If you are the owner of a small or medium business you probably know how important Digital Marketing is. We are living in the 21. Century where people shop online almost all the time. If you want to get more sales, you need to set up your own digital marketing strategies and use all possible platforms or tools to advertise your products or services.
In this article, we will talk about the importance of digital marketing for your business and what is PPC (price-per-click) strategy.
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What are the reasons why you should consider Digital Marketing?
Right from the start, we will talk about the reasons why you should start your own Digital Marketing. There are many reasons, but we will talk about the most important ones.
1. Everyone is turning digital
Day by day there are more and more customers who are buying online. It doesn’t matter if the consumer is ready to buy or use search engines to find all the information about the specific product or its brand. For example, there are over 3.5 billion searches per day on Google. Now you probably want to show your products or services on Google Search, because it can rapidly increase your traffic and conversions. But it is not that easy.
Search is an important digital marketing tactic, but keep in mind it is not the only one. Studies show that the modern consumer is researching the whole internet before he decides to make a purchase. Study by Blue Nile Research shows that between 79% and 82% of consumers use search engines, check brand websites or look at the customers reviews. Between 14 and 25 percent use different platforms, such as social media or blogs. If you combine these two tactics, your results can be only better.
As we said, people are turning digital. They are browsing or searching in the library, on their way to work or when they are bored. If you do not have any campaigns in digital marketing, you may be missing a great opportunity to attract new customers. Many people use smartphones to shop online, but what does this information mean to you? If you want to succeed in digital marketing, you need to deliver the content to the consumer right in their moment of need.
2. You can do magic even with small budget
One of the best benefits of digital marketing is that some tactics and campaigns are affordable and effective. This means, you do not need to invest thousands of dollars to be effective with your ads. You can use many ways of digital marketing, such as through email, social media and SEO marketing. For example, if you run ads on Google network, you are paying only when someone clicks on your ad. This auction system is called CPC (cost-per-click). Also, you will see if the person who clicked on your ad buys something or if you are not advertising something that is not selling well. You will have detailed reports.
Imagine that you would pay thousands of dollars for the spot on the TV or in the radio. There is no way on how to track conversions from these channels and you will pay for it anyway. As we said before, people are turning digital day by day which means these “old school” channels will be gone in a few years.
There are also different and less expensive ways of digital marketing, such as content marketing. You can drive traffic thanks to the quality of your content which is less expensive than paid ads and increase your ROI (return of investment). Just make sure that you are posting consistently and you will feel the power of this strategy.
3. Easy measurable campaigns and reports
It is really necessary to track your campaigns and their results. Without these reports you won’t be able to measure the effect of your campaigns and it can cost you money. Thanks to reports you can decide which campaigns are making the most and which is not making any money. After this information you will be able to re-invest your budget in different strategies or increase the budget of your most successful campaigns.
If you are using Google Ads you probably know how detailed reports you can get from your campaigns. If they do not fit you and you want even more detailed reports, you can implement Google Analytics to see even more details about your business. If you are not using Google, there are plenty other tools that can help you automate these reports on a daily/weekly or monthly basis o you will not waste your precious time.
Overall, the possibility to track and monitor your campaign success allows you to get more out of your marketing budget. By having real-time analytics, you can improve or make changes to your existing campaigns before you run out of your budget. Tracking is really important!
4. Provide a more interactive experience to your customers
There are plenty of ways on how to provide a more personalized experience through interactive video ads or tailored product recommendations. Video ads (online videos) have quickly become a part of consumers’ daily lives. This type of marketing is a great opportunity for brands to engage their target audience.
If you want to be more personal, product recommendations are the best way on how to encourage repeat sales, cross-sell and up-sell to your current clients/customers. There is a higher chance to sell something to someone who is already satisfied with your products than to someone who is deciding to buy from you or your competition.
In our opinion, one of the best strategies is remarketing. This allows you to reach back to your customers who have visited your site and leave without making any purchase. If you are using Google Ads you can simply run this strategy with your Shopping campaigns. This is the best way on how to interact with many customers who are only browsing your site. In the case of Google Ads, imagine that potential customers will look for “Iphone 11 pro”. He has not decided if he wants to buy it from your site and continue his research on the other sites. Remarketing allows you to show your ad of “Iphone 11 pro” to him on the different pages. This can bring him back and finish the conversion on your site.
5. Use social media to be closer with your customers
If you think about the other ways on how to improve your reach, social media marketing is the best option. Almost everyone uses social media everyday. It doesn’t matter if it’s Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter if you are constantly answering questions of the audience on these platforms.
Keep in mind that the fast answers and personal contact is crucial if you want to improve the name of your brand or company. Plan the posts, giveaways or anything interactive on your social media to bring more traffic to your website.
If you are not using any kind of live-chat on your website, you can use social media such as Facebook or Instagram to answer the questions of people who are trying to reach you. This is really important if you want to develop a more personal relationship with them.
Also, be polite and answer all ratings and reviews about your products or services. People will notice that. If you have any negative review, do not hesitate and answer them as soon as possible. You need to show to other audiences that you care about them so do not be afraid to give them some coupons or discounts if they are not satisfied.
6. You can adjust your business to trends in real-time
Digital strategy can help you respond to popular trends in real-time which can help your company to take advantage of people’s response to current events, topics, or trends. For example, you are selling Nike Shoes. You published ads on the newspaper, radio or even on the TV. The trend changes and people are not buying Nike Shoes but start buying Adidas Shoes. What now? Your ads are everywhere and you can’t change it right away. But if you are advertising through online marketing, you will simply change all the campaign settings and you are done.
Thanks to digital marketing, you are allowed to respond to these trends quickly. Also, you can use other networks, such as social media to inform people immediately. There won’t be any delay and you can be always ahead of your competition.
7. You can increase your reach
Traditional marketing materials, such as television ads or local newspapers can target an audience at a certain geographical location. However, if you are looking for ways to increase your reach beyond these targeted audiences or reach new audiences across the nation or the globe, digital marketing will help you increase your overall reach and expand your business.
If your business allows you to sell your products in the whole country or, for example, the whole Europe, why limit yourself to selling only to locals. If you are selling a service or a product that are useful to a larger demographic, you can use digital marketing tools and strategies to reach this audience via the internet.
In addition, digital marketing provides other ways to target your audience, such as social media. Your brand or company can follow people from the whole world, so you may probably want to invest some of your budget or time on social media too. You can share information about your products or services, make special giveaways or share informative content that can convert visitors to customers. This is a great way to gain additional exposure and build brand recognition.
8. Develop better relationships with your customer
Another reason why digital marketing is a must for most modern companies and brands is that it allows companies to foster better customer relationships and strengthen brand. The traditional marketing provides on-way communication with the consumer, but digital marketing allows for two-way communication even in the real time. This makes it easier for companies to effectively address their customers’ questions and concerns without delay. This can also help companies to foster brand relationships through quality consumer engagement.
Social media is a really great tool for improving customer relationships. Social media like Facebook or Instagram allow brands to communicate with customers and engage them in a significant way. When people who visit your site have questions or concerns, they are able to contact your company on social media for additional information or solutions. Thanks to improving customer service relations, social media also helps improve overall customer satisfaction, which can help you with your brand awareness.
Social media are not only great for improving customer service, but also help improve customer relationships by allowing brands to better get to know their customers needs and wants. By improving customer service relations, you can achieve better overall customer satisfaction rates which can lead to repeat sales and customer referrals.
9. Digital marketing is not much different than traditional print marketing
Many businesses think that once they go digital, they won’t be able to go back to traditional marketing. However, the combination of these two allows you to expand your business even more. The key to finding success is a combined strategy where you need to consider something from digital marketing and from the traditional marketing.
One of the best combinations is for example print ads or offers combined with digital marketing tactics such as social media to maximize the overall success of your campaign. For example, you are selling specific services to digital marketing agencies. As the first step, you will send them personalised letters about your offer. We know how busy agencies are, so you can’t expect a fast answer. After some period of time, you can follow up them via email or newsletter. If that won’t be effective, you can directly contact them via phone call. By this, you will combine two marketing strategies and increase your chance of success. Do not be afraid to invest more in these combinated strategies, after some time you will find the best one that fits your goals.
10. Be ahead of your competitors
This part is simple. If your company is not using digital marketing strategies, your competition is. If you want to be top and succeed, you must be ahead of your competition. If you will use at least half of our tips, we are more than sure that your business will grow faster than before. Make research about your competitors, if they are using
Do not be afraid to use several automation tools to save time for your company, such as Google Ads automation tool BlueWinston or other tools for email marketing, social media, etc.
Also, if you are advertising on Google and you are using Shopping campaigns, you can advertise them through the CSS partner program and save up to 20% on the cost-per-click.
What is PPC?
After you learned all about digital marketing, you are probably thinking what is PPC and how to use it to benefit your business. For someone it can be simple, but for the others it is a different level of marketing. If you need professional advice, Crystal Marketing is a SEM Agency in Sydney who are dedicated to growing businesses via PPC.
PPC (pay-per-click) is an advertising model that lets people and marketers place ads on different ad platforms and pay only when someone clicks on their ads.
The goal of pay-per-click is to lead the people viewing it to click through to the advertiser’s app or website, where visitors can do a valuable action, such as registration or purchasing a product. Search engines are the most popular advertising platforms because they will allow you to display ads that are relevant to what people are searching for.
How does paid search work?
The first results on a search engine result page is called SERP. The ads that are being shown in these results won the auction including bid amount and the quality of the ads.
Ads are being shown when someone searches for something on a search engine. This means, when advertisers are interested in showing ads related to a people’s search query, an auction is triggered based on keywords that are bid on by advertisers.
If you want to get involved in these auctions, you can use accounts on different platforms, such as Google Ads to set up your ads and determine where and when you would like those ads to appear. Google also offers to show some of your ads on their partners’ websites. This can strengthen your brand even more.
Keywords
If you want to give it a try, you must understand what keywords are and how to use them. If you want to start your paid advertisement, you need to have as much as possible relevant keywords.
They are divided in two categories:
- Queries – These are the actual words that users type into the search field of a search engine in order to find results.
- Keywords – These are what marketers use to target these users by matching their search queries.
Depending on the keyword match types, advertisers can match search queries with more or less precision and show their ads.
As an example, you can choose to match keywords with search queries exactly, for example “nike air max 97” or you allow different variations such as different orderings of the words, different spellings or the inclusion of other words, for example “nike max 97, air max nike, nike shoes 97” etc.
Keep in mind, that it is also possible to have negative keywords that will prevent ads being triggered by search queries containing those keywords, in order to avoid irrelevant traffic.
Ads
After you learned how the auction system and keywords work, you need to learn how to prepare ads in your campaigns. Ads are what people will see if the auction is won, so their preparation is very important to get right.
Ads typically contain a headline, URL and description. You can also enhance with additional info, for example, in Google Ads, you can add some of the “ad extensions” such as location, phone number or text message.
Ads can be shown on a SERP on top of the results or at the bottom of the page. It is good practice to test different versions of ads to see what performs the best.
For example, Google Ads offers different versions of ads such as search, display, shopping, video or universal app.
You can also use remarketing strategy to attract people who left your website without the conversion. Google offers many strategies and automation, so if you are not decided which platform to give a go, you should consider Google Ads.
Summarize
After reading this article you should learn all the benefits of digital marketing. It is truly a great opportunity especially during this crisis caused by COVID-19. You can notice how important it is to be online and be able to deliver your products or services even during situations like this.
Do not forget to run paid campaigns and try different strategies. It is really important to be as close as possible to your customers, so if you do not have any social media, create them.
If you do not have time for copywriting and blogging, you should consider hiring someone for the content. There is always something to write about. Beside the quality of information of your blogs, you will be able to attract a wider audience and maybe convert them from visitors to your customers. If you have any query or need any kind of service feel free to contact us. We’ll assist you in an efficient way.
As the last point, do not be afraid to use different tools that can help you with the automation of some of your tasks. For example, if you are publishing posts on social media on a daily basis, you should consider some tool that will do this for you. You will be able to save many hours that can be invested in the other part of your business.
Digital marketing is full of the opportunities, so we wish you luck with your business!