How Digital Marketing Is Arising As An Essential Business Skill? By James Tredwell on September 18, 2020 In this technology-enabled world, a rising number of consumers are shifting online to search and buy different products. Be it grocery shopping, ordering meals, doing laundry, or buying gadgets, everything can be bought online in just a few taps. This trend in consumer buying behavior is making digital marketing arise as an essential business skill. Businesses who haven’t yet entered the digital world or are not implementing digital marketing strategies will gradually lose the race. An essential reason why businesses are embracing digital marketing is that it enables them to interact and engage with their target audience in real-time, as opposed to traditional marketing channels. Therefore, as a business owner, it is important to involve digital marketing strategies in marketing your product or service. What is Digital Marketing? Digital marketing includes marketing efforts that involve the use of the internet and electronic devices. It involves the use of digital channels like social media, search engines, other websites, and emails to interact with existing and potential customers. The different types of digital marketing a business can use to market its product are: Search Engine Optimization Search Engine Marketing Content Marketing Social Media Marketing Email Marketing Affiliate Marketing Pay Per Click Advertising Instant Messaging Marketing Why is Digital Marketing an essential business skill? Almost all businesses build their own website as soon as they plan to start a business. However, many of them don’t realize that merely having a website is not enough to create awareness and visibility for the business. If you want your target audience to visit your website and buy your products or services, you need an effective marketing strategy. This is where digital marketing comes into the picture. It helps your customers to find your website on the internet by using strategies such as SEO, content marketing, PPC, etc. Moreover, digital marketing is quite cost-effective when compared to other forms of marketing. This is because once you invest in different strategies of digital marketing, the impacts stay for a longer time without requiring your involvement. It also enables businesses to create customized campaigns for a specific audience. Businesses can also track the data through analytics to optimize the campaigns. Digital marketing in combination with RPA services is streamlining the use of strategies to promote and market brands. RPA eases the digital marketing tasks of marketers by automating many tasks such as keyword search, link building, content editing, monitoring rankings, etc. Here are some statistics on digital marketing that reveal its importance: 86% of women refer to social media before making a purchasing decision. Leading brands spend 25% to 43% of their budget on content marketing. 49% of consumers prefer receiving weekly promotional emails from their favorite brands. 78% of salespeople that use social media perform better than their peers. 51% of shoppers complete an online purchase on their smartphone. 67% of search engine clicks are made on the first 5 results displayed. How Digital Marketing is becoming an essential business skill? Increasing number of customers are going online With technological advancements and most of the people across the world owning a smartphone, an increasing number of customers can be found online. Moreover, the lockdown situation in most of the companies during the COVID-19 pandemic, made people more dependent on mobile devices for ordering essentials and non-essentials. Therefore, if you are still not leveraging the digital world, you are losing out. Customer’s buying decisions these days are quite influenced by what they read about your business online. For this, they get recommendations from other people on social media, analyze your website, and read your content. If a customer also comes across a brand name several times, the name is then imprinted on their brains. When the customers are in need of a product that you sell, they will be able to recall viewing your name and will give your business a try if they are satisfied. Competitors are leveraging the digital world Having an online presence and using digital marketing strategies is not only important to analyze customer behavior, their buying trends, and to attract them to your website. It is also important to watch your competitors, analyze the strategies they are using to influence their customers, and learn from their mistakes and achievements. Sites like Google Analytics and UberSuggest help you to track the performance of your competitors. You can also find the keywords that they are using and are ranking for. Using similar keywords in your digital marketing strategy can help your website also rank on the search engine. The strategies that your competitors use can help you plan strategies for your business as well. Identify your target audience Digital marketing enables businesses to engage and interact with their prospective customers. The strategies help understand the needs and buying behavior of potential customers. Interacting with the target audience helps businesses identify the pain points of customers and provide adequate solutions. Digital marketing offers many tools to identify and understand your target audience. You can even interact with your customers on social media, conduct surveys to understand their requirements, and consider their comments and feedback on the surveys or on social media platforms to improve your product or service. When you operate a business with a customer-centric focus, you can instantly gain customer trust and visibility. Trends in digital marketing that are helping businesses boost their ROI Influencer Marketing Social Media Marketing Content Marketing App Store optimization Live Video Streaming Site Optimization for Wearables Consumer Engagement Strategy Big Data Personalization The Bottom Line As we all know that the world is shifting from traditional marketing to digital marketing. Eventually, digital marketing is expected to be the fate of marketing. Consumers are also preferring to shop online from the comfort of their homes. Therefore, it is important for businesses to reach their customers online. Moreover, digital marketing is more cost-effective than traditional marketing and are adaptable, quantifiable, quicker, and result-driven. Its benefits can be leveraged by customers and marketers alike. Digital marketing works for businesses of all kinds irrespective of size and industry. Regardless of what you are selling, it helps build buyer personas to identify the needs of your target audience and create online content. However, different businesses should use different digital marketing strategies based on their product and target customers Author Bio– Vijaya Bharti is a Content Writer at Enuke Software Company specialized in RPA, iOT and Blockchain app development. She is passionate about writing, she has made her passion her profession.