Every business needs some form of marketing to generate new customers and sales. Of course, you can’t go outside your home or go online without seeing some company’s advertisement, but which is better for your business’s growth and budget?
Digital marketing supersedes the return on investment and customer growth that traditional forms of marketing generate. How? Let’s take a look.
Digital and traditional marketing explained
We’ve all had some experience with marketing, usually as a recipient of some tested method that gets us to buy products or services. Marketing is an art form of persuasion where a company attracts customers to spend money for their goods or services. Simple, right? Well, on the other side, for those using marketing to attract potential customers, there are hours of research and many dollars spent. Statista reports that companies spent around $262 billion in 2021 alone on U.S. marketing. Traditional marketing uses print and broadcast media like tv, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards, mail, and networking to reach its audiences, but since the introduction of social media and the internet in the 1990s and early 2000s, companies have found more ways to reach customers through the digital marketplace. So, what is digital marketing?
Well, digital marketing is marketing, the enticement of companies to buy their products or services, on digital platforms such as the internet and mobile apps. It utilizes websites, mobile devices, social media, and search engines to reach its target market. Marketers with the know-how can strategically manipulate these digital platforms to boost your goods’ and services’ customer views and traffic. Hence, you still need research and money to succeed on this platform. Yet, digital marketing made it more realistic for small businesses to compete in local and national markets. With everything online collecting data, marketers use that information in some way to get companies their competitive edge in brand awareness and building client bases.
Digital marketing’s advantages over traditional
Historically, companies used the traditional marketing industry to reach a broader audience base through commercials on radio and television broadcasts, either between songs, shows, or sporting events, to get the edge in product promotion. However, costs have skyrocketed for those spots, with primetime events, such as the Super Bowl, costing up to $6.5 million for a 30-second time slot, says USA Today. Not sure how many small businesses can afford that price tag.
Traditional marketing is about the eyeball share. In other words, how much exposure to information could marketers get to their target audience through billboards, tv, newspapers, magazines, etc., increasing the probability their eyes would see the advertisement. However, traditional marketing advertisements saw drawbacks like:
- One-way conversation communication with no real-time feedback loop
- Return on investment, or ROI, can be difficult to measure since data tracking on what advertisement method won the customer’s business
- No easy way to update or edit information once published
- Hard to tailor marketing experience to the individual
- Easy for people to ignore advertisements by changing the channel or throwing away marketing resources
- It feels more intrusive and annoying to potential customers
While traditional marketing may reach larger audiences, digital marketing can overcome the above shortcomings and is usually more cost-effective for any sized business. Digital marketing has become so intricate in companies’ business models that they have chosen it over traditional marketing since 2015. Statista reports that marketers continue to reduce their budget allotments for traditional marketing, applying more to their digital campaigns. February 2022 saw a 16.2 percent increase in digital market spending compared to the past 12 months. Let’s found out why companies prefer digital marketing over traditional.
Of the many avenues digital marketing taps into, search engine optimization (SEO), social media data and platforms, email campaigns, and lead generation are some of its most significant assets. SEO harnesses the algorithms used by browser searches, like Google, to place a company’s website higher than its competitors in the results. The goal is to get on the first page of any search because those sites get the most traffic. Additionally, someone can use the success of another site by linking to it, providing their online material with more validity and public visibility. It’s a whole science, but utilizing SEO gives digital marketers a leg up on building their brand awareness and client base in ways traditional marketing can’t.
Social media, by far, has become the fastest-growing avenue for digital marketing, with most of the planet being members of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and the like. The data these companies have on people’s preferences makes for an individually tailored marketing experience that will give a company more effective hits and opportunities to attract customers. After a few online searches or discussions, you will start to see specialized marketing pop up on your landing pages in your social media apps. These tactics create lead generation as well. Those times where you offer up your email or some contact info after clicking a link, receiving a coupon, or whatever is where companies can reach out to you personally to follow up and generate a sale. Maybe a little scary, but insanely useful for companies or individuals selling products.
Email campaigns take digital marketing from just brand awareness to establishing customer relationships. Email campaigns harness the power of an already engaged audience. This connection marketers use to nurture and tailor customer experiences, so they feel prioritized and special, increasing customer retention and brand loyalty. How often do you buy something you could get somewhere else just because you trust or like a brand better? Somewhere along the way, this relationship nurtured you into a faithful follower of the brand. Email marketing is one of the inexpensive and easiest ways to do just that.
No matter what industry or size of your business, these aspects of digital marketing are why so many companies are switching over increasingly to the digital marketing space. When you have tools like these that are fast and effective, why go back to the shotgun style with traditional marketing? The answer is you don’t.
Digital marketing, a successful strategy
We’ve talked about a few advantages digital marketing has over traditional marketing. Still, we all know seeing the numbers is more persuasive. Here are a few that demonstrate the prowess of digital marketing and the success that businesses and individuals see with it:
- 69% of marketers invested in SEO strategy during 2021
- SEO is the number one strategy for 71% of marketers
- Half of all website traffic globally has come from mobile devices since 2017
- Marketers expect the amount of global social media users to reach approximately 3.43 billion in 2023
- In the U.S., around 250 million (88%) of the population have a smartphone
- Marketers use Facebook as their primary channel for content distribution, with 64% of businesses saying their Facebook marketing resulted in new customers.
- Forecasts show that Instagram will reach 1.1 billion users in 2022
- 319 million people use Twitter
- Video is the most used social media experience, increasing customer engagement, which is why apps like TikTok are the most downloaded non-gaming apps.
- With 4 of 5 LinkedIn members driving business decisions, LinkedIn is the largest business-to-business (B2B) advertiser in the U.S. at 32.3%
- 64% of small businesses say their email campaigns were effective to very effective in driving customer growth and retention
- Marketers using email campaigns noted a 760% increase in revenue, making email marketing the second most effective method for building brand awareness.
- Early lead generation resulted from email marketing, says 53% of marketers
- Facebook and Google searches, an SEO mechanism, have the highest ROI, with 78% of salespeople using social selling to outsell their peers that don’t.
Digital marketing has a tremendous reach and potential due to today’s mobile and social media society. Companies can generate customers and increase their sales in the early stages of their digital marketing campaigns. It’s time to leave the past behind and move forward with all the rewards digital marketing brings, and there are specialists out there who can help you do it.
