The Impact of Digital Marketing on Business Growth and Branding

The impact of digital marketing has forever changed the way companies operate and communicate with their customers.

The effect of digital marketing strategies had consequences on profit margins and the ability of a business to grow. Without incorporating this style of advertising into a broader messaging campaign, a brand severely limits its ability to be successful.

A business that doesn’t embrace digital marketing strategies limits the growth opportunities for its business. If you want to grow your business with digital marketing, let’s look at its impact:

1. Find customers that you would have never encountered otherwise via SEO
2. Understand what channels drive sales for your company
3. Communicate your message and better connect you with both current and prospective customers
4. Establish a presence online
5. Personalize your brand and control the messaging
6. Provide tools that better allow you to target your core customers
7. Provide value to your customers and showcase content that matters to them

1. Find Customers That You Would Have Never Encountered Via SEO

If you have even a basic understanding of digital marketing you have heard the phrase and acronym SEO. This abbreviation stands for search engine optimization. The objective of using SEO techniques is to increase where your content is ranked by the search engines. The higher you rank, the better your chances are of getting your website and other content in front of potential customers. 

Ranking is critical since 75% of searchers won’t go past the first page of Google search results. 

From your perspective, the more traffic that you generate to your website means a chance to increase your business. Each person who arrives at your site that isn’t an existing customer is a chance to grow your database. This visitor could end up joining your email list or making a purchase that day from your eCommerce store. 

While the customers you have are already valuable, every brand needs to grow its customer base to survive. 

Using SEO techniques allow you to do just that. 

Another reason why SEO enhances digital marketing impact on business is that it builds credibility in your site with Google. 

The more Google sees your site as an authority on its designated subject matter, the higher they will value it. 

This also boosts your chances of being seen by more web browsers. To help with this area, work on creating quality backlinks as one of the ways to increase your authority.

2. Understand What Channels Drive Sales for Your Company

One of the best things about the impact of digital marketing on business growth is that you can see results almost in real-time.

If you launch an ad campaign and you see a spike in sales, then you can attribute that spike to your campaign. There are tools you can use to see which channels and which ads bring you the most traffic as well. All of these are helpful in planning where to make your next ad buy and how much you should invest. 

The most important thing you will need to do before starting any marketing campaign is to decide what metrics you want to study and measure. 

Once you know the objective, then it is easier to create the ad to drive the desired outcome. If you want to drive sales, then you want to track how well your ad does in converting viewers into buyers. If you want to drive brand awareness by getting more followers to your social media channels, observe your numbers after your campaign launches.

Tools to grow your business with digital marketing

To make things less complicated, use a marketing program to help you monitor your ROI and track all your analytics. There are tools made just for tracking specific platforms or you could use a fully integrated CRM that can handle all digital marketing needs. 

• Hubspot is a fully integrated CRM that keeps all your data in one place and can handle multiple different types of digital marketing efforts. Their platform can help you track your SEO efforts, email drip campaigns, website traffic, and more. 
• GetResponse is an email marketing program that helps you create landing pages and email marketing campaigns. Their program can tell you precisely who opened your email at what time and tell you what links in your email they clicked. Their program also lets you segment your list for improved efficiency.
• Hootsuite is a terrific platform to use for tracking your social media campaigns and social listening efforts. It brings the data from all your social channels into one place and helps you see what audience segments respond to your campaigns. As a plus, it will also help you schedule your social postings.
• Google Analytics can help you examine your website traffic and where it is originating from. Since Google also has its own services like Google search and display ads, the ability to track and analyze that data is there as well.

3. Incorporate Social Media to Help You Share Your Message And Better Connect With Both Current And Prospective Customers

Social media dominates many aspects of the average person’s life. It should also play a large part in any digital marketing strategy you embark on. Social media channels are just one more way you can connect with new and old customers alike. They also offer you the chance to cross-promote your content from channel to channel. 

Here are some other powerful reasons you need a social media presence and strategy.

• Let’s a business have conversations with customers that may not have happened otherwise. This helps customers feel like they are a part of something and that a company values them.
• Social media is great for being able to react quickly to customer feedback and respond to questions.
• You can use your channels to keep an eye on the competition and see what they are saying & doing and how customers are reacting to their messaging.
• You can utilize social listening tools to see what people are saying about your brand even when you are not tagged in their comments.

4. Establish A Presence Online

In today’s world, if you aren’t online no one is going to find you. You must establish an online presence in order to see an impact of digital marketing on branding and business growth.

The modern customer doesn’t look through a phonebook; they use Google, Facebook, or ask their friends on social media. If you aren’t there, you are missing out. The average person spends over two hours on social media every day. When a person has the thought to look at a product or service, you must have a presence where they will be searching.

Creating your social media accounts is the first thing a brand should do when trying to extend the impact of digital marketing on business growth.

Social media is one of the first places a person will look to find a company. As an FYI – you don’t need to be on every social network. Only join the channels where your customers are going to be. Do your research on all the available networks and compare that to your ideal customer base.

One of the most important things a company must do is claim their Google Business listing. 

Since the bulk of searches happen on Google, you want to take advantage of every tool their search engine has. By claiming your Google listing, your exact location will show up in a local Google search and on their maps application. This will help bring customers directly to your door. These listings should include your address, website address, and your phone number. 

Without a social media footprint, a potential customer may think your brand has something to hide. Your company will also be viewed as less than trustworthy. 

5. Personalize Your Brand And Control The Messaging

Digital media is the one place where the company is fully in control of the message and its response to customer feedback. 

If a news story is posted online about your brand, you have no ability to counter any of the comments made by readers. But if you post a critique of your brand, along with any reflections or rebuttals you have on your own social channels, you are 100% in control of what you say and how you handle the responses to it. 

Google Reviews are a terrific example of this point in action. 

Individuals can post anything they want on a company’s Google Reviews. Smart brands make it a point to respond to these reviews, either as a chance to work through any issues a customer has experienced or to rebut a review that is unwarranted or false.

Here are some other powerful ways the impact of digital marketing can help you craft and control your brand message:

• When possible, personalize your ads and emails with the name of your customer or other specific details.
• Use your customer and buyer personas to help guide the types of content that you create. Make sure you create content that resonates with your customers.
• You can use the data that you gain during your campaigns to help you improve your future decisions.

6. Utilize Tools To Target Your Core Customers

There are a multitude of reasons digital marketing has a major impact compared to traditional forms of marketing, but one of the most obvious reasons is that it provides invaluable data to a company on its customers. 

The more you know about the people who interact with your website and your content, the better you can position yourself for the future. Through data analysis, you can know who interacts with your content and when. This means you can adjust your content and the channels that you use to display that content based on this information.

This chart shows some of the best performing channels for digital marketing. However, keep in mind the demographics of your core customer may not line up with this chart as it is an average. Figure out what works best for your brand and delivers the best ROI. 

Email marketing consistently offers the best ROI out of any digital marketing method for the sale of products, but this may not prove true for other industries.

7. Provide Value To Your Customers And Showcase Content That Matters To Them

A large part of any digital marketing strategy is content marketing. 

Content is more than just the words on a web page. Content includes web copy, blog posts, social blurbs and hashtags, video, and even photos. It is all-encompassing. By developing a strategy that includes these forms of content for your viewers, you can rest assured that you are providing your customers with what they want to see. 

For example, if you are a craft company, videos that provide demonstrations on how to complete a project or use a crafting tool would prove to be invaluable to your customer base. During the pandemic, some of the most popular video content has been how to make a cloth face mask. Craft stores and fabric companies who created videos around this subject matter or even took photos to show step-by-step instructions developed content that brought value to their customers.  

Here are ways that providing content with value to your viewers can pay off for your company:

• Consumers are 131% more likely to buy from your brand after reading or viewing educational content on your website.
• You can generate 3x more leads using a solid content marketing strategy versus paid lead generation. It also costs 62% less.
• After implementing a solid content strategy, companies found that the quality of the leads generated was better than before they had a content marketing plan in place.

Final Thoughts

Digital marketing has completely changed the way brands communicate with their customers and the way customers find a company to do business with. The impact of digital marketing on business growth will only continue to grow as more and more brands go digital.

If a company lacks a solid digital footprint, it severely hampers its ability to communicate with existing customers and find new ones. The lack of a digital presence also leads to a lack of trust in the brand. However, if a company implements a strong digital marketing plan that covers areas such as social media and content marketing, it can have a positive impact on a brand’s bottom line.