Businesses should consider the huge marketplace of prospects online. No business, no matter how new, should overlook this vast marketplace. The group of potential customers that are found online is a much larger group of people than you are likely to be able to attract locally. Having a solid digital marketing strategy helps you to reach an enormous audience in a way that is both cost-effective and measurable. Digital marketing education is still in its infancy in Zimbabwe. At the time of writing this article, the Marketers Association Of Zimbabwe is one verified player. Not many local universities are offering digital marketing courses. However, most recently there has been a rise in both digital marketing jobs and digital marketing agency companies. Before we discuss the digital marketing job profile it is important to note why you should consider digital marketing in the first place.
- Digital Marketing Is More Cost-Effective than Traditional Marketing- Gartner’s Digital Marketing Spend Report which highlights key findings from US Digital Marketing Spending shows that up to 40% of respondents claimed to get considerable savings by using digital marketing methods of promotion for their products and services. Hubspot state of inbound marketing annual report shows how digital marketers get better Cost-Per-Lead (CPL) compared to other marketing channels.
- Digital Marketing allows you to track and measure all your marketing efforts- Management thinker Peter Drucker is often quoted as saying that “you can't manage what you can't measure.” Drucker means that you cannot know whether or not you are successful unless success is defined and tracked. With digital marketing, you can use tools like analytics dashboards to monitor the success and ROI of your campaigns more than you could with a traditional promotional content -- such as a billboard or print ad. Digital marketing analytics takes the guesswork out of determining whether your marketing is actually working. By measuring your digital marketing campaigns in real-time, you can see which tactics are working and which are not. Then, you can adjust your campaigns for greater success. You can also take the insights that you’ve gained from the process to improve future campaigns.
- SEO helps you reach more qualified buyers online- Search engine optimisation is a digital marketing tactic that offers a variety of benefits. By optimizing your site content for the search engines, you can work to reach more buyers online. Using relevant keywords that help describe your product or service offering can help you bring more targeted traffic to your site, which increases conversions over time. Many consumers are searching for local companies online, and these searches eventually lead to a purchase. Think with Google recently reported that “76% of people who search for something nearby on their smartphone visit a related business within a day and 28% of those searches result in a purchase.”
- Easier A/B Testing Hones Communications- One of digital marketing’s best allowances is the ability of a company to experiment with almost every aspect of a marketing campaign. A/B testing the location of an email sign-up, the color of a promotional banner, a subject line, etc., is much easier—and results are available much faster—on digital channels. With some diligence, simple changes can be tracked and used to target customers more effectively. For example, testing can be used to better engage a target audience, improve CTRs, help drive buyers through their journey and more. The results of A/B testing can be used to improve targeting of print ads as well. For example, if a company is targeting the same audience on Google as it is in a print magazine ad, the same language will be effective for both.
- Solving Customers Problems- Be it email marketing or social media you can always offer the customer solutions to their problems and make them relate to your product by even providing live chat access. Your website and social media page can easily be converted into a place where the consumer can ask queries, give suggestions and hence take the association with you on a positive level.
The path to reaching business goals and finding success is through a strong digital marketing strategy. Better cost efficiency, more data to inform better decisions, and building on customer trust are just a few of the advantages to be gained from digital marketing.
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