By 2021, smartphones will be more common than piped water or electricity. People’s day-to-day activities have migrated to the digital landscape. We pay bills online, purchase online, compare brands online, connect with other people online. With the widespread use of the internet, companies have also shifted from traditional marketing channels to digital ones.
Digital marketing has been evolving rapidly, acting like a major catalyst for innovation. It shapes your brand image, interactions, and customer relationships. Here is how digital marketing has changed the way we do business.
Customers Require Real-Time Feedback
With the rise of social networks, instant messaging apps, and artificial intelligence, customers’ demands have changed. They expect brands to be available 24/7.
Savvy companies are taking advantage of digital channels to enhance customer satisfaction and gain a 360-degree view of their customers’ behaviors and preferences. They combine live chat, instant messaging apps, and chatbots to provide instant feedback. With the help of social media monitoring tools, brands can now track brand mentions and engage in customer conversations faster.
While each of those communication channels is effective on its own, integrating them would help you inject consistency into customer conversations and provide omnichannel customer support.
Understanding Digital Marketing is Crucial for Business Owners
No matter if you are promoting your business yourself, hiring an in-house digital marketing specialist, or outsourcing your marketing efforts to a digital agency, you need to understand how digital marketing works.
Fortunately, digital marketing resources are now more available than ever. For starters, you could read reputable blogs on digital marketing, including Neil Patel, SEO Book, Brian Dean, Mashable, etc. You can also find a wide range of courses on digital marketing on e-learning platforms or take ICT online courses to enhance your knowledge in related fields, such as cybersecurity or website development.
Only by learning the basics of digital marketing will you be able to set reasonable digital marketing goals for your business, analyze your market, and track your performance.
Quality Digital Content Gains Customers’ Trust
Research says that, in 60 seconds, 1,440 WordPress posts are published, 3.3 million Facebook posts are shared, and 500 hours of YouTube videos are uploaded. In the noisy digital marketing ecosystem, getting yourself heard by your customers can be highly challenging.
Creating original, innovative, and relevant content across multiple digital platforms can help you set yourself apart from your competitors and grab your target audience’s attention. Use your blog, email newsletters, and social channels to educate your audiences and help them solve specific problems. This way, you will position yourself as an authoritative source of information and inspire people to come back to your site for more tips.
Many brands have started diversifying their content, as well. Apart from traditional articles, they now focus on producing data-backed guides, whitepapers, in-house research, and case studies. Visual content helps them boost user engagement, too. Videos, images, high-quality photos, infographics, user-generated content, and animations will evoke users’ emotions and inspire brand loyalty.
Personalization Remains Crucial
Personalization and digital marketing go hand in hand. In the overcrowded digital marketing ecosystem, customers expect brands to make them feel special. Statistics say they are willing to pay more for personalized products.
Brands are collecting customers’ geolocation data, previous purchases, or browsing habits to understand what products and services they are interested in and serving them highly targeted content across all channels.
Customer rewards programs, contests, and giveaways increase customers’ satisfaction and boost brand loyalty.
AI chatbots are taking digital marketing personalization to the next level. Apart from making interactions with your brand fast, fun, and relevant, they can also serve as reliable customer assistants. Many brands use chatbots to ask customers about their needs and preferences. Based on customers’ answers, they provide relevant product offers and inspire faster conversions.
The Focus Is on Customer-Centric Marketing
Today’s customers don’t trust branded content anymore. When making purchasing decisions, they focus on their peers’ experiences with brands. Namely, 88% of customers trust online reviews as much as they trust their friends and families. In marketing physiology, this phenomenon is called social proof – a customer conforms to the opinions of the masses.
Brands are now seeing the power of social proof marketing. They encourage customers to review and rate them on their websites, social networks, business listings, and similar channels. On social networks, they host photo contests and motivate customers to create quality and relevant user-generated content. They create fun social media marketing campaigns to inspire people to mention their brand and use their hashtags. On their websites, they are showing customers’ testimonials and writing case studies, where they explain what problems their customers faced and how they helped them.
By letting customers share their opinions about your brand, you will show the human side of your brand and boost brand trust.
Conclusions
Digital transformation is the foundation of your business growth. It lets you stand out in the competitive industry, build a recognizable brand, and build stronger relationships with your target customers.
Remember that digital marketing is evolving at an astounding rate. Therefore, to gain a competitive advantage, you should stay on top of industry trends and adopt them fast. We cannot wait to see what the next big thing in the digital marketing sphere will be.