Many business owners ask why they should invest in digital marketing at all. The answer is financial, and it comes down to eight things.
1. Why traditional methods are failing
The market has changed dramatically in the last 10 years, and the shift online has forced many businesses to adjust or close.
In order for a business to understand why to invest in digital marketing they first have to come to terms with the fact that previously viable business techniques have for the most part become unsustainable.
2. Audience location
The digital revolution has changed the way we consume information, research and commission services. Even if you’re one of the few who still buy locally or flip through the phone book to find a company, the unfortunate reality is that you’re the minority.
Much of the world is online now, and that changes where customers look. What this means is that the tides have changed and whereas leaflet drops, cold calls and shop fronts may have drawn in prospective clients, the new commercial battlefield is online.
Sole trader or blue chip company, your audience is now online.
3. Get seen with SEO (search engine optimisation)
All search engines are indexes. They file information by keyword and display it in an order set by Google’s internal algorithm. That algorithm is not public, so it falls to agencies like ours to work out how to structure your site and your listings so you appear for the terms that are worth money.
SEO is not black magic. Google has two branches: the service side (Google search) and the commercial branch (Google Ads).
On the search side, Google’s organic results aim to show the best answer for each search. It decides who is best on a long list of factors, but it comes down to what people search for, where they search from, and which page answers the question best.
4. Return on investment
The main reason anyone invests in anything is return. Traditional marketing relies on people and human interaction. Printing leaflets or making cold calls takes people.
A digital marketer is still an expense, but for the reach you get it is a much smaller one.
5. Reduced overhead
Every business in Ireland needs to reduce its overheads wherever possible. Digital marketing is a primary avenue to cut costs. With traditional marketing strategies it’s very hard or impossible to track ROI. Digital marketing is the polar opposite.
From a paid perspective, Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising report impressions, clicks and conversions for each campaign, so you can see what a client costs you to obtain.
You can then use your own business analysis to ascertain what your average lifetime value of a client is. By knowing these business fundamentals, you can understand what profit you retain on each and every client.
From an SEO perspective you can also track what you spend and what income it brings in.
6. Cost effectiveness
Traditional marketing is slow and expensive to change. Paid digital campaigns can return money in the same week, and you can back them up with longer term work such as optimising your site for search engines.
7. Increase brand equity
Brand equity is important for every business regardless of size, but brand equity can be particularly important for brands with high-end commercial products. For example, a business offering business or development loans would rarely see an inbound enquiry from a paid ad alone. But when someone is researching companies that offer that service, you want your brand in front of them.
8. Target specific audience
One of the more recent additions to major marketing suites (Meta, Google, Bing, etc) is audience targeting and segmenting. It lets businesses target individuals on gender and age. Review the conversion data across your campaigns and you can build a profile of your ideal client, then target that profile directly.
Again by targeting the ideal client type, you reduce overhead, marketing spend and increase conversion.
Digital marketing agency
At Bubblehub we start with your business goals and build the marketing strategy around them.
We do web design, search engine optimisation, pay-per-click marketing and social media marketing. Used together, they put you in front of more of the people already looking for what you sell.
If you want to know what digital marketing would look like for your business, contact us. No obligation.
