I was chatting with a prospect some years ago, and a few minutes into our discussion, he asked, “Is digital marketing worth it?”
Why should businesses spend a fraction of their budget annually on digital marketing campaigns? I understand why, and I don’t expect everyone to know.
I took out time to explain more about digital marketing to the prospect. And the conversation ended with me winning a client for BitChip Digital, a leading digital marketing company.
Here, I will reveal my stand on the question and share a few stats that should get you inspired. Read on!
What Is Digital Marketing?
Firstly, note that digital marketing is also known as online marketing. Both are the same and involve the same processes, but for this post, we’ll use “Digital Marketing.”
So, what does digital marketing mean? It involves all the marketing efforts performed online to grow a business.
In digital marketing, businesses deploy diverse channels to achieve their targeted goal. The channels include social media, search engines (Google, Bing, etc.), email, websites, etc., to connect with prospects and customers.
Is Digital Marketing Worth It?
The answer is no and yes!
No, digital marketing isn’t worth it if your business isn’t seeking growth. Investing in SEO is a waste of resources if you aren’t looking for more traffic, sales, as well as increase in brand awareness, and search engine result pages (SERP).
Yes, digital marketing is worth it if your business is seeking an increase in traffic, brand recognition, ranking, and sales.
The size of your new business does not really matter. When you deploy the right digital marketing strategy, growth opportunities will open up for your business.
These were my answers to the prospect that wanted to know if digital marketing was worth it or just another channel to waste resources.
Anyway, I didn’t stop there. I gave more details on how digital marketing can impact a business when implemented successfully.
Alright, let’s discuss why businesses need digital marketing.
Reasons Your Business Needs Digital Marketing
Let me guess. You’re probably asking yourself, “is digital marketing ideal for my industry?”
Yes, it is. Digital marketing is effective for any business. It doesn’t matter your industry, product or service.
“Digital marketing helps connect businesses to their customers via varied channels.”
The digital marketing channels you can explore are:
- Website
- Mobile app
- Social media
- Search engine
Now, let’s discuss how digital marketing is beneficial for your business.
1: Digital marketing is cost-effective
Digital marketing is less expensive than traditional or other forms of marketing. All your costs will be massively low in this form of marketing.
In other words, your social media interactions, including email campaigns, and website content, cost nearly nothing to generate.
Another exciting thing about digital marketing is that when potential customers come to you via the various digital marketing channels, your CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) is negligible.
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) is a crucial metric in business. It measures how much a company spends to obtain a new customer.
So, digital marketing is cost-effective compared to traditional marketing. In digital marketing, you can continuously evaluate your marketing effort and see if it’s yielding results.
You can practically measure your ROI in digital marketing, identify channels yielding the best results, and redirect your resources to the right areas.
For instance, you can see the results of your paid advert on a simple dashboard. From the performance of the ads, you can decide whether to continue or discontinue the campaign.
So, how cost-effective is digital marketing? Check out the statistics below.
- For every $1 businesses spend on Google Ads, they earn an average of $2. This stat shows PPC can deliver high ROI under the right circumstance. [Google Economic Impact Report]
- Email marketing boasts a high ROI. For every $1 spent, businesses receive an ROI of $40. [Litmus]
- On email marketing, statistics show that 77% of marketers have witnessed an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months. [Hubspot]
A Pro Tip: According to Search Engine Watch, 72% of Google Ads marketers have plans to raise their PPC budget.
Now, what does this move indicate to you? The ROIs these marketers have been getting from digital marketing (Google Ads) were positive. Why did I say so? It’s obvious. Only positive ROI can motivate marketers to increase their budget.
One amazing thing you need to know about digital marketing is that businesses can avoid massive losses. If the marketing technique deployed wasn’t going to yield results, it won’t be so hard for you to figure out.
2: Digital marketing lets you focus on the prospects:
Placing Ads on TVs and billboards can be quite expensive. And that is not the only problem. Unfortunately, you can’t track the people that view your TV ads or billboard.
It’s the same issue with magazines. You will have to rely on guesswork and hope your advertisement on TV, billboard, or magazine brings positive ROI.
The truth is the days of TV, radio, and billboard adverts are fading away. Besides, not business has the resources to place Ads on these platforms. Another reason these traditional marketing methods are no match for digital marketing is that you can’t identify your audience.
Digital marketing makes it easier for you to identify your audience. It lets you target your audience by sending high-converting and personalized marketing messages.
“Digital marketing offers businesses diverse ways to target an audience.”
You can use PPC (Pay-Per-Click) to serve targeted ads to an audience that has shown interest in your products or services. You can even target a specific age group, demographic, or gender.
SEO (search engine optimization) is another digital marketing technique you can deploy to boost your business. Here, you have to incorporate the right keywords in your content. Use the keywords that people are searching for.
Why is SEO relevant? Here is a good question.
People (potential customers) are likely searching for you. There are probably thousands of people searching for your products or services daily.
How are people searching for you? They are using some search terms (Keywords). And you can help them find you easily by ranking for those keywords.
But don’t forget that you’re not the only one interested in ranking for a keyword. Thousands of others are, and many more will make a move in the future.
So, put in more effort. Show Google that you truly deserve to be on the first page.
Why the first page? According to Hubspot, 75% of people that use search engines don’t scroll past the first page.
How is SEO done? Here’s another good question.
SEO involves the following five steps.
- Keyword research – What search terms are people using? What are people searching for? Find them using the right tools. An example of the search term (keyword) is “Best digital marketing agency.”
- Content creation – Create authoritative, informative, and readable content for searchers. Use the keyword in the content according to best SEO practices. Remember, keyword stuffing is obsolete! It can get you in big trouble.
- On-page SEO – Involves optimizing web pages to boost your site’s search engine ranking and increase organic traffic. On-page SEO involves publishing high-quality content. It also includes optimizing your images, headlines, and HTML tags (Meta, titles, and header).
- Link Building – Quality backlinks are vital for SEO. They’ll help you build trust and authority and boost organic traffic.
- Technical SEO – This process is essential to help search engines to identify, crawl and index your content.
So, these are the processes involved in search engine optimization. And remember, each step is relevant to the success of your marketing campaign.
Now, let’s look at some mind-blowing stats that indicate why you should never take SEO for granted.
Key SEO Stats You Should Know
- 68% of online experiences that ever took place started with a search engine. [Bright Edge Research]
- 61% of B2B marketers claim that SEO and organic traffic generated more leads than other marketing forms. [Hubspot]
- 63% of all shopping started online, regardless of whether the purchase happened at a physical location. [Oberlo]
- 66% of buyers perform some research online before purchasing an item online. [Semrush]
- Approximately one-third of consumers in the United States of America use the internet to conduct searches for local businesses daily. [Statista]
- 79% of consumers have the same trust that they have for personal recommendations on online reviews. [Oberlo]
- 71% of marketers have claimed that using strategic keywords was their number of SEO strategy. [Hubspot]
- 69% of marketers invested their resources in SEO in 2021. [Hubspot]
A Pro Tip: Digital marketing empowers you to perform the research necessary to figure out your buyer persona. Additionally, it lets you revisit and refine your marketing strategy as time progresses to ensure you’re targeting prospects that will most likely purchase your products.
3: Your competitors are obsessed with digital marketing:
Do you want to remain competitive in the industry you’re in? If your answer is no, then forget about digital marketing.
However, if your answer is yes, you have to be obsessed with digital marketing, as your competitors – though in a good way.
Your competitors aggressively deploy digital marketing strategies to engage new and existing customers, acquire new leads, and influence purchasing decisions. So, don’t be left out.
Channel your energy and resources to digital marketing to compete and even overtake your competitors.
The thing is, many brands have developed a habit of researching and engaging prospects and customers. Now, this has become a norm for most prospects and customers. They expect digital engagements from brands.
Are your competitors using only unpaid digital marketing strategies (Unpaid or organic traffic)? No, is the straightforward answer.
Many are using paid digital marketing strategies to locate the ideal customers online. You’ll find many B2Bs and B2Cs using SEM (search engine marketing) strategies, which are practically search and social media advertisements.
Now, let’s be clear on one thing. There is nothing wrong with obtaining traffic via SEO and paid search. I highly recommend you pay attention to both.
Search engines and social media ads are vital to a company’s digital marketing strategy. It is the same as other businesses driving organic traffic.
Key Digital Marketing Stats You Should Know
- 76% of B2C and 88% of B2B use digital marketing strategies such as blogging to engage their targeted market. [Content Marketing Institute]
- 66% of B2B marketers utilize SEM; the most-used paid digital marketing tactic for B2B. [Content Marketing Institute]
- 63% of businesses have raised their digital marketing budget in the past few years. [Hubspot]
- 55% of marketing businesses do is digital. In 2021, digital advertising was $436 billion, while offline advertising was $196 billion. [Marketing Charts]
- Digital advertisement can increase brand awareness by 80%. [Valve+Meter]
- Google has an 82% share of the search engine market, Bing controls 9%, and Yahoo has 2.55% as of July 2022 [Statista]. This report shows Google is still the biggest search engine, making its paid advert more attractive.
Other Reasons That Shows Digital Marketing Is Worth It
Here are more reasons that show why you should never neglect digital marketing.
4: Digital marketing is measurable:
One thing that makes digital marketing exceptional is that you can measure the outcome of your campaigns.
You can find out how many people viewed, clicked, or shared your content within a given time. In addition, you can also determine how much time people spend on your web pages.
5: Digital marketing is adaptable:
As a professional digital marketer with many years in the industry, I know marketing is time-consuming. You have to plan and follow through with your plan to the end.
Unfortunately, things may not always go as planned. By the way, you don’t own the customers and can’t dictate how they would react to your adverts or products.
Don’t be deceived. No digital marketing strategy is full-proof. But the unique thing about digital marketing is that you can always pause, re-evaluate and change your approach. In other forms of marketing, this isn’t possible without incurring massive losses.
6: Digital marketing help potential customers find you:
If customers were interested in your product or services, what would they do? They’ll research your company, including your products or services.
It doesn’t stop there. Today’s shoppers rely on reviews to make buying decisions. So, expect potential customers to read online reviews about your product or service to have a view of what others say about you.
So, in today’s digital age, businesses are supposed to have a website and a social media account. Your customers expect you to have them.
In addition, a business that doesn’t have a website or social media presence won’t be found online. Even if some people find out about your company or product from someone that mentioned it on their website or online, they might not trust you that much.
So, create a website for your business and open social media accounts. Be ready to promote the website via SEO or paid advertisement. Additionally, be prepared to share content and engage potential customers on your social media accounts.
According to Bright Local, in local businesses, approximately 87% of potential customers read online reviews before making a buying decision.
7: Know your customers better:
Digital marketing creates an avenue for prospects and customers to find you. It also allows you to engage prospects and customers, learn about their pain points, and meet their needs.
You can engage customers and prospects on your blog or social media account. It doesn’t matter the platform. Just be professional and friendly when responding to questions or complaints.
Conclusion
So, is digital marketing worth it? Yes, it is. That’s the straightforward answer. You can see the stats in the post, showing how digital marketing can shape your business.
The fact that you have been wasting money and not seeing positive results doesn’t mean digital marketing doesn’t work. You can achieve positive ROI and grow your business with the right digital marketing strategy.
Hire the best digital marketing agency that can deliver the growth your business needs. BitChip Digital is the leading full-service digital marketing company established to help companies grow their business.
We can help you build your website from scratch and make it easier for your targeted audience to find you.
So, do you want to get started right away? Contact us!
