Almost every day I'm getting emails and reading articles on the recession and recession-beating strategies. No question, times are tough and the focus is on return on spend more than ever before. But this got me thinking why we should all be looking at digital media much more closely at the moment. What are the key elements that make it so popular, particularly during tough times?
Here are a few reasons why I believe that businesses need to raise the prominence of digital marketing in their own strategies.
Digital Marketing works; if planned properly and managed well a digital marketing campaign can produce very good results. As budgets are being migrated from traditional to online marketing, companies are seeing good results. According to a recent report by Nielsen
, 90% of internet consumers worldwide trust recommendations from people they know, while 70% trust consumer opinions posted online.
Digital Marketing costs less; if you have a good website that is properly optimised for search engines, and that is talked about positively within social media, site traffic and enquiries will come. There are dozens of reports on how effective digital marketing is compared to how much it costs. Now that Search is a more established method of driving traffic, business are rapidly moving into social media with Forrester predicting an annual growth of 34% over the next five years.
Digital Marketing can be set to a budget that suits; whether a budget is modest or otherwise there is always something that can be done that will produce results. Talking about what you do on a social media site or writing an incisive and interesting blog post can produce excellent results. The growth in both of these areas has been huge. If however there is a larger budget available then an integrated campaign across search and social media can provide spectacular results. No doubt, the recession is also taking its toll on online marketing budgets. The Bellweather report showed that online marketing spend reduced by 7.9% in the second quarter of 2009. However whilst online advertising dropped by 18.4%, Search saw a drop of only 5.4%.
Digital marketing is very finely measurable; by deploying analytics and reputation management tools, as well as building good systems into a site, it’s possible to accurately know where enquiries and sales are coming from and measure ROI. This has huge advantages over many more traditional methods of marketing.
Digital Marketing has wide benefits; this is beyond the obvious benefits of enquiries and sales. If digital marketing is carried out then awareness of the business grows and more people learn about the products and services being offered. They may not want or need the products or services at the time, but they may well bookmark the site page or post and go back to it when they do.
It seems that as we move deeper into the recession, more and more business are turning to digital methods for increased marketing. Those that are doing it properly will not only do well out of it, but the benefits will still be there when the recession ends.
