Why You Need a Digital Marketing Agency for Your Small Business
Living in the digital age has taken its toll on traditional brick and mortar methods and changed the game in terms of how to get customers through the door and keep them coming back and loyal.
This is why digital marketing agencies are essential for small businesses. Especially in a thriving and competitive market like New Orleans where so many local companies are already taking advantage of modern marketing strategists to get the modern edge.
As internet availability continues to become more accessible and widespread the value of online marketing will continue to increase. As of 2018, approximately 3.03 billion people around the world had some type of social media.Â
That number will only continue to grow and deepen the necessity for online marketing to reach the broadest demographics.
You may have a good design idea and a clean looking website for your company or product already, but it’s a fact that search engine results drive around 93% of all website traffic making it essential to utilize search engine optimization (SEO) in order to get into the front page of relevant searches to your company.
While you can manage to get some narrow search results optimized, a professional team can expand the results that your company gets first page results on.
Another important factor to note is that 82% of buyers use their phones to search for a product before they buy it for the first time in a store.
This means that you’ll want positive information about your product to make a strong presence in the results.
Also, 50% of consumers find themselves inclined towards a brand if they are exposed to that brand name more than once during their online search.
Types of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is a broad spectrum of advertising techniques that a company employs through electronic devices or the internet.
This type of marketing uses various strategies for businesses to connect with their customer base online. Simply put, digital marketing is marketing done online.
Previously mentioned and of key importance is search engine optimization which employs various techniques using keywords to increase the odds of any given page being seen as the most relevant for a google search.
Pay-Per-Click
Advertisement uses banner ads and other types of links to draw customers to the desired page. These have the simple advantage that the person footing the bill for them pays, as the name says, per click that the ad generates. While this type of add does not guarantee a purchase once clicked, it does help increase traffic and interest in your product.
Content Marketing
Allows you to advertise to your customers in the content that they are interested in reading. This includes videos and blog posts that talk about your product or topics adjacent to your product to gain SEO relevancy and pull in traffic that is likely to be your customer base.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing helps get your company name and brand out there in the open seas of user-created content. Successful social media marketing requires a strong brand direction and persona in order to regularly appeal to target demographics and spread.Â
Affiliate Marketing
Takes advantage of existing presences to cross advertise for your product. This is often seen through influential facebook, youtube or Instagram personalities creating content in exchange for a commission to spread your brand name to their own audience.Â
Email Marketing
This is mostly on its way out as far as getting new customers in, but can still be used to some degree of success in getting previous customers to return through opt-in mailing lists sending out regular special offers to encourage repeat visits.
Inbound Marketing
This is yet another technique mostly unique to online marketing. It focuses on getting an audience to traffic earned or owned media about your company. This is a broad category that includes much of the above but is an important concept to understand in the era of modern online marketing as its a huge means of getting quality clicks onto your website and converting clicks into customers.
Advantages of Online Marketing
Online marketing isn’t just another medium to get your product out there.
It’s probably the most dominant force in marketing and just has so many advantages over traditional marketing in the way that it can be utilized and leveraged.
- Communication – Online platforms and social media offer the unique opportunity for instant communication between a brand and audience allowing you to respond to your client base in ways not available without an online presence. This is especially important in having your own hand in the direction of online talk about your brand to help influence the talk towards positive aspects.
- Content Distribution – By having your marketing online you are allowed to have you can appeal to a huge audience through social media, emails, newsletters and so on allowing you to get your name out in a big way and frequently update your most interested customer base with new options and offerings.
- Customer Information – The magnificent ability of the internet to gather information about your customer base can be a huge advantage. If you’ve yet to identify your brand’s successful demographics then online marketing can easily help you see where your product is doing well and where you need the most improvement. By compiling data on what has worked you can make precise decisions in the direction that your brand goes to guarantee the most success.
- Transparent Information – Just as interesting as your brand is in knowing about your customers and what works, with the information era customers are just as interested in knowing the real face of the brand that they are buying into. Online marketing allows a two-way street for your customers to experience a genuine transparent face of your company while exchanging their information so that you know who they are in turn. This allows you to cultivate a massive cult of brand loyalists.
- Opportunity for Innovation – The greatest part to digital marketing is that it allows a huge variety in innovative ways to advertise in order to draw a slight edge over their opposition. The unique ways that you can communicate and appeal to your audience are almost limitless in the information age.
To put it simply, you’re wasting time and money by not expanding into a strong online presence to catch up with modern advertisement techniques and reach your real client potential.
Find a local advertising agency that can help guide you to succeed against local trends and get the most success in your area.