Digital marketing is currently one of the things you need to pay attention to seeing the increasingly intense competition for online business. Regardless of the size of your current business, digital marketing is proven to be effective and efficient to reach your target audience wherever they are.
You need to know, currently, more and more consumers are shopping online, be it through marketplaces, websites, or social media. With this marketing strategy, your products and services will certainly be easier to find.
In this article, we will discuss information about digital marketing. Here’s the information for you.
Understanding Digital Marketing and How to use in Business
Digital marketing is a form of marketing to promote products or services through various digital media such as search engines, social media, websites, email, and many more.
When compared to traditional marketing such as using billboards, newspapers, or brochures, digital marketing is considered to be more effective and efficient. This assumption arises for several reasons such as:
- Through digital marketing you can set the target audience you want to reach
- ads can be reached by a wider target market
- offer higher engagement with customers
In addition, when implementing a digital marketing strategy, you will get metrics, insights, or reports about the performance of the ads that are running. With this information, it will be easier for you to find out what kind of marketing strategy is most appropriate to reach company goals.
Some examples of digital marketing strategies that are often used are social media ads, Pay Per Click, SEO optimization, email marketing, content marketing, and others.
What is the Role and Function of Digital Marketing for Businesses?
1. As a medium for interacting with the target audience
One of the challenges that companies face is building long-term relationships with customers. Before digital marketing was widely used, companies maintained relationships with customers through traditional ways such as calling by telephone, holding events, or coming directly to the customer’s location. Unfortunately, this did not work effectively. In fact, they are not infrequently annoyed by this approach.
It’s different today. The ease of internet access allows companies to take a continuous approach to interact with the audience. Even with digital media, companies can reach a wide target audience with a minimal budget.
Some examples of digital marketing strategies that can be used include:
- create an email newsletter
- Share interactive content on social media
- create informative blog posts
- hold a live broadcast
- and others
2. Maintain customer loyalty
Loyal customers are assets that need to be maintained because they will continue to make purchases. They will also be happy to recommend your product or service to their peers so that your product will become better known.
To maintain customer loyalty, you need to “keep in contact” with them and digital marketing will make it easier for you to do this. Some strategies that can be done such as:
a. Email marketing:
Through email marketing, you can send a variety of useful information for customers such as new product information, promos, discounts, give away and others. This strategy will not only keep you connected with your customers, but it can also make your customers feel more valued and drive more sales.
b. Social media marketing:
Social media such as Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok allow a business to continue interacting with its customers. You can create interesting content that can encourage customers to want to comment. Through social media, you can also create giveaway content, product info, tips, or other useful content so that they want to continue to follow your company’s social media account.
3. Build brand awareness
One of the functions of digital marketing is to build brand awareness. Brand awareness is one of the factors that will affect the success of selling a product because most consumers have a tendency to buy products or use services from brands they are familiar with. Therefore, many companies are trying hard to build brand awareness so that their products can be widely recognized.
To build brand awareness effectively and efficiently, you can use a digital marketing strategy. Some of them are:
a. SEO Optimization
Through SEO optimization, you can improve your website’s ranking on Google. Thus, when consumers search for certain keywords on Google, your website will be displayed on the first page.
With better visibility, consumers will find it easier to remember your products and services. In addition, a high web ranking will also generate more traffic so that the product becomes more widely recognized.
b. Social media marketing
Social media is currently one of the most widely used media to find information about a product or service. Therefore, social media has an important role in developing brand awareness.
Apart from that, social media is also a good platform for safeguarding customer relationships. With social media like Facebook or Instagram, you can interact with your customers. In addition, social media also opens up opportunities to be found by new prospects because many followers on social media accounts share content and mention their friends in the comments column.
4. Reach your ideal prospect
The next function of digital marketing is to reach targeted customers. This will really help in increasing sales because the marketing message you create will be received by people who are interested in your product or business.
Some examples of digital marketing that can be used to target specific audiences such as Facebook Ads, Google Ads, or Instagram Ads.
5. Result in better conversions
A digital marketing strategy will help your business to be able to convey marketing messages with a wider reach. In fact, this marketing strategy also allows you to target specific prospects.
For example, when you use Facebook Ads, you are allowed to set the location, age, gender, and language used by your target. Through this arrangement, the marketing message you want to convey will be received by specific people. When the marketing message is reached by people who are most likely to be interested in your product, the company will have more opportunities to generate conversions.
Digital Marketing Goals & Objectives
When carrying out a marketing strategy, you need to determine in advance what goals and objectives you want to achieve.
1.Definition of Goal
Goals are the results you want to achieve that are usually broad and long-term. Usually, goals are used as benchmarks that can help you when designing a marketing strategy that will be carried out as a whole.
2. Objective definition
Objectives are specific actions taken in order to reach the company’s larger goals. In general, objectives can be acted upon in a realistic, measurable, and time-bound manner. For example, if a company has a main goal, namely to increase brand awareness, the marketing objective that can be done is to send a newsletter to 10 new subscribers every day.
3. How to Set Goals & Objectives
Goals and objectives are important components of your marketing strategy. In addition, both goals and objectives can determine the direction needed for your product or service to be successful in the market.
To determine these two components, there are several ways you can do it. One way is to use SMART considerations. Here’s the explanation:
- a. Specific
The goals you want to achieve should be specific and detailed. Thus, the people involved in achieving these goals can understand well the expected results.
- b. Measurable
Goals must not be abstract and must be measurable. If you don’t put a “number” on your goals, it will be difficult for the company to track whether progress is being made.
- c. Attainable
Goals or objectives must also be attainable or achievable. This means that when setting business goals, you must consider whether they are possible to achieve. You can use company data to see if the goals set have a chance to be achieved.
- d. Realistic
Business goals must be realistic. This means that you and your team must realistically set achievable business goals based on the resources and time available.
- e. Time-bound
The goals that you want to achieve must have a specific deadline or time frame. If not, then the goals that have been set will be difficult to achieve because they do not have a clear time limit.
Conclusion
As more and more customers switch to using digital platforms for shopping, business owners need to implement digital marketing strategies in promoting their products and services. There are various digital media that can be used, ranging from websites, social media, email, and others.
You can do an analysis in advance to find out which platform is most suitable to reach the target audience you want. With a mature digital marketing strategy, sales success will certainly be easy to achieve.