Why Digital Marketing Strategy Is Important

What you need to know

A digital marketing strategy is important because your customers are online, it will help increase brand awareness,  it can also help automate marketing activities, the amount of leads you generate will improve, it will be much easier to track and measure the results of your marketing campaigns. There are more reasons why a digital marketing strategy is important, if you want to learn what those reasons are, check out the rest of this article.

It is estimated that some 92% of adults in the United Kingdom use the internet. For people aged between 16 and 44 years, this rises to 99%, highlighting how central a role the internet has become in our lives over the past decade or two.

If you are a business owner, owning a website has become an essential part of marketing and advertising. However, having a strong digital marketing strategy isn’t as simple as just owning a website.

As we will highlight in this blog post, there are many different components of a successful digital marketing strategy. Let’s take a deep dive into why a digital marketing strategy is important in this modern age.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing can be defined as a company’s marketing efforts that use the internet and online-based digital technologies. It is the promotion of a business to connect and engage with potential customers online.

As noted above, there are many different components to digital marketing. These include:

• Web design
• Content marketing
• Social media marketing
• Search engine optimisation (SEO)
• Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
• Email marketing

Many of these components overlay with one another, such as SEO and content marketing.

On the point of web design, it is important to understand that aesthetics and functionality are essential (especially when it comes to first impressions). Research shows, for instance, that it takes online users just 50 milliseconds to form an impression, whether positive or negative, about a website.

Why Digital Marketing Strategy Is Important

In this section, let’s take a look at exactly why a digital marketing strategy is so important for businesses.

Your Customers Are Online

As we have already highlighted, the vast majority of people in the UK use the internet. Most people use it every day, including on computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Digital marketing opens up a huge audience to businesses from every market and industry.

This is the case both for national/international businesses and local businesses. Through tactics such as local SEO, businesses are able to effectively target and market towards their specific audience (such as people living in a particular city).

Increase Brand Awareness

Expanding your brand’s reach and increasing its awareness is essential to acquiring new customers. Having a strategic digital marketing plan helps a business to reach a larger audience quickly and efficiently (far more so that with traditional marketing methods).

There are many different marketing channels a brand can use to expand its online presence. Some examples here include influencer marketing, social media marketing, videos, and pay-per-click ads.

Automate Marketing Activities

Having a focused strategy makes it easy to automate your marketing activities. This, in turn, helps a business execute its marketing campaigns in a way that is faster and more effective.

For example, digital marketing activities can be automated in the following ways: scheduling social media posts in advance and automating the delivery of email sequences.

Low Customer Acquisition Cost

One undoubted benefit of digital marketing is that it is affordable, particularly when looked at alongside more traditional methods of advertising/marketing. TV adverts, radio adverts, and newspaper adverts are all more expensive than online-based strategies.

A lower customer acquisition cost results in a higher profit margin, allowing for a greater return on investment for a business’s marketing activities.

Improved Lead Generation

A large percentage of people will first conduct online research about a product or service before committing to a purchase. Through digital marketing strategies such as SEO, businesses can improve their lead-generation abilities and build interested customers.

For example, the higher up a website page is on a search results page, the better the odds that an online user will visit that business’s website.

Easy Customisation and Personalisation

With digital marketing, a business is easily able to customise and personalise marketing campaigns to directly appeal to and target specific audiences. This level of personalisation is not possible within traditional marketing methods.

For example, social media adverts can be targeted towards specific demographics, including age, gender, interests, and location.

Tracking and Measurement

Being able to track and measure the success of a marketing campaign comes with undeniable benefits. Being able to establish key metrics and track performance allows businesses to understand the most effective channels to use and tweak campaigns as needed.

Traditional advertising methods, again, do not allow for such a detailed analysis of marketing campaigns.

Adapt to Changing Customer Behavior

Customer behaviour is always evolving. As such, so should a business’s marketing strategies. As new trends emerge (such as new social media platforms), businesses are able to quickly appeal to customers when they focus on digital marketing strategies.

Reasons You Need a Digital Marketing Strategy

If you aren’t entirely satisfied with your current marketing strategies, you aren’t alone. In this section, we’ll highlight some of the reasons you need to refocus your marketing strategy with a strategic digital-first approach.

Lacking Direction

In order to get the most out of digital marketing efforts, it’s essential to have a tailored and focused plan. A company without a clear goal for its marketing efforts won’t be able to achieve meaningful growth.

Working closely with a digital marketing company, such as WTBI, will allow your company to craft a digital marketing strategy that has a clear direction and goal.

Unsure of Target Audience

If you aren’t sure who your target audience is, it’s impossible to effectively target customers with a digital marketing campaign.

Given that digital marketing allows for such focus on target audiences, it’s essential to first pinpoint the who, where, and why of your target audience.

Competition Is Far Ahead

In today’s uber-competitive marketplace, it’s likely that your business has several direct competitors. It’s also possible that they are more effective in their digital marketing strategies.

If you want to reel in your rivals and increase your market share, having a focused digital marketing strategy is necessary.

Your SEO Game Is Poor

There’s a dark joke that succinctly sums up the importance of SEO today. Question: “Where is the best place to hide a dead body?” Answer: “On the second page of a Google search result.”

The point is that most online users won’t go past the first page of a search result (or even past the first couple of results on the first page). If your SEO strategy is poor, your business’s website likely won’t be visible to its target audience.

How to Create a Solid Digital Marketing Strategy

To finish up, let’s take a look at some steps you can take to create a solid digital marketing strategy.

Explore the Landscape

First things first, you should start by examining and analyzing. This should include both your own digital marketing efforts to date and your competitors.

Define Your Target Audience

Given that there are so many different components of digital marketing, this is another crucial step. Understanding who your target audience is and what their online browsing habits are will help you to map out your strategy.

For example, in terms of social media use, certain demographics are more inclined to certain platforms. TikTok is increasingly popular among younger audiences, for example.

Map Out Your Strategy

Having a clear strategy based on what you want to achieve is key. Take some time to establish your goals, both in the medium and long term. Then, set about formulating a strategy that is based on these goals.

Build a Content Strategy

Some effective ways to find content inspiration include:

• Look at what your competitors are doing
• Search hashtags (i.e. #DigitalMarketing) on social media platforms (such as Twitter and Instagram) to see what is trending
• Look at Google Search suggestions
• Explore Pinterest
• Ask the public and browse for trends on search engines

“Answer the Public” is another recommended tool for discovering what people are talking about online.

We also recommend that you create relevant content for your website’s blog, based on your services and products. An active blog establishes a business as a knowledge leader within its industry.

Set Benchmarks

Every activity related to digital marketing should have a clear KPI, which is your measure of success. Having benchmarks allows you to understand what success will look like, which makes analysing campaigns easier.

Analyse and Adjust

Not everything that a business does in terms of digital marketing will be a hit. Thankfully, it’s easy to analyse this and make adjustments as needed.

If a particular type of campaign or advert isn’t delivering results, you can try a new direction. Over time, it will become clear that works and what doesn’t work for your business.

Understanding the Importance of a Digital Marketing Strategy

The bottom line is that an effective digital marketing strategy is key in these modern times. Your business is able to effectively target a huge audience online, so it pays to pay close attention to your digital branding.

Wots The Big Idea is your premier choice for digital marketing in the UK. Contact our expert team today to learn more about our services and why a digital marketing strategy is important. We look forward to working with you.