You’re probably doing some kind of online marketing right now. Maybe you have a Facebook page and a website. You might even be doing some pay-per-click ads. However, if you’re like most small business owners, you’re probably not satisfied with the results.
You may start to wonder why you’re investing the money month-after-month.
It’s a valid question to ask of any expense that doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere. But, before you decide to scrap your online presence and go back to “what’s always worked”, maybe it’s time to really understand what digital marketing is for.
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Before You Drop Your Digital Marketing
When you’re frustrated about spending money without getting the results you expect, it’s normal to want to cut that budget line. After all, you likely don’t have room for waste in your monthly expenses. But before you make that cut, you need to consider what you may be giving up.
Digital marketing is ultimately the future of marketing. As we move towards a world that spends less time consuming it’s media on cable and the networks and more time consuming it on YouTube and Facebook, all marketing will adapt to meet the audience where they spend their time.
If you decide to drop your online presence now, you may kill your company long-term.
Digital Marketing Doesn’t Lead To Short-Term Sales
Unfortunately, if you’re looking for short-term sales from your digital marketing efforts, you may need to rethink your expectations. Digital marketing is a long-game that will lead to consistent growth. You can’t expect the wrong things from it.
With that in mind, putting your focus on long-term growth is what’s going to keep your company alive. Putting a great digital marketing strategy in place now will create a solid foundation of growth for years to come. As long as you continue to adapt to whatever the digital world becomes, you’ll continue to have success.
So What Should You Expect From Strong Digital Marketing
Like I suggested earlier, your digital marketing may not be meeting your expectations, leaving you willing to scrap it. However, it may be your expectations that are off. Even if they’re not the problem (and your digital marketing guy/gal/team just sucks), you want to make sure you can correct things the right way. That means you’ve got to know what you’re getting into.
Here are the real reasons you should have excellent digital marketing.
Get Your Company Discovered
One of the biggest and most obvious benefits to strong digital marketing is the way it can help people find you. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be a magic beacon pointing a stream of clients at your front door, though. It means you’re going to be findable by someone running a search for your company, your service, or possibly your industry.
Many of the components of digital marketing – blogs, SEO, social media, PPC ads – are all things that will establish your online visibility. That means potential customers from all over the world will be able to find you.
Imagine owning a storefront that’s just had a freeway built next to it. Drive-by traffic surges, which inevitably leads to more visitors and more sales. Just as a consequence of sheer volume, your business would grow. That’s exactly what a great online presence can do for you.
Build Your Business’ Credibility
What would happen if thousands of people believed you were one of the most knowledgeable companies in your industry? Would that help your sales team close more sales? Would it bring in more leads? Digital marketing plays a big role in building that belief system among your audience.
Digital marketing requires content. From blogs to videos, podcasts, and social media, that content is going to establish a baseline understanding of your company’s knowledge. When you’re able to deliver real, reliable, helpful answers to your customers’ most pressing questions, you begin to prove that you know your industry.
When you can establish yourself as a reliable source for your audience to find the information they need, you build credibility beyond your audience. Google starts to take notice, and that credibility begins to play into your search ranking.
Develop A Strong Presence For The Future
As I noted earlier, digital marketing will one day (in the not-so-distant future) be the only kind of marketing. Consumers are no longer spending time on traditional television and radio, instead favoring streaming services like Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify. Most print media, like magazines and newspapers, have nearly all moved online, leaving their former paper formats in the past.
That means that attention is being dramatically focused towards the internet. For a company to survive, they need to focus their marketing where the attention is. Because digital marketing is about using the internet to bring awareness to your company, it places you right in the spotlight.
Capture More Attention
Marketing is about attention first and foremost. If you can’t get the eyeballs looking your way, you can’t get them to see what you’ve got to offer. Once you start thinking of marketing from that perspective, you can really begin to understand the point of digital marketing.
Done correctly and completely, digital marketing takes advantage of the full breadth of tools available on the internet – social media, search engines, pay-per-click ads, video, podcasts, etc – to draw in as many followers as possible. By delivering real value through your marketing channels, you captivate an audience and get them to voluntarily stick around.
It’s the value proposition that matters.
When you can deliver high-value content to your audience, they will continue to pay attention to what you have to say. Then, when it comes time for the ask, you have enough eyes to get a yes. It’s a long-term process, but it builds much stronger customer relationships.
Digital Marketing Requires You To Give Way More Than You Take
The real flip to great digital marketing is the give. People expect value from the brands they stand by, far beyond the product or service they offer. Be it education or entertainment, the content you create has to deliver something that people will appreciate.
When you decide to take digital marketing seriously and put it in play correctly, you’ll cement success into your future.
