3 Reasons Digital Marketing Matters (even when most of your business is word of mouth)
It’s 2020, and regardless of what industry you’re in, it’s vital that you have a sound digital marketing strategy. Even if most of your business is conducted through word of mouth referrals, there is still an enormous wealth of untapped potential through incorporating an effective digital marketing strategy into your business.
Here are some reasons why digital marketing matters even when most of your business is word of mouth.
1. Client Engagement
Customer engagement is the strategy by which businesses create relationships with their customers, with the intent of raising brand awareness and maintaining brand loyalty.
Businesses that continue to engage with their customers benefit from the following:
- It differentiates a brand: by consistently creating opportunities for customer engagement, you produce a memorable touchstone for your customers to return to, thus elevating your customers’ experience.
- It enhances customer satisfaction: this helps your business retain customers whilst making them your biggest fans. This, in turn, will increase word of mouth referrals.
- It creates trust: customers trust a brand that is open, communicative and consistent in their engagement.
An effective digital marketing strategy is an imperative method of engaging your clientele. Through communicating with your customers through a company website and social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, you are able to tap into a massive market of internet users whilst fostering healthy business/client relationships.
2. Keep Your Brand Top Of Mind
Top of mind awareness is essentially the first brand that comes to mind when considering a product. Sports? Nike. Takeaway? McDonalds. You get the picture, but simply relying on word of mouth referrals is no way to make your brand stand out amongst the competition.
The best way to do this? Incorporating a sound digital strategy into your overall marketing efforts. Online advertising is jumping the line when it comes to top of mind awareness, so it’s important that you get on board with this vital method.
Through the use of digital methods like Google Ads and sponsored social posts, as well as through the use of email marketing, you could see your business being one of the the customer’s first thoughts when they consider your industry.
3. Digital Strategy Provides Value
What makes digital marketing such an outstanding technique is the value it provides. Digital marketing is far cheaper than traditional advertising methods like television, radio etc. A recent Gartner study of marketers around the world found that 41 per cent say they have saved money using digital marketing as opposed to traditional marketing methods. Furthermore, digital marketing has the potential to bring in more customers than traditional methods.
Digital marketing provides value by doing the following:
- Exposes your brand to specific audiences: digital marketing doesn’t face geographic or demographic constraints. You can select a specific audience you want to target based upon their age, interests, location etc.
- Cost-effective techniques: digital marketing allows you to monitor your campaign in real time, analysing important metrics that would be otherwise lost in word of mouth or traditional methods. This allows you to make changes on-the-go, thus saving money on campaigns that might not be working.
- Better revenue growth: conducted professionally, digital marketing can help you increase your revenue. Google has said that businesses that utilise digital techniques are 2.8 per cent more likely to increase revenue than those that didn’t.
Digital marketing can help increase your overall conversions through customer engagement, loyalty and brand awareness. It can work efficiently alongside your word of mouth business to create an outstanding overall marketing strategy.
