The Value of Digital Marketing

byMichaelKiff

80 followers

8 years ago

In marketing circles everywhere, we hear marketers and organizations talking about digital marketing campaigns but how many are actually implementing a digital marketing strategy?

In a recent survey of over a thousand organizations it was learned that nearly 47% of those companies surveyed not only had not implemented a digital campaign, their organizations did not have a digital marketing strategy. Clearly that shows us that these firms are marketing like they always have, expecting improved results and not understanding why their business is not improving.

In 2015, the digital marketing industry was worth more than $60 billion in the U.S. alone and now that mobile has over taken desk top browsing, that number is expected to increase dramatically this year. In fact, Forrester stated that the digital market will be a $100-billion-dollar industry in 2019! http://www.slideshare.net/JeffHarnoisMS/us-digital-marketing-forecast-2014-to-2019.

Digital marketing is basically made up of two activities – Acquisition and Optimization. Every online company has invested in some form of acquisition, but few spend the resources to impact optimization despite the fact that it is crucially important to any company’s success.

Listed below are examples of both:

Customer Acquisition

Activities that drive relevant traffic to you online properties.

• Email marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Mobile Marketing
• Search Marketing

Customer Optimization

Activities that improve the user experience and turn more visitors into customers.

• Usability and User-Centric Design
• Performance
• A/B Testing
• Analytics
• Net Promoter Score
• Customer satisfaction
• Conversion rate is the ratio of achievements of a desired goal (purchase, Signup) to the number of applicable visits to the website.

I find many companies find themselves playing “catch-up” trying to manage the digital world without really having a strategic plan how. We used to talk about living online and offline. But more and more, we are creating seamless paths between the two, creating a complete lifestyle, enriched and enabled by technology rather than engulfed by it. This is something qualitatively different from having both a distinct online and a distinct offline presence.

I would suggest that any organization should be proactive in their approach to digital marketing and not treat it as an entity onto itself. In this Omni channel marketplace your customers wants the same experience digitally as they have at your physical place of business. Instead of chasing the latest technology innovation we believe any marketer is better served with a strategic, yet agile managed approach that will give your customers the experience they seek.