The Great Shift: Physical to Digital Marketing

The time for debate is over. Nowadays, if you want to maintain a business, then setting aside the familiar and embracing a healthy digital setup is crucial for your success. Don’t get us wrong. Here at SO, we’re not discounting the effectiveness of billboards and flyers (in fact, we still produce the latter), but we do know that without a carefully planned digital marketing strategy, a business has dug itself an early grave. So we’re asking: why this great shift from physical to digital?

Just Another Trend?

With more and more people favouring the efficiency of digital marketing, it seems there’s been something of a mass business exodus from more traditional methods of marketing. What’s more, it’s no fluke or fad. Digital marketing has had a meteoric rise up the business ranks partially thanks to a handy expansion of audience. With the advent of social media, there’s infinite scope for digital media marketing with previously unreachable audiences now more readily available than ever before, whatever the size of your business. From Facebook to Twitter, Instagram to Google+, these platforms are a marketer’s playground with virtually limitless opportunity. Oh, but the fun isn’t over yet: add to all this the fact that you’re now able to directly interact with your customer base,  connecting with their responses in real time, and digital marketing’s efficiency is unmistakable.

A Bit of Give and Take

With this form of marketing, it’s a two-way street. It’s not just about giving information to your customers and receiving nothing in return. Using web analytics tools, you can get to know your audience without any of those cringe-worthy ‘first date’ questions. By including cookies on your website, it’s never been so straightforward to gather essential data about who’s visiting your site, when they’re looking, and what they’re focusing on. Gone are the days of posting reams of questionnaire sheets, as frustrating for you as they are for the customer. Observing the click rate, you’ll be able to swiftly analyse which elements of your website gain the most traction and adjust other areas accordingly. Helping to tailor the site to specific customers, this approach increases the likelihood of a re-visit and in turn boosts loyalty to your brand. Moreover, shoot out a few promotional emails to this now faithful fan base and your business can reinforce its personalised concern for customer interests.

More Bang For The Buck

Making business returns is, after all, the primary aim of these marketing shenanigans. Working to minimise your expenditure but heighten your returns, a professional digital marketing strategy resolves all the advertising woes of yesteryear. For instance, rather than use a long-winded and costly physical campaign, it’s possible to raise your internet game still further with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) getting your business to the top of the pile, quite literally. But all this isn’t without statistical proof. Boasting up to 2.8 times the predicted revenue growth of a business without digital methods, you can expect your company’s conversion rates to positively soar.

A word of warning, though: go about your marketing campaign without the correct knowledge and you risk jeopardising your business’s all-important credibility. With SO’s expertise, our Staffordshire-based web designers and digital marketing specialists can put to rest those technical concerns and get your business to move on up in the lucrative digital marketing world.