what is really happening with your business.
Final Thoughts
Digital marketing is a dominant force in the marketing world today. In order to grow your business, an internet presence is a must. Understanding digital marketing will help you identify meaningful goals and create plans to meet them. Hiring a digital marketer allows you to tap into a wealth of knowledge to generate revenue, save time, and succeed in business!
