No one can deny the importance of Digital Marketing in the existing world. During the past few years, digital marketing has become an integral part of the business to its customers. It can easily be said that time is running against you very fast if you are not planning to adopt any digital marketing strategy for your business.
As the internet has become the backbone of everything so that the importance of digital media cannot be denied. Creating a website or running some unfocused advertisement campaign is no longer enough for the growth of the business unless you have some extraordinary digital marketing strategy for your business.
Let’s have a look that, why it is important to have the digital marketing strategy for growing and flourishing your business.
There are various predictions by experts about digital marketing, such as:
As per IDG, more than 44 percent of the business has already shifted to a digital approach for better customer experience.
The Smart Light reported that around 34% of the companies have already gone through digital transmission.
Gartner reported that more than 50% of global CEO admitted that digital improvement has led them to increase their revenue.
The strategies of Digital marketing have become challenging every day and there will be a lot more things which need to me consider more in the coming years.
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1. Content Selling
Traditional marketing is become less effective nowadays, as people are more focusing on content marketing to sell their products.
As per the latest research, 93% of the most successful B2B content marketing is incredibly committed to content marketing.
Content marketing is the process of creating relevant and valuable content to seek the attention and engage the audience. In today’s world, clients are receiving countless marketing messages which they have never received before. This creates a challenging environment for the businessman to continuously create engaging content for the customer to avoid the loss in the static environment. A well-designed content marketing strategy can take your business up to the level where your product has become a brand, and over a period of time, it creates a strong bonding between your brand and a customer.
In today’s era of the digital world, people prefer to get online satisfaction about the brand first before purchase. As per the latest survey, 93% of the buying cycle starts from a search engine. One more research shows that 51% of the content comes from the organic search, so it is vital to rank your valuable content high on the search engine. This will share your content in social networks widely to the relevant audience, which will increase the count of your customers and turned into an increase in sales.
In comparison with the traditional marketing strategy where thousands and millions of dollars need to spend for an advertising campaign and the return of investment cannot be calculated, the content marketing strategy is far better than traditional marketing, where the investment is nil or less and will give you a targeted client. However, the marketing campaign needs to design and manage smartly. It provides endless possibilities to precisely target the right audience without investing a huge amount of money.
Once your content spread into the digital world, the audience will get aware of your brand that will later become a loyal customer to your business.
As per the latest research, various marketing projects are running under the concept of content marketing. Content marketing produces extraordinary results so that besides small business owners, there are a lot of multinational organizations that are doing content marketing, such as P&G, Microsoft, Cisco, etc.
2. A Single Technology Provider
It is hard to avoid the fact that the internet has changed the world of communication. The way we learn, play, participate, and the shop has all been undoubtedly be changed by online marketing.
In recent years, we have seen various programming merchants offering advanced marketing tools at a one-stop answer for creating, distributing, and managing content and measuring the performance of the online networking properties.
Organizations that are engaged with digital marketing strategy achieve more than 25% of goal as compare to traditional marketing.
In recent times, the “Marketing Cloud” become an essential tool for big business software organizations. As per the survey, in today’s digital world, an average entrepreneur uses 91 different marketing cloud services.
3. Hyper-Targeted Contents
You might have experienced the bombardment of advertisements while using social media, which are mostly irrelevant to you and may cause you irritated. People don’t like the bombing of irrelevant adds. A survey reported that 49% of the people would disregard a brand if it bombarded them adds or if they perceive the advertising to be irrelevant.
Hyper targeting is a marketing strategy where you identify a target customer and deliver extremely relevant messages in the places where they will be most likely to see it.
Hyper targeting can be performed in different ways, such as:
- Buyer Persona: It is an in-depth customer profile that defines your target customer through their demographics, sociographic, values, challenges, influences, and buying habits.
- Segmentation: It is the act of dividing an audience into different groups based on their interaction with your brands or their sociographic, demographics, and their professional role, principles, objectives, challenges, and buying habits.
- Geo-targeting: An action performs in targeting the customer based on their location. This could be as broad as targeting by country or as narrow as targeting by zip-code or mile-radius around a location or business.
- Retargeting: It is the act of targeting the audience, who are already engaged in your brand. It includes the remarketing of the people who visit your website, store and make purchases and follow your brand on social media.
Hyper marketing can lead you to connect with the customer, generate leads and help in increasing the sale if it executes properly.
4. Voice Search
One of the significant growth influencing the digital marketing world today is an extensive adoption of voice search technology. This voice search technology has created a challenge for the marketing professional to optimize their website to rank for targeted keywords and queries.
The latest trends and statistics in voice search over the past several years can show that the usage of smartphone assistants and smart speakers such as Apple series, Amazon’s Alexa and Google homes are influencing rapidly in this technology.
This rapid influence of the digital voice assistant has made a significant impact on search trends and SEO.
Comparing to the past couple of years, when the voice search was only a small fraction of total searches, it has now converted to a significant search option. Today more than 20 percent of the mobile searches are being done by voice.
The experts are predicting that half of the searches will be performed through voice by 2020 whereas voice commerce sales have been estimated to reach $40 billion in 2022 in the US only.
5. New Positions In Marketing
Due to the rapid influence of digital marketing, the positions for traditional marketing analysts have no almost obsolete, and new marketing positions such as “Digital marketing research analysis” are creating.
The job of the digital market analyst is to increase the traffic on the website, social media posts, and other forms of online promotional content. Their role also includes reviewing the company’s current internet presence and analyzing web traffic statistics to understand the effectiveness of their online presence.
They should identify the traffic goal and targeted audience and implement the strategies to increase the web traffic.
Boston University predicts that the position of the Market research analyst will increase in popularity by 41.2 % by 2020.
6. Personalization
It is one of the emerging digital trends that are followed by different brands. It is about offering the right product to the right person at the right time. It will develop a positive image of your brand and helps in building trust in your brand.
Today’s consumers are smart enough to demand personalization. They are well known about the marketing moves of companies and are aware that they can get personalized products on-demand today. Most of the customers are willing to pay for that exclusive experience, even they ready to share their data if it helps them receiving personalized experience and recommendations.
Ignorance of the customer needs may cause a deadly impact on your business, as the consumer may switch to another brand and keep your customer happy.
As per the research by “Gartner,” 90% of the brands will follow personalized marketing strategy by 2020.
As per another researcher, there will be another enormous rise in personalized content.
7. Combining Market & Sales
The primary concern for every business person is the return on investment when they spend on online advertisements. Google ads or PPC ads delivered through the Google search engine can generate a handsome revenue for your business. Usually, after spending on this platform, companies double their investment after advertising g on this platform.
Digital marketing plays a vital role in all types of business in today’s world. This mode of approach differs from business to business. It is also useful in reaching the overall brand, which helps in increasing sales.
As people have become more brand conscious and they like to investigate first online before buying. So compared to a businessman who is not in the digital world, the digital marketer will generate more revenue in terms of sales after having a loyal online customer
There are different marketing tactics, out of which some are for one time and some campaigns run for a long time.
The most common marketing tactics are B2B marketing and B2C marketing.
The B2B marketing strategy by the business focuses on promoting the products and connecting with the right person on other ends. For example, searching for the right person for your product on Linkedin could play a positive impact.
B2C marketing is all about creating a positive atmosphere for attracting your customers, increasing your traffic, etc. For example, an e-commerce website includes an offer to their website for the best deal to attract the customers towards them or to come back.
According to Liana’s survey, 29.5% of the marketer sees the closer collaboration of Marketing & Sales as the main benefit of marketing automation.
8. Investment On The Rise
Nowadays, businesses are more relying on the combination of their digital marketing strategies and resources. They are giving priority to social media marketing and websites. More than 76% of the marketer believes that marketing has changed in the past couple of years which has never been changed 50 years before.
Today it is less important for a business person to spend on traditional marketing like billboards, pamphlets, flyers and print advertisements. They are more focusing on investing in digital marketing.
Nearly all business is planning to increase its investment in at least one digital marketing channel.
Most of the business is investing more in multiple digital channels, but social media marketing and websites are in their priority list.
According to the CMPO, 87% of the total marketing budget will be shifted to digital marketing by 2020.
9. Caters To Gen-Zers
Generation Z represents the Millenials following generation who were born between 1996 to 2010. This generation is being raised with internet and social media and doesn’t know anything outside the digital world technology.
Generation Z is taking over and is expected to be 40% of the total customers by 2020. Smartphones and social media are the prime source of information for this generation. This technology involvement has transformed the way of communication and marketing strategy with one of the fastest-growing consumer markets in the world.
To build a relation with Generation Z customer, there are few strategies which need to be followed.
- Sell Experience, Not Product: Members of Generation Z are not interested in traditional marketing strategy. They don’t have any interest in knowing how your product is amazing or different from others. They are grown up with the internet and use of obvious marketing campaign. They want to know how your product will be beneficial for them and what kind of experience they are going to have after using your product.
According to Mention, 25% of your total sale is your product, the remaining 75% is the intangible feeling that comes with the product.
- Invest In Video Content: It is quite common that people like to see and listen more instead of reading. So introducing your product through some video channel is very important to attract the customer of Generation Z
A Google survey revealed that Youtube is the first platform of Generation Z to get entertained. It is essential to engage this generation with your channel by using this platform.
The Redbull is such a relevant example there, who has over 8 million subscribers on its youtube channel. They have several playlists including the series called Redbull travel vlogs.
- Collaborate with Influencers: The top influencers of 2019 are Cristiano Ronaldo, Ariana Grande, and Selena Gomez. But collaboration with celebrities use to be very common and now most of the brands dislike this practice and they are focusing on micro-influencers. Micro-Influencers define that anyone has 1000 to 100000 followers on social media. They can drive more engagement aside from their celebrity counterparts as Generation Z relates to them.
- Engage with Customers: We all know the importance of product reviews; in fact, 76% of the generation Z customers like to see the reviews first before getting engage with some brand. Getting positive reviews is the first step, but it will also be noted that how the client is getting a response by the company. Even if there is a negative comment and the issue is resolved in the reply by the company representative, then it will create a positive impact on the viewer.
So keeping your self engage with the customers is undoubtedly be essential to get the customer from this generation.
- Be Transparent And Honest: One of the surveys from IBM has stated that less than 1/3 of the teens of this generation are comfortable in sharing their details online, other than the contact information and purchase history. Whereas the same survey stated that 61% of Gen Z customers could freely share their information if they know that the brand is trustworthy and their data will not be misused.
So if your target is the customer of Gen Z, then you should take some steps to satisfy your clients that their data will remain safe and will not be handed over for any misuse. This can be done by signing a written declaration from your company which stated that the data would remain safe and secure.
10. Transparency And Data Security
According to the CMO, 87% of the total marketing budget will be going to digital by 2022. Due to the increasing number of digital marketing platforms, the data of the consumer is spreading around, and people have become more concerned about the security and utilization of their data.
The internet is the library and source of information, and anything shared online will remain there forever. Even after you delete them but virtually its existence will be there forever. Although many of the users want to stay anonymous, in today’s world, it is just not possible. There are plenty of secret ways to remotely access the browsing history of anyone.
More than half of the internet users have admitted that it is impossible to remain anonymous online, and probably they are right. Most of the people use their actual name in their social networking account regularly and keep the same password for their email, bank accounts, and other online accounts. If someone has that password, he can access to all your accounts and cause you in trouble.
One careless download, one hacked password, or a stolen wallet to lose their identity.
86% of internet users are taking active steps to improve their internet privacy.
11% of online customers losing their personal information in terms of credit card number, bank account information or own ID numbers.
68% believe that existing laws are not enough to protect the right of internet users.
As data security has become a life-saving for an individual so that companies who are using the other data have also become more curious about data security. They have realized that the reputation and success of their company are dependent a lot on transparency and security of the customer’s data.
However, it is not only an IT issue. The marketers are equally responsible for ensuring that client data should be used fairly and must be protected from wrong or fraudulent persons.
11. Influence Of Mobile Apps
Every business person in recent days is adopting the latest digital technology for marketing. The mobile app is one of the newest technology that has changed the way of business.
By using such enterprise applications, the business is more likely to get recognized and attain brand value. Enterprise-based mobile apps are now also becoming one of the essential marketing tools for the businessman to sell their goods.
It gives a chance to the entrepreneur to get engaged with the target audience at all times. Also, it provides the direct means of interaction between the marketer and customer
As per one of the survey, Americans spend more than 2 hours a day on their mobile device. Also, this is the fact that few of the applications are there where the user spends more time. If your app is relevant and contains the features that will make shopping seamless and simpler, then it will probably keep your audience engage with your app after the initial download.
There are some interesting facts about mobile applications:
- 50 percent of all e-commerce transactions performed by mobile devices
- 85 percent of customers prefer to use the mobile form instead of a mobile website
- Mobile apps will be a key initiator in driving brand recognition.
The increasing speed of mobile network forcing the marketers to focus their marketing effort on mobile
However, it is essential that you design your mobile app with the features that drive sales and boost your revenue
12. The Fall of Social Media
The number of people is increasing, who is considering quitting the facebook app. This app is no longer a considerable tool for the marketer. For the last two years, this is one of the major apps which is losing the audience.
Mostly the younger generation now gets rid of their facebook account and switching towards the new apps. This declining trend is also affecting the facebook opt own apps like Instagram and WhatsApp.
32% of the users in the US and UK say that they have deactivated or closed their social media account in the past 12 months
All around the world, on average, every individual has twenty different apps in their mobile other than preinstalled apps. It shows that there are a variety of options that are available for mobile users.
Due to the increase in the number of new mobile apps and their users, the marketing persons are forced to take the initiative to be involved in those apps to get in touch with the customers.
13. Just In Time Marketing
The main objective of Just in time marketing is to aim at creating the required marketing contents according to the need of the customer at the right time when they are in the mood of buying. In short, the marketing strategy at a massive level will be created to reach the broadest level of the audience.
However, the survey reported that this strategy was not successful unless applied without the digital medium. The use of the digital medium in the marketing campaign has made it possible and easier to successfully run the just in the time marketing campaign.
38% of the companies utilizing just in time marketing have grown their annual revenues by more than 25%.
14. The Rise Of Machines
As machines (AI) are increasingly become popular in taking over human beings in terms of performing a different kind of work. So, it is possible that in the future, they will be able to perform higher tasks and will take more serious decisions due to their capacity of processing and analyzing a large amount of data. The expected positive result of this AI will be that the people at a different level will have more time to think about something more creative.
Artificial intelligence is taking over dozens of industries. They are affecting various departments, from finance to technology and retail.
AI is no longer a buzzword but is being implemented in marketing and communications technology at a rapid pace.
AI has changed the way of business that brands were doing before. For digital marketers, it is also changing the ways of connecting the brand with its audience.
Machines and computers are working like human beings and are performing the task like voice recognition, visual perception, translation, and they also have the ability to make decisions as well.
Now artificial intelligence is capable of performing these tasks independently, which requires human intelligence before.
Gartner predicted that AI features would be in almost every new software product by 2020. Also, the AI industry will grow to $190 billion by 2025. These are just a couple of predictions about AI. There is no doubt that there will be a continuous movement for this technological revolution.
