The phrase, ‘digital marketing’ isn’t exactly new: most of us have heard of it and broadly understand what it is. From over-talkative chatbots to engaging EDMs, digital marketing incorporates a whole lot. You’d struggle to find a flourishing business in 2021 with marketing efforts that aren’t predominantly digital.
So, what IS digital marketing?
Digital marketing covers all marketing that uses electronic devices or the internet to deliver messages. To level up and increase sales, successfully leveraging channels like social media, search engines, and email marketing can help your profits grow and grow (and grow). And who doesn’t want that?
All marketing is really just about building valuable relationships with your audience in the most meaningful ways and to reach your future customers, you need to know where they are. So where is your customer hanging out? Our best guess is online.
According to Statista, the average daily time spent on the internet per capita worldwide has increased from 75 minutes in 2011 to 192 minutes in 2021. By our calculations, that’s a massive 152% increase!
Here are a few types of digital marketing that you might already be using:
- Social media marketing
- Pay per click (PPC)
- Email marketing
- Search engine optimisation (SEO)
- Inbound marketing
- Content marketing
- Landing pages
Does digital marketing matter?
At 3PM, we know that digital marketing matters because we implement it and witness its positive results every single day. For a recent client, we increased leads by 600% and conversion rates from 0.08% to 2.8% in one month, just by refining their digital marketing strategy. Amazing, huh?
What are the benefits of effective digital marketing?
- Two of our absolute favourite things about digital marketing are kind of contradictory. On one hand, the whole world is reachable. With effective SEO and social media implementation you could reach your ideal customer thousands of miles away without having to leave the office. That means your prospective customer-base is HUGE!
- On the other hand, digital marketing allows you to narrow your focus down to a very specific niche. Is your perfect buyer persona a 60-year-old woman with a love of computer games and a cat obsession? With digital marketing you can reach that exact persona to build your brand and give people their perfect product or service. Strategies like segmenting, lead nurturing, and behaviour analysis can give you a head start on delivering exactly what they want.
- Digital marketing can make a real impact on customers and build loyalty through more frequent connections. Customer loyalty can be a difficult thing to master, but with engaging digital marketing you can get in front of your customer more often. That means that when they need to make a purchase, you’ll be the business they think of first.
- Remember when businesses used to hand-deliver informative postcards to your letterbox? ‘WE DO PRINTING’ and ‘BRUCE’S HANDY REPAIRS’ flyers aren’t necessarily ineffective – but how do you really know whether they worked or not? Did 80% of people chuck them in the bin? Did 40% of potential customers put the flyer to one side for later? Digital marketing tools let you measure exactly how people are interacting with what you’re putting out there – meaning you can adjust and adapt as necessary.
Are there negatives to digital marketing?
Digital marketing doesn’t have to be complicated, but it can be time-consuming. Getting experienced, passionate professionals onboard can prevent you wasting time on digital activities that look homemade and get very little engagement.
It’s more important than ever to be online, but it’s especially important to do it well. The breadth of digital marketing tools and options can be totally overwhelming when you’re running a business. It’s hard to know where to start.
At 3PM, we can help you deliver a marketing strategy that has high return on investment, engages the right people at the right time, and sets you apart from your competitors. Give us a call to find out how we can help your business thrive.
