What is Digital Marketing Used for?

You may already know what digital marketing is about, but without understanding what it is for, it's hard to take full advantage of it. Digital marketing encompasses all marketing activities conducted on the Internet and includes any other marketing form done on an electronic device (radio and television advertising).

Understanding how it is utilized is the key to harnessing its full potential and leveraging it for the long-term growth of your business. It's better to have a clear goal in mind when using digital marketing, whether it is getting more visitors to your site or building your email list.

Increasing Web Traffic

Digital marketing practices like SEO and SEM make it possible for you to send paid and organic web traffic your way. Organic traffic is "free" traffic because the visitors you gain organically (from search engine result pages) aren't necessarily paid for. SEM involves buying an ad spot at the top of the page, so any traffic gained using this type of digital marketing is considered paid traffic.

When you want to make your website visible, you use digital marketing strategies like SEO and SEM to get good rankings on SERPs. Depending on the quality of your SEO techniques, which can be world-class if you choose to work with a digital agency, you can get a lot of traffic from just a handful of digital marketing strategies.

And if that's not enough, digital marketing scales quite easily with your business, so you can easily shift focus from grabbing everyone's attention to getting the most relevant traffic to your website. You can achieve this using social media platforms like Facebook Ads. With the enterprise-grade digital marketing tools it offers, it levels the playing field for startups and small businesses with limited budgets.

Spreading Brand Awareness

Of the 7.8 billion people in the world, there are 4.5 billion active internet users, which means 58 % of the world's population is accessible online no matter where you are in the world. Evidently, the internet is an unimaginably vast network that you can use to gain rapid brand recognition with the right digital marketing strategies.

Spreading brand awareness is a fundamental step to growing an online presence. People have to know what you're about; otherwise, they won't know what value you're offering. Digital marketing allows you to advertise your business effectively to gain recognition as a reputable company in your niche.

That's important for long-term success.

Content marketing, SEO, PPC advertising, and social media marketing are just a few of the numerous types of digital marketing that can help you gain brand recognition. Even though written and audial content has decent conversion rates, the gold standard when it comes to maximizing engagement is visual content. When promoting your brand, ensure there are a lot of visual aspects that prospects can latch onto and quickly understand what you're about.

Promoting Sales and Conversions

Digital marketing is the only way you can promote products and services online. Whether you're a small B2C company, a B2B, or a SaaS firm, you must promote your products and services if you wish to get more conversions and make sales.

Marketing products may require a combination of content marketing, SEO, email marketing, PPC, SEM, social media marketing, and IM marketing. SEO, SEM, and PPC give you a more visible presence online, while email marketing allows you to target and re-target customers who have already shown interest in your company.

To maximize conversions, digital marketing allows you to showcase products and explain services through content marketing, which is arguably the most important type of digital marketing as far as product promotion is concerned. Using videos and other visual content can dramatically improve conversions, especially if you advertise to relevant audiences.

Creating a Fan Base

If there is one thing that assures you of repeat business, it is customer loyalty. Once you have a loyal fan base, your company can stay in business for as long as you don't lose your loyal customers. That's as straightforward as it gets.

How can businesses use digital marketing to create fan bases? Social media is the best platform for this as it allows you to create a page and a business identity online that other people can interact with. If your company has a visible presence online, the chances are good that people will trust you over your competition.

Creating customer fan bases may involve posting content regularly or interacting directly with your audience. The companies that thrive on social media can always be found in the comments section, providing assistance, clarifying points, or responding to feedback. Customers view you as a personable and friendly business when you communicate with them at a human level.

Creating a fan base is also a good way to promote word-of-mouth advertisement as loyal customers are more likely to encourage other people to use your brand over your competitors'.

Improving Customer Relations

One way to take advantage of social media is by using it as a platform to connect with your customers. Social media marketing is one of the fastest-growing digital marketing types that is proving far more lucrative than options like SEO. If you think about it, this type of marketing has no middlemen-it's just you and your audience.

Some businesses use social media exclusively for customer feedback. When a customer poses a question on their page, they may respond directly on a public platform or offer feedback privately by messaging them.

Either way, the company gains the trust of one or more customers because responding publicly allows other people to see how they interact with their customers. A private response builds a sense of trust and reliability between them and the customer.

Social media is a powerful tool for relating to your audience. Some businesses take full advantage of it by answering questions publicly, creating an answered FAQs section that ends up as a reference point for new customers looking for more information about their brand.

Having a good relationship with your customers means that your products and services are satisfactory. If they're not, you can use customer complaints to gauge how you can improve for the better. In other words, digital marketing gives you full control of how you interact with your valued audience.

Boosting Local Visibility

If your business caters primarily to a local audience, they need to know you're there. Google My Business is a local SEO marketing technique and is one of the best tools for boosting a business's local visibility. It allows you to create a profile for your company that gives people an overview of your business at a glance.

Platforms like GMB let you communicate things like your physical location, working hours, and pricing. You can even showcase some of your products on the page and share pictures of your business premises and your staff.

Most importantly, local SEO gives you the ability to market to customers that are near you. For example, customers that search for "restaurants near me" will get results that are filtered based on distance first, then relevance. So, the restaurants closer to their location get first priority. That's why local SEO is so important for a business that caters to a local clientele.

Retargeting Previous Customers

The long-term survival of your business depends on how much business you can get from your existing customers. That's why building an email list is one of the most important things you can do.

Email marketing has been around forever, and it's probably going to stay for a while longer. This type of digital marketing allows you to retarget customers by collecting their email addresses to send promotions in the future.

You will probably get more business from a well-curated email list than from new web traffic. That's because it's easier to sell to customers who are already fans of your brand than to convince new visitors to switch to your brand. Therefore, email marketing is one of the most important forms of digital marketing for any business looking to attain long-term success online.

Establishing Authority

Some companies leverage various types of digital marketing techniques when creating valuable content for their customers. Although their main aim is to sell products and services, valuable content inadvertently becomes more valuable if it stays relevant for a long time.

That's because Google's algorithm loves valuable content. If you publish posts that are easy to read, insightful, and utterly helpful, then you will consistently rank on the top page. Good SEO and content marketing are necessary to create useful content that people can find easily. Create enough of these, and with time, your company can become an authority in your specific niche, especially if you're known for providing accurate and helpful information.

That's why some websites (WebMD, Healthline, etc.) consistently feature at the top of the results page in niches like health and living. Don't underestimate the value of good content.

Bottom Line

Digital marketing certainly has many uses, and its importance in a world that's growing ever dependent on online transactions cannot be overstated.

Remember, you don't have to do it alone if you've never attempted any digital marketing before.

Partnering with an established online marketing agency may seem like an unnecessary cost, but it is nothing compared to the priceless value of solid digital marketing practices that elevate your business to new heights.