No matter the shape, size or flavour of your business, you need digital marketing.

That’s not a throwaway statement or an unnecessary generalisation. A business that capitalises on digital marketing will be more successful than one that doesn’t – it’s that simple. And this fact is more important than ever in 2022.

Why? Read on to find out.

What is digital marketing?

First things first. What exactly do we mean by ‘digital marketing’? This category of marketing encompasses all things internet: email, search engines, social media, online display advertising, company blogs and more.

Over the last couple of decades digital marketing has largely replaced print, radio, TV and other forms of ‘traditional’ marketing. And there are good reasons why. Today we’ll be looking at 11 of the most compelling, and why your business needs to start taking digital marketing seriously.

11 reasons why digital marketing is important for your business

1. Simplicity and accessibility

You might be surprised at exactly how easy it is to capitalise on digital marketing. A wealth of smart tools allow anyone to dip their toe – a Facebook ad can be posted in a couple of clicks, and an email campaign can be crafted in minutes with the help of a solution like Mailchimp. Once you get a sense of digital marketing’s potential, you can partner with an agency to make the most of the opportunity.

2. Cost-effectiveness

Unlike traditional marketing, which often demands a high minimum spend, the smallest of investments will allow you to test the digital marketing waters. You can use any number of freemium tools, and get started with a social media or pay per click (PPC) campaign for $5, $10 or $20. While you can’t exactly expect a return when spending these amounts, it will give you the opportunity to see what different digital marketing strategies are all about. You can then build on your initial investment.

3. Scalability

What you spend on digital marketing is entirely up to you. Many forms of digital marketing don’t feature price lists, but instead scale to your budget. You say how much you’d like to spend, and the search engine, social media platform or tool crafts its services to your budget. This makes digital marketing both accessible and perfectly scalable – the size of the audience you reach is entirely up to you.

4. Immediacy

Traditional marketing channels like TV, radio and print can have rather long turnaround times – you create the ad, you schedule it, then you wait. Sometimes it’s days, other times it’s weeks before it is finally released. In digital marketing, meanwhile, publication can be instantaneous – you can get marketing materials in front of your audience with a handful of clicks in a couple of minutes.

5. Targeting

One of the major issues with traditional advertising is that it blasts a message out to a general audience. Search engine and social media companies, meanwhile, offer detailed information on their users, and you can use this data to get your brand in front of the right eyes. Ask yourself: what does my perfect customer look like? What’s their age and location? What do they do for a living? What are their hobbies and interests? Once you’ve built up this ‘buyer persona’, you can use the targeting functionality offered by the likes of Google and Facebook to speak directly to those who are most likely to buy.

6. Personalisation

You can make your digital marketing so targeted, in fact, that it can be customised to the individual. Think of when you browse for a product, then get served up display ads for that exact item in the days that follow. This is an example of remarketing, where previous website visitors are encouraged to return and complete their purchase. Personalisation can also be utilised in email and social media ads, and for the most part it is automated; you don’t have to create the individual ads – a tool will do it for you.

7. Measurability

Digital marketing not only offers information on your audience, it also offers real-time data on ad performance. Most tools and platforms offer analytics that give you a sense of how well a particular ad or post is doing. Metrics include:

  • Views/reach: How many people have seen your ad.
  • Engagement rate: How often someone interacts with your ad (likes, comments, shares, clicks.)
  • Click-through rate: How often someone visits your site/landing page via the ad.
  • Conversion rate: How often an ad results in a desired action (sale, subscription, form completion.)

8. Feedback

Armed with the metrics above, you can refine your digital marketing strategy on the fly. You can use A/B testing – publishing two versions of an ad and seeing which performs better – to find the most effective version. As you build up more data over time, you can compare campaign against campaign, and ensure you continue to enjoy an ever-increasing return on your marketing investment. Feedback can also be provided in a more direct form by your audience, who might comment, react or reply to a piece of marketing, letting you know whether it resonates with them or not.

9. Agility

Add the scalability, immediacy, measurability and feedback of digital marketing together, and it all adds up to marketing agility. You can gain a clear and almost instant sense of what your audience is after and adjust your strategies as you go. We’re not just talking marketing strategies either – it could be that your digital marketing efforts reveal a gap in your product range or in the wider market.

10. No boundaries

Traditional marketing usually restricts you to a certain geographical area; where your flyers can be dropped, where a newspaper is published, the TV/radio station broadcast area. Digital marketing, on the other hand, is truly borderless. You can advertise to the most relevant people throughout New Zealand (where over 90% of the population use search engines and over 80% are active on social media), or you can just as easily sell to someone on the other side of the globe!

11. Greater ROI

When you consider all the above, it’s perhaps unsurprising to hear that digital marketing offers a far greater ROI than traditional marketing. Cost-effective, highly targeted and offering unprecedented control, your digital marketing strategy can be whatever you make it. Some forms of digital marketing offer almost unbelievable yields – email marketing, for example, offers an average return of $36 for every dollar invested.

The bottom line

You need to get your brand out there if you are to succeed in business, and digital marketing offers a range of effective ways to do just that. But to those who haven’t dealt in it before, digital marketing can feel confusing and perhaps a little intimidating. That’s where we at Traction come in.

Our friendly team brings the knowledge, skills and expertise you need to capitalise on the endless potential of the internet. From Google to social mediasearch engine optimisation (SEO) to video advertising, we can identify your most promising online opportunities and help you make the most of them.

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