How Does Digital Marketing Help Businesses? Everything You Need to Know

Digital marketing has quickly become one of the most important aspects of any business, regardless of size or industry. In order to stay competitive in today’s digital age, it is essential to have a comprehensive digital marketing strategy in place. So, what exactly is digital marketing? And how can businesses make the most out of it? In this blog post, we will answer these questions and more! We’ll discuss the basics of digital marketing, outline how businesses can use digital channels to reach their target audiences, and give you a teaser on the type of digital marketing that we love – story-based marketing! Let’s get started.

How does digital marketing differ from traditional marketing?

The biggest difference between digital and traditional marketing is the way that consumers interact with each other and with businesses. In the digital world, consumers are constantly interacting with brands through social media, blogs, websites, and online forums. This two-way communication didn’t really exist in the pre-digital age. It was much more one-sided, with businesses doing all the talking and consumers doing all the listening.

With digital marketing, businesses can reach their target audiences where they already are – online! And because digital channels allow for two-way communication, businesses can build relationships with their customers and create a community around their brand.

What are some of the most common digital marketing strategies?

There are a number of different digital marketing strategies that businesses can use to reach their target audiences. Here are a few of the most common:

• Search engine optimization (SEO): The goal of SEO is to improve a website’s organic search ranking, which will ultimately lead to more traffic and conversions.
• Pay-per-click advertising (PPC): PPC is a digital marketing strategy in which businesses pay for each click on their ad.
• Social media marketing (SMM): SMM is the process of using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to build relationships with potential and current customers.
• Content marketing: Content marketing is all about creating valuable, relevant, and engaging content that will attract and retain customers.
• Email marketing: Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that involves sending emails to customers and prospects in order to build relationships and convert leads into customers.

The great thing about these strategies is that you don’t have to pick just one! You can use all of these strategies in your larger digital marketing strategy. If you’re new to digital marketing, maybe you start with one and then add on as you go. Or, maybe you can start with a few depending on what tends to work in your industry. Whatever you do, we always recommend that you start with strategy and a plan. Plan out what you’re going to do first and understand why you want to do it before you start spending time and money on digital marketing.

What are the benefits of digital marketing?

We could go on all day about this! No, but seriously – there are endless benefits of digital marketing, and that’s why it has become such an integral part of business today. Here are just a few of the many benefits:

1. It’s cost-effective: Digital marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach your target audience.
2. It’s targeted: With digital marketing, businesses can target specific demographics, interests, and even locations.
3. It’s measurable: With digital tools, businesses can track their progress and ROI like never before.
4. It’s real-time: Digital marketing allows businesses to see the results of their campaigns almost immediately.
5. It’s engaging: Digital channels provide customers with a two-way communication, which helps businesses build relationships with their target audiences. Digital marketing is an incredibly powerful tool that can help businesses reach their target audiences in new and innovative ways.

We really could go on all day, but we’ll stop there…basically, as long as you know that there are infinite benefits to digital marketing and that if you own a business you should DEFINITELY be doing it, that’s enough 🙂

How can you make the most of digital marketing?

The million dollar question! And unfortunately, there’s no easy answer. Every business is different, which means that every digital marketing strategy should be tailored to fit the specific needs of the business. However, there are a few general tips that we can give you to make sure that you’re making the most of digital marketing:

• Set realistic goals and objectives: Don’t try to do everything at once! Start small and focus on one or two digital marketing channels first. Once you’ve mastered those, you can start adding on more.
• Spend plenty of time on your strategy: A digital marketing strategy is not something that you can just create and forget about. You need to continuously work on it and update it as your business grows and changes.
• Make sure you’re using the right tools and technology: There are a ton of digital marketing tools out there, but not all of them will be right for your business. Do your research and choose the ones that will help you achieve your goals.
• Understand your target audience: This seems like a no-brainer, but it’s important to understand exactly who you’re trying to reach with your digital marketing efforts, so spend time on figuring out your target audience. Once you know who your target audience is, you can tailor your digital marketing strategy to fit their specific needs.
• Get clear on your brand identity: Your digital marketing strategy should be an extension of your brand identity. If you’re not sure what your brand identity is, take some time to figure it out before you start working on your digital marketing strategy. It’s important that you know who your brand is and how you want to portray yourself before you start marketing yourself all over the place.
• Create quality content: This is one of the most important tips we can give you. Content is still king and if you’re not creating quality, engaging content, you’re not going to get very far with digital marketing.
• Cross-promote: Once you have your digital marketing strategy in place and you’re creating quality content, make sure that you’re cross-promoting it across your channels! Share your content on social media, send out email newsletters, and do whatever else you can to get people to see your stuff.
• Be patient: Like we said before, digital marketing takes time. You’re not going to see results overnight, so don’t get discouraged and give up! Just keep at it and eventually, you’ll start to see the fruits of your labor.

A little more on story-based marketing…

This blog post went over the basics of digital marketing, but we would be remiss not to talk about our favorite (and in our humble opinion, the most effective) type of digital marketing: story-based marketing. Story-based marketing is the process of using storytelling in your marketing to uniquely position your products, services, or organization for rapid growth.

At Evolve Global Marketing, we typically use a specific type of story-based marketing called StoryBrand marketing. StoryBrand is a 7-part framework that can help businesses clarify their message and leverage the amazing power of storytelling. Our CEO, Kimjera Whittington, is StoryBrand Certified, so she’s always available to support businesses in their StoryBrand or story-based marketing endeavors. We won’t get into it too much more here, but if you’re curious about StoryBrand marketing, you can check out this blog post we wrote that shows how you can design a high-converting website page utilizing the StoryBrand framework. Or, as always, you can reach out to us to learn more about it – we always love to talk!

And that’s it for today! We hope that this blog helped break down the basics of digital marketing and story-based marketing. If you take one thing away from this post, let it be that you definitely, definitely, definitely need to jump on the digital marketing bandwagon if you haven’t already. And if you need a hand, you know where to find us.