Why You Should Learn Digital Marketing
In today’s world, digital marketing has become like language. It is a medium of communication. Do you think you have an option to learn English? No! English forms the backbone of today’s global economy and there is really no debate on whether you should choose to learn English.
Digital marketing forms the backbone of today’s economy. It is a skill that everyone should have irrespective of his or her profession. Sometimes it is natural to feel that digital marketing is one of the many professions in the world. But the reality is different.
In this article, we will explore why should learn digital marketing even if you do not plan to have a career in core digital marketing.
A 14-year-old teen posting a selfie on Instagram is doing digital marketing.
A 21-year-old guy posting pictures of his first motorcycle on Facebook is also doing digital marketing.
A social activist trying to get signatures on Change.org for a petition is doing digital marketing.
Once you start observing how the behavior of the people around us has changed because of the internet, you will see that digital marketing is everywhere and everyone is a digital marketer.
For the first time in the history of mankind, a single individual has the power to publish something that the whole world can see. We’ve never had this power before. We were always consumers of information and never the creators of content or information.
Related Article: Did Digital Kill the Traditional Marketing?
The need to express ourselves and communicate information to others has been there with us since we started carving figures on cave walls. Today all of us spread information through digital channels. We publish text, photos, and videos. It could be for personal, business, or non-profit initiatives.
Digital marketing activities should never be constrained to the digital marketing team alone. Digital marketing runs through the entire organization. Both self-employed professionals and employees need digital marketing skills.
Most of the concepts that you learn in marketing and digital marketing will also help you in other areas of your life. For example, marketers can influence their friends and family easily because they understand human psychology and how humans react to things.
So that’s why even if you do not plan to become a core digital marketer you should learn digital marketing and marketing fundamentals
Fundamental Reasons for growing demand for Digital Marketing:
- Digital media user adoption growth: There’s an explosion in terms of the number of people joining various digital media such as Facebook, LinkedIn. According to Internet World Stats, over 40% of the world’s population (i.e. 3.3 billion people) today has an Internet connection. It was less than 1% in 1995. Moreover, the amount of time spent on digital media is also growing. Interestingly, around 50% of this Internet user base is from Asia.
- Total media ad spending worldwide will rise by 7.4% to $628.63 billion in 2018, according to eMarketer’s latest report. By 2020, digital’s share of total advertising will near 50%. (“Global Ad Spending: The eMarketer Forecast for 2018.)
- Talent gap for skilled digital marketing professionals: Given the evolving nature of this medium and industry, academic institutions can’t take care of digital marketing skill building needs. This has created an ever-increasing gap between demand and supply of skilled digital marketing people at entry-level positions.
- The rate of change in the digital marketing industry: Since digital media channels change so often, there’s a constant need of skill up gradation for people who are already into this industry.
- The growth of Internet-based businesses: Due to lower entry barrier, Internet-based startups are exploding globally. This has placed additional pressure to produce digital marketing talent.
- Digital methods of content distribution are faster, more practical, and more versatile. They offer better returns to both marketers and consumers.
Related Article: Building Blocks of Digital Marketing
17 Advantages of Digital Marketing
(1) Strategize with the Valuable Data and Analytics
With digital marketing, you can have an idea of the exact number of people who have viewed your website’s homepage in real time.
With Google Analytics, you can track stats and information about your marketing website. It will let you know about –
- the number of people visiting your business page
- their geographic location
- the sex, age, and interests of the visitors
- how much time they are spending on your site
- the source of traffic from various gadgets
- website bounce rates
- how the traffic has changed over time
By displaying a breakdown of all of this traffic information, this intelligence helps you to prioritize the marketing channels.
The real-time data analysis provides you with a better understanding of the effectiveness of your marketing tactics. With access to this information, you can also optimize your marketing budget by investing in the well-performing marketing campaigns.
(2) Content Performance and Lead Generation
Imagine you’ve created a product brochure and delivered it to people as an offline content. Does it seem to be convenient enough?
The problem is that you have no idea how many people have gone through that or, in the worst scenarios, how many people threw it into the trash!
Once you create an impactful visual content, start promoting it on social media. Through such networks, buyers would be able to learn about products and services through influencers and peers.
The more engagement you get, the more Google considers your content to be worthy. And in turn, it will boost your SEO rankings with ease.
Through digital marketing, you can measure exactly how many people viewed your marketing content.
Thereafter, you can collect the contact details of those who download it by using forms. Additionally, you’re also generating qualified leads when people download it. With a solid lead nurturing strategy, you can build better awareness and affinity for your brand.
(3) Improved Conversion Rates
Converting a customer online is not a big deal. All you need to do is just make your marketing strategy an engaging one.
Targeted traffic offers bigger chances for conversion. Unlike other types of advertising, digital marketing lets you have a two-way conversation with customers and leads.
Through digital marketing, you can reach out to your customers at any time. Instead of bothering them with multiple phone calls, reaching customers online seems to be a better idea. Just send an email and let them make a purchase and learn more about your organization. From such interactions, important leads can be generated, which would eventually bring an increase in conversion rates.
(4) More Cost Effective than Traditional Marketing
Digital marketing lets you save your money to a substantial extent. This has the potential to replace costly advertising channels such as television, radio, and yellow pages.
With email marketing automation, you can boost your leads. Thus, it will allow you to pre-load content and schedule it for sending out the content at key times.
(5) Higher Revenues
It’s a well-known fact that higher conversion rates can be generated by effective digital marketing techniques. Hence, it will deliver loads of profitable benefits for your business in terms of better and higher revenues.
While advertising your brand:
- have a good layout that enables easy navigation
- use the digital platform to understand customer purchase patterns
- offer the right idea that meets the needs of your customers
- use multiple digital marketing channels to gather useful data
With better revenue growth expectancy, small and medium enterprises will have better chances of expanding their workforce.
(6) Higher ROI from Your Campaigns
Digital marketing companies optimize conversion rates to achieve maximum Return on Investment (ROI) for businesses. With smarter branding and better revenues, digital marketing can fetch a better ROI than traditional marketing.
With effective tracking and monitoring methods, results can be analyzed. It helps the organizations to take necessary measures as soon as possible.
With digital marketing, you can generate a steady flow of targeted traffic that gets converted into sales and leads. And, the more your business generates this kind of traffic, the faster you can enjoy your ROI.
(7) Compete with Large Corporations
Does digital marketing sound as foreign as binary code to you?
Don’t worry if you are dealing even with a small industry.
The importance of digital marketing also lies in the fact that it lets you compete for head to head with big brands and large corporations.
From a small vendor to a large powerhouse, digital marketing offers affordable and effective marketing tactics. Small brands can drive traffic both locally and across the country by reaching out to their target consumers.
(8) Get Prepared for the “Internet of Things”
The “Internet of Things” is a global ecosystem of interconnected devices – smartphones, tablets, and several other gadgets. These can help people interact with each other through the world of the web.
Digital marketing will prepare your business towards this eventuality. It will permeate through every aspect of people’s lives.
Your business survival strategy needs to be equipped with this interconnected grid. It will provide you an access window to reach out to targeted audience belonging to this online grid.
(9) Earn People’s Trust and Build Brand Reputation
Digital Marketing leverages on social media signals, social proof and testimonials availed from bonafide consumers. The more reliable these social signals are, the higher the trust rate it can generate from targeted audiences.
People would trust information about a particular brand if the data comes from people they know.
And once you meet their expectations, your brand reputation will go viral. Eventually, it will open new doors of opportunities for reaching bigger markets.
(10) Ensure Online Business Survival
Many people may come and go, but a targeted few will actually make a purchase. If you can target the right kind of people who are going to be your potential customers, the best results will surely come.
By implementing smart tactics, like blogging and social media, you can communicate with the target audience. It will help you gain valuable feedback and insights. With these, you can strategize and ensure the survival of your business.
(11) Know All About Your Competitors
As they say – “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
Social media competitive analysis is an integral part of your digital marketing campaign.
When you are engaging in digital marketing, you can ask the experts to look into your competitor’s online strategies. It will help you to capitalize on any possible opportunities in no time. You can see what they are doing to gain an upper hand and reach more consumers.
Thus, you can figure out marketing opportunities and gain a strong competitive advantage.
(12) Real-Time Results
Unlike traditional methods, you can see in real time what’s working and what’s not for your online business.
Through online marketing, you can know about:
- the number of visitors to your site
- the increase in the number of its subscribers
- peak trading times
- conversion rates
- Increase/drop in website traffic
- bounce rate
- and much more!
And this can be done just with the touch of a button.
Such results can give you a thorough idea through which you can choose the necessary steps to improve your results.
(13) Improve Your Outreach
Since digital marketing takes place online, it is accessible to the global audience.
Whereas traditional marketing limits you to a particular geographic area, its modern counterpart can help you interact with the customers quite easily.
On the other hand, it seems like having your storefront open all day long. And with digital marketing specialists, you can respond to posts promptly on your platforms.
It doesn’t take long for gaining publicity to enhance the prospects and enjoy the benefits of digital marketing for your business at its best.
If you’re not yet utilizing the power of digital marketing for your business, you are missing a lot of golden opportunities.
Your prospective customers are waiting for you in the digital world.
Now that you know how digital marketing can help your business, make the move without any delay
(14) Become more competitive
First of all, who said that digital marketing is a monopolistic area to invest? It is damn competitive. Right from a huge brand to a local vendor, everyone competes in his or her limits on this digital platform. And that’s how businesses will work in the future as well.
If you as an entrepreneur or a marketer are not a part of this digital marketing game, you are way behind. Probably, it is going to be more competitive in the future, ensure your business is competitive by employing a smart digital marketing strategy.
(15) Realize higher ROI and revenue
When you set your own business or work for an existing one, your focus will be on returns on what you invest. May it be time, may it be labour, and may it be money.
Gradually when you increase your digital reach out, you can increase your revenue in a predictable way. In comparison with traditional marketing, digital marketing allows you real time results.
Real-time data allows you to predict results and you can exactly know what kind of digital marketing practice yield you the highest revenue.
(16) Conversion optimization
That term sounds too technical correct?
Just read this small paragraph and you shall understand this digital marketing term thoroughly.
Tracking allows you to know more about customer’s journey; right from the first click to the leaving of the website.
Digital marketing allows you to test and optimize your website for conversion. It’s not a onetime activity; it is an on-going process. Brands like Amazon and Flipkart have been doing this for quite a long time.
Related Article: Instagram Marketing Strategies for Every Business
(17) Track customers’ entire journey
Analytics is a key module in digital marketing. Through analytics, you can track your customer’s actions on your website.
Right from visiting the page, which part of the website is being viewed, their decisions and preferences of products, every moment can be tracked
Other Reasons to Learn Digital Marketing
Easy to Learn | Equivalent to Mini MBA | Exhibit Creativity | Demand and Supply Gap | Adds weight to resume | Growth Rate | Stand ahead in the Competition | Affordable and Worthy | Certification | Future Ready
Benefits of Having a Digital Marketing Career
Debating whether to change career direction or what to study next? You might want to discover the four big digital marketing benefits first. They’re good, we promise.
- Become an In-Demand Professional
- A wide range of Career Options
- Digital Marketing is Continuously Increasing
- It’s a recession Proof Career Option
- Deployment of Skills from one company to another
- Get Paid More than Your Peers
- You Can KickStart Your Own Career
Stay Smart. . . . Stay Informed