At one point online marketing was just a new and different way to market. It opened up a new form of media on which to peddle goods and services. But within just the past few years, the importance of digital marketing has become something else. It’s become an integral part of what a business is to its customers. It’s no longer enough to have a website or run some un-focused Ads campaign. Every business needs a clear, digital marketing plan.

Don’t have integrated digital marketing strategies working for your business?

Time is working against you because of it. As the Internet becomes entwined with everything we do, the importance of digital marketing is becoming crystal clear.

It Reaches People Where They Spend Their Time & Money

The average Internet user has at least 8 social media accounts. 97% of US adults under 65 are on social media at least once a month. The vast majority are on it every day. Social media is strongly preferred as a means of customer care. Although as many as 89% of customer messages are ignored by businesses. 22% of the world population is on Facebook. 62% of people in the US are there. 76% of Facebook users and 51% of Instagram users are on it every day.

Importance of digital marketing

30% of people on social media mention a specific brand when referring to milestones in their lives. Gen X is slightly more likely to interact with a brand on social media than millennials. The trend right now is the average person spends over 2 hours a day on social media. Teenagers average 9 hours. Social media is integrated into everything they do from school, to work, to entertainment, to hanging out with friends. Social Media is where people are. 

 

But do people buy things there?

One of the top 10 reasons people say they’re on social media is to buy products advertised to them. They spend around 37% of their social media time interacting with branded content. Putting valuable content out there where your target audience is already scrolling is an effective means of inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a form of marketing where you’re drawing your target market in and attract customers as opposed to outwardly pushing your brand on them, like cold calling for example. You don’t have to work as hard to convince someone to purchase something when they find your brand on their own and can see the value you would offer them from your content. 57% of Millennials say that social media has made the ads they see more relevant to them. 48% of people say they made their last online purchase as the direct result of a Facebook ad. But only 45% of marketers think their social media efforts are paying off. There are definitely some winners and losers on social media.

Just having a profile and sharing some content once in a while isn’t enough. You need a social media marketing strategy. When you understand how to maximize your digital marketing ROI, that’s when you’ll see a digital transformation. Social media marketing and advertising are only a piece of digital marketing. But it’s a very important one. Throughout this article, we’ll look at many kinds of online marketing methods. This will show the importance of digital marketing to your business.

Digital Marketing Levels the Playing Field for Small Business

You’ve seen it happen before. A huge company like Walmart comes to town and wipes out 100’s of local specialty shops. Starbucks rolls in and mom and pop coffee and bagel shops close down. We’ve seen the online equivalent of this with Amazon. It’s hard to compete with the name recognition or the millions that they put into marketing and reputation management. That’s where the importance of digital marketing shines as a beacon of hope for small businesses. It’s the same for brick & mortar, e-commerce, and personal brands alike. Digital marketing actually allows smaller businesses the ability to hold a top-ranking position. Like a client we helped outrank Amazon and Lowe’s using our Google Ads services.

 

AdWords

Digital marketing allows you to compete with your competition by exposing you to a wider audience on a much smaller advertising budget. When managed effectively, it gives businesses laser-focused control over where and how they spend their money. When you have this kind of control and the data to support decisions, you make smarter ones. Additionally, the explosion of video marketing has leveled the playing field even further for small business owners. Small businesses are going viral and reaching millions organically with short-form videos like TikToks, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and more. Video has become the preferred media type by both potential customers and the social media platforms themselves. Therefore, video marketing has become extremely effective at allowing small brands to reach their ideal customers by the masses.

More Targeted

When you run a magazine ad, for example, you definitely do some targeting. You know if your target audience reads that publication. You have some control over placement and size. You control the message within certain publisher guidelines. That ad may reach 1 million-plus readers. But what percent of this million is actually your target? A particular fashion magazine might have a demographic 59% female ages 35-55. They may have some college education. And you know they’re interested in the type of fashion depicted in the magazine. But that’s a huge demographic. One of the gifts that digital marketing has given us is the ability to dissect huge demographics. Whittle them down into very targeted groups to get super-focused on a specific kind of person.

Who’s that person? It’s the person most likely to purchase what you sell.

When you do targeting at this level, you create an ad that’s highly relevant to your target market. Because it’s so relevant, it connects on a level that more general advertising can’t. This connection gives it the ability to influence decisions. You can do it without following annoying traditional methods and advertising. You’re not showing the same ad thousands of times over a month’s period. Or interrupting someone’s program over and over. So, what kind of targeting is possible with digital marketing? You’ll probably be surprised. Let’s look at search advertising as an example. That includes Google Ads. In this form of digital marketing, you target people doing searches in Google.

Search results now account for about 64% of website traffic across the Internet.

For businesses who’ve put a strong focus on SEO (search engine optimization) as much as 80% of traffic arrives from search results. Search advertising, aka PPC (pay per click) allows you to position yourself near the top of searches. PPC allows you to do this even if you’re not appearing in an organic search. With search advertising, you can target people with a very specific:

Challenge
Goal
Profession
Education level
Buying behavior
And more

Do this by bidding on search queries that represent these specific targets. Build ads and landing pages around them to convert that traffic.

Social media advertising similarly allows you to narrow your target audience Use the data they’ve collected about their users.