What is your brand’s digital marketing strategy for the years ahead? Even though having a solid marketing plan that highlights a company’s specific goals and objectives is vital, not many businesses recognize the importance of having one in place. Failing to plan is planning to fail, and the consequences of not fully integrating digital marketing into a marketing plan are the reasons why 50% of most small start-ups take a nosedive after five years or less.

Lack of planning leads to suboptimal execution. This means gaining and retaining new customers becomes a challenge, consequently, your existing and start-up competitors begin to fill in the gaps of the uninspiring products or services your company has to offer. Given the effectiveness of digital marketing today, without one in place in this competitive e-commerce environment, unfortunately, means that you are missing out on opportunities for better targeting and optimization in entirety.

The scope and scale of digital marketing is quite large today, and in order to avoid common business pitfalls and have a leg up over the competition, you will need to learn various tools that can help you outsmart your rivals consequently, increase sales and profits while at it.

Digital Marketing or Traditional Marketing

Even though the two methods of advertising have their own unique perks, it can be challenging to choose the one that ultimately produces the best ROI or even allocate a set budget for marketing efforts. An innovative and visionary entrepreneur will employ common marketing knowledge to ensure that they have a marketing strategy that is focused on specific target demographics and serving their needs. To help you get an understanding of the two concepts and consequently, direct your efforts and budget fittingly toward a brand marketing process that will help your business to stand out, consider the following information that will make this daunting task manageable.

Digital Marketing

Marketing is an indispensable part of any growing company and while choosing the appropriate market and offering high-quality products and services is vital, but in order to reach out and convert your target audience into potential leads or loyal customers, it is essential to leverage the right kind of marketing techniques. Today, e-commerce technology offers customers multiple ways of searching and purchasing various products and services, as well as the convenience of secure and instant transactions, all in the comfort of their home. Digital marketing technology also offers businesses both large and start-ups the opportunity to use an integrated approach by leveraging the strengths of various marketing channels such as website, smartphones, and social media to reach a global audience.

For any digital marketing strategy to work, businesses must carry out a media-testing assessment to help them fully comprehend who their ideal target audience is and what media platform best resonates with them. For example, there is a considerable chunk of the population who don’t have Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat accounts or even use the Internet to conduct transactions. Thanks to the inception of mass media marketing, consumers today have an unprecedented choice. However, the pressure is on for businesses to differentiate and market their products and services to a much larger audience through various digital marketing mediums. Which is why companies must constantly eavesdrop online and on different social media platforms to build up an accurate buyer persona, which in turn, will help them when reviewing their product, services, and potential audience.

Today, modern technology has become a part of our lifestyle, consequently, digital marketing concepts have evolved and turned out to be a paramount process of marketing that uses innovative business models. Such models where buyers and sellers meet include virtual E-commerce marketplaces, online services, or online networking. Digital Marketing incorporates online mediums such as search engines, emails, social media networks, and mobile messages as well as utilizing marketing practices such as search engine optimization, Search Engine, and content marketing, e-commerce and social media marketing. Which explains the benefits of using this method as a marketing strategy because:

• It is cost effective and eases brand interactions
• Online networking can help a business reach a large audience
• Digital marketing can target different demographics
• It can expand and improve customer loyalty
• Its campaign activation timeframe is fast
• It can create brand loyalty when properly utilized

Traditional Marketing

These marketing methods have been in play ever since the concept of advertisements or marketing came into existence. Marketers have employed conventional marketing tools such as radio and TV ads, telephone, direct mail, outdoor billboards, as well as print ads on newspapers, catalogs, flyers, magazines, etc. to communicate and promote their products and services to a much larger audience. While it can still be useful, the drawbacks of this mode of publicizing compared to digital marketing are:

• High recurring ad costs that may not yield better ROI’s especially if published information is not seen or received by your target audience immediately
• Once static print ads or TV and radio commercials are executed cannot be updated, and any replacements or changes can put a considerable dent in your marketing budget
• It offers fewer options for customizing your campaigns and targeting specific customers that fall in particular age group or work in a specific industry
• With traditional marketing, you may not find adequate space to fully disclose unique, customized pricing details to help you convert more leads into potential and loyal followers
• You may invest in the wrong direction when executing a traditional marketing strategy because of poor campaign measurements compared to a digital marketing strategy that can be measured efficiently and also helps you to identify where you are going wrong and if it is successful or not

Having a brand presence in the digital sphere is vital but if you don’t establish a tempting value proposition for a customer through having a clear and precise message you will not be able to run successful digital marketing campaigns. So, benchmark where your business is today, set clear objectives and identify marketing goals that you want to accomplish in the future.