Digital marketing refers to the act of using the web and online technologies to promote business products/services. In today’s world of technological revolution and research, many businesses have decided to expand their market reach by employing technology that is currently vast in most parts of the globe. Digitisation of business processes and functions is among the steps that many businesses are undertaking to remain relevant and robust in the market. Here are some of the essential things to note about digital marketing, its benefits, and its downsides.
Benefits of digital marketing
Digital marketing helps in the targeting of specific potential customers. Through studying a customer’s pattern of internet searching, the business can get information about those people who regularly search for products or services that are similar or related to the business products. This enables the company to send suitable and more enticing offers to the specific customer that is likely to get involved with that transaction.
Global-reach – The most significant advantage of digital marketing is that it expands the business market to the entire globe! It means that anyone in the world is a potential customer to the company provided they can access the internet with their digital gadgets such as laptops and mobile phones.
Huge ROI – since digital marketing expands the business market to a global reach, it means that more customers will be reached: therefore, more profit to the business (Return on Investment).
Digital marketing also reduces the costs of carrying out the business by lowering the costs of reaching the customers and also the cost of maintaining the company by having clearly set objectives.
A digital marketing agency helps the business to attain a competitive advantage. A company is likely to be in a better position than its competitors when it uses digital marketing and other technological resources in conducting its operations. Digital marketing ensures that the business remains relevant in the market and up-to-date with the needs of the customers.
It is quite easy to share information with many customers through the use of digital marketing strategy at a lower cost, unlike traditional methods that require a lot of resources and a lot of costs to reach customers who might not even be interested in doing business with the company.
Some demerits of digital marketing in businesses
There are technical skills and expertise that are required to run digital marketing in a business, and this means that you need to train employees or acquire the experts for that purpose.
Some customers may shy away from the digital marketing content for fear of being scammed or for fear of their online security and privacy. This can make the digital marketing process to be very inefficient and very costly to the business.
The process of acquiring customers’ internet logs and their routine search behaviour can prove to be time-consuming and needs a lot of patience and discipline.
When a business decides to take its operations over the internet, it also increases the level of competition because there are thousands or even millions of similar businesses already existing on the internet. Therefore, it needs to be very disciplined and very smart in order to be an outstanding one from the rest of the businesses.
Digital marketing, if properly utilised, can be of great advantage to a business in many ways. On the other hand, if not well done, it can lead to the end of such a business. It’s up to the company to come up with a unique plan that will help them stand out from others.