Introduction: Digital Marketing Explained
Digital marketing, also known as online marketing, Internet marketing or web marketing, is the collective name for online marketing. Print media, live promotions, TV, and radio advertisements are known as traditional marketing.
Using digital marketing, companies can specifically target advertising to personal digital devices – computers, tablets, and smartphones – that consumers use every day.
As part of your marketing strategy, digital marketing is so much more than just selling and advertising.
With that said, effective digital marketing is how companies generate new revenue streams. Based on a selection of new marketing channels, which are also able to help companies develop their brand’s awareness. Compared to traditional marketing, with digital marketing you can:
- be cost-effective
- target a specific audience
- Compile excellent reporting and analysis.
Have you ever wondered if an ad you placed in a magazine or newspaper worked? The chances are you will never know because there is no way to determine if someone paid attention to your ad. With digital marketing, on the other hand, you can measure the return on investment in so many ways.
Website traffic
Driving traffic to your website and finding out how many people have visited is also possible with digital marketing. You will know:
- how many of those visitors are new or returning,
- as well as the time they spent viewing your content or
- which content interested them, is essential for determining the accuracy of your marketing strategy.
With this in mind, we can also establish what content is driving traffic to your website. Is it from Google organic searches, paid Google ads, or social media? Once this has been determined, you can direct your marketing spend to what you know is already working.
Traditional marketing platforms make it challenging to measure your success or to determine how people have interacted with your brand before reaching your sales team. But with digital marketing, identifying customer trends and behaviour is possible by tracking them from when they land on your website right through the marketing funnel.
Content performance and lead generation
Do you remember flyers stuffed into your post box and how you threw them all into the bin while sorting through your mail? Now imagine you placing that flyer onto your website where you can measure precisely how many people have viewed it and whether they downloaded it. Not only can you measure if customers are engaging with your content, but you are also generating qualified leads in the process.
