How To Use Digital Marketing To Grow Your Business

Research shows that 95% of small businesses owners plan to increase their digital marketing spend this year.

Are you one of them?

If so, you’re taking a major step in the right direction. The digital marketing software sphere alone will skyrocket to $105.28 billion by 2028, signaling that more business leaders than ever before plan to invest in the tools and technologies required to put their company top of mind.

Today, we’re taking a look at the importance of digital marketing from a competitive and performance standpoint to grow your business. Why does it matter and what does it mean for the future of your enterprise?

Let’s get started!

Boosting Your Online Visibility

In the past, the only way to drive traffic to your store was to create physical signage. You’d spend the money, do the work, and hope that passersby would notice and direct their foot traffic your way.

Now, both e-commerce retailers and brick-and-mortar retailers alike are turning to the internet to deliver outreach messages right to the customers they need.

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, online sales outpaced general merchandise stores for the first time this year. What’s driving this shift in market share?

Today’s buyers are hopping online to buy everything from their weekly groceries to their Friday night movie rental. In fact, even if they’re determined to buy an item in-store, 82% will still conduct online research, first!

Simply put, having an active internet presence is necessary to survive in today’s competitive business market. If you bring all of your core functions, including your marketing campaigns, into the digital sphere, the number of eyes you can get on your content jumps from your local patrons to a global online community.

Create Customer Connections

Did you know that 70% of shoppers who feel a connection to your brand will spend twice as much on your business? One of the major digital marketing benefits is that it allows you to create personal connections with your online followers.

This is especially true if your digital marketing efforts stretch across the major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Here, you can share blog posts, advertise upcoming promotions and product releases, and spark conversations with your target audience.

Another benefit of staying active on these channels?

They give you a direct link to the opinions and preferences of the buyers your business wants. When you connect in this way, you establish an organic and natural connection that feels more authentic than gimmicky sales tactics.

As only 52% of consumers around the globe trust businesses, these genuine networking opportunities are gold.

Establish Thought Leadership

Want to boost your brand credibility, grow your online following and improve your bottom line? In today’s competitive marketplace, this kind of growth requires thought leadership.

You might be the best in your industry niche, with state-of-the-art products, services, and ideas. However, unless you’re sharing this knowledge with the people who need to hear it, your efforts could fall flat.

This is where digital marketing comes in.

The top way to establish your company as a thought leader in its space is to create digital content that meets the following criteria:

• Relevant
• Helpful
• Interesting
• Timely
• Shareable
• Actionable

Regardless of your sector, you have something valuable and new to bring to the conversation, so it’s time to say it!

Create a blog, record a podcast, write an e-book or develop an entire online course around the knowledge that you want to share. Some material, such as blogs, can be free while you might charge customers a fee to download longer-form content.

Appeal to Mobile Users

An effective digital marketing strategy incorporates website optimization tactics to ensure that all content looks as great on a smartphone as it does on a laptop. When you take into account load time, typography, image size, touchability and more, you can help deliver a seamless user experience across any device.

Research shows that 72% of people will access the internet using only their smartphone by 2025. If your marketing collateral is responsive, quick to load, and visually dynamic across any screen, you’ll capture their attention, even when they’re on-the-go.

Create a Brand Presence

Digital marketing allows you to carve out your own corner of the internet. For your brand, this means that you can create cohesive touchpoints all around the web that tie your story together. At the same time, you also offer your customers the opportunity to add their own pages to the tale.

From your social media accounts and blog posts to your virtual checkouts and web pages, every online element can tie back to your brand, showcasing your logo, font, verbiage, and more.

In this way, you can create a memorable, unified brand image that’s critical for customer recall. Then, when someone uses your service or buys your product, they can hop online and tell others about it.

From the glowing reviews to the negative ones, all kinds of client feedback can help fuel your business forward. Studies show that 84% of people actually trust online reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family members, so it’s important to give your audience a voice. This is free advertising you couldn’t get without the power of digital marketing.

Leverage SEO to Improve Rank

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a major facet of digital marketing. In short, this is the collection of tools and best practices that help your website rank as high as possible on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

In years past, adding a couple of keywords to your site was the extent of a successful SEO strategy. Now, however, SEO requirements are more complex than ever before, and forward-thinking companies require sophisticated tools and technologies to keep them on track.

While valuable content and keywords are still relevant, a modern SEO strategy takes into account other factors, including:

• Your audience and industry
• User intent
• Reporting and analytics
• Crawling
• Mobile SEO
• Technical SEO
• Indexing
• Linking

Knowledge of SEO can make a major difference in the success of your digital marketing efforts. This is why it pays to partner with an SEO expert who can show you where your website currently stands and help you get it where it needs to be.

Expand Through E-mail Marketing

In a world of flashier and more tech-savvy measures, e-mail marketing still holds incredible power. However, sticking with the old method of blasting your latest blog post to your list of subscribers won’t cut it anymore.

Advanced digital marketing platforms allow you to customize this outreach approach to improve conversion rates and draw more traffic to your site. Some strategies you can implement include:

• Personalizing your messages
• Segmenting your subscribers
• Sending mobile-friendly emails
• Automating campaigns
• Testing copy, buttons, and designs

Email subscriber management tools and services can help you transition from your current email marketing system onto a more effective and modern platform, such as MailChimp, without interrupting your subscribers.

Analyze Your Campaign Efforts

Do you want to measure how successful your last marketing campaign was? Do you need metrics to track and patterns to analyze so you can make sure your next one is the most effective yet? Paper-based modeling methods are antiquated and limited in scope, which can hinder and stall decision-making efforts.

Digital marketing software, on the other hand, allows you a valuable and in-depth look at key performance metrics.

Regardless of whether you’re running an email marketing campaign, analyzing website visits, measuring site traffic or tracking customer service response times, you need insight into the numbers that matter. And, it’s smart to have these numbers as soon as possible. This way, you can take action before your cart abandonment rates skyrocket or your SERP position dips.

Leverage the Power and Importance of Digital Marketing To Grow Your Business

You’ve put the hours into growing your business, developing your projects and fine-tuning your management approach. Now, it’s time to make sure everyone else knows your name.

Traditional marketing strategies that worked years ago could render your company irrelevant or even obsolete today. That’s why you can’t overlook or overemphasize the importance of digital marketing to grow your business. From email marketing lists to SEO strategies and social media campaigns, there is no limit to the steps you can implement.

Want a little help as you unroll your new outreach plan? That’s where we come in.

We’re experts in this space, with years of experience helping clients make the most of their media strategies. From website development and email subscriber management to social media analysis and publishing services, we do it all.

Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your business grow. In the meantime, check out our free e-book on marketing strategies for business success!