How Digital Marketing Impacts Businesses

What is Digital Marketing ?

Digital marketing is a way for brands, businesses or individuals to promote their products, services or imagery over digital channels (mainly over the internet).

It is important as the consumers today are spending majority of their time over digital mediums and for businesses it is important that they advertise, engage and inform their target audience about their products & services to influence their buying decision.

How Digital Marketing Impacts Businesses

Businesses today are impacted by digital marketing. These channels are majorly used for two purposes

1. Sell products & services
2. Provide information to customers about the various products, services, offers, promotions, new launches etc.

Here we list down 9 ways in which digital marketing can impact your business tremendously.

1. Reduce Marketing Costs

The cost of marketing on digital channels is much lower than traditional mediums. You can reach the precise audience you like and show a very specific message. This in return increases engagement and influences purchase decision. You are more likely to respond to a message and connect to it when it is tailored to your requirement.

Traditional methods do not give this advantage. You have limitations on audience customisation and the cost is usually not completely in your control. The campaigns once rolled out on traditional method are not easy to withdraw. On the other hand, these things are completely under your control and you can alter them anytime you like.

Therefore, digital marketing can reduce your cost by marketing only to specific audience with tailored communication. We will also explain this through an example.

Example – Cost of reaching a consumer through an Instagram Post will be lower as compared to a Magazine advertisement. Instagram helps you build a following and that will give you free organic traffic and this alone explains cost implication. You can reach a wide variety of people organically and then run ads for specific audiences. On the other hand, magazine ad is a sunk cost. No free traffic and no contact with the audience.

2. Reduce Selling Cost

The amount of resources and people required to close a transaction in store compared to online store, the resources required for online store are lower. There are no such costs of rent, showroom, salesmen etc which a business would incur. Though the online store has its own costs but are very minimal compared to the retail store.

In a physical store, you need people to handle the customer, answer their queries and close the sale. The major task is customer service. While using digital marketing, you can reduce the need for your manpower and answer customer queries efficiently.

You can answer customer questions on email, social media or blog. Customer service can also be handled on website or other digital platforms and you can also inform customers about peak hours and when will it be best for them to visit store. In similar ways, a lot of your work can be taken care of on digital platforms.

3. Reaching the Right Audience

With the technologies available today, it is easy to target audience that the brand wants & measure the results. Its possible to reach local as well as global audience. Targeting & segmenting can be done on the basis of demographics, location, devices they use, past behaviour, status, profession etc.

You can target customers on a whole bunch of attributes and can market your products to them. There is no need to show your ads to everyone, but you can show them to people who are specifically searching for your product or service. You can even show to people whom you think are the most likely to purchase your products or service.

4. More Closer to Your Customers

Yes, it brings you more closer to your customers. You can connect with them and they can connect with you anytime and from anywhere. The best way according to us here, is by using social media. You can interact with your customers on social media, website and other digital channels.

You can build a brand following on these channels. When you share your products and services or any other content, your customers can share their experience or engage over the content. You can understand how your customer sees your brand, product and how do they use it. It can help you align your brand strategy. You can understand how do they perceive you as a brand and how  loyal are they going to be?

Another way of getting closer is by answering the direct customer questions and increasing engagement with them. You can also use influencers here. These can help sway audience towards you. It is more likely that new customers would trust existing customers reviews than your advertisements.

5. Easy to Measure (Analytics)

Marketing is an investment that every business makes to increase its revenue. It is very important that the investment is made in the right channels, which can bring more and more of revenue. That is what every business wants and looks out for. In traditional methods, you can see the changes in revenue but cannot be measured precisely. It is very difficult to say that the revenue growth was due to magazine ads or news paper ads.

We know that digital marketing can help reduce marketing cost. There is one more very crucial aspect to it. You can measure which ads, which demographics have been driving results. This is can save your tremendous amount of time and resources. You will be able to see the results and immediately decide where to invest more and where to slow down.

It is easier to track and measure the success of a marketing campaign. Tools like Google Analytics etc help in web analytics which gives a clear picture as which mediums, demographics and what part of the strategy is working.

6. Better Understanding of the Consumer

As you know digital technologies can bring you closer to the customers. It can also help you understand your customers better. You can know their demographics such as age, gender, location etc. The tools give a better understanding of the consumer on digital platforms. It can help understand businesses as what is it that their consumers are looking for and where are they located. This can help you understand where you stand strong and what are your improvement areas.

Yes, you can get the improvement areas and production ideas from it. The loyal consumers when leave a feedback or review they do share the need or problem solved and what made them happy. This can help you understand what did you right and what possibly went wrong. You can ask your loyal customers for improvements areas directly too. Run your ideas through them and understand if it will work for them. Even research if there is an unsaid need that they have and you can provide solution to them.

7. Competitors Customers

It is very unlikely that when you are doing digital marketing, your competitors will not be doing the same. Our point here is, even if the competitors are there or not, the customers are there who might not be using your product or service. They could possibly be using competitors products or services.

As you know, you can reach a particular set of demographics very efficiently, you can target your competitors customers. Having known why your existing customers prefer you over others, you can use this to market your offerings to your competitors customers. Thereby, giving you an opportunity to convert your non buyers into buyers.

With competitors also aware of the benefits of digital marketing, there is a very high chance that your competitor would already be targeting and influencing your consumers. To stay on the Top of Mind for your consumers, brands use digital mediums as the consumer spends a major chunk of their time on digital platforms/mediums.

8. Source of Revenue / Channel for Sales

The digital platforms for the businesses have become revenue generators, both directly and indirectly. Directly where the transaction is tracked and identified & indirectly is when the digital platforms help in decision making and the purchase happens on offline channels.

You can effectively roll out a campaign or promotion and measure success, also create options for purchasing it on the website. Your website, social media profiles and fan followings can be an immediate audience to sell and generate revenue over it. Google Shopping, Facebook Shop, eCommerce Store, Pinterest Shop etc are examples where you can sell to your audience directly on the digital platform where you are running the marketing campaigns/promotions.

9. Facilitates Customisation

With digital technologies it is possible to take and handle customised orders on the digital medium itself. You can offer a lot more of extras to up-sell and cross sell to your customer. For businesses that sell customised products, it is very useful for them.

The problem with customisation is that you never know what the customer might order and in that case, keeping a ready stock is not a good idea. If you want your wallet to have your name written on it or if you want your mother’s name on the new ring. It is not possible to have these items ready. In such a case you can draw the customer to digital channels and offer customisation options. It becomes easier to handle and the customer also chooses what he/she likes.

If your business is of a kind where you can provide these customisation, you can use digital channels to open up a new areas of sales for you.