Digital Marketing – 8 Key Benefits

The internet has provided highly advanced possibilities for advertising your business. Thanks to the extensive ability to track campaign results and report in real time, it has become the primary tool for acquiring customers in the 21st century. The ability to precisely target audiences and track their journey, combined with reduced conversion costs, means that every startup should consider implementing digital marketing solutions as one of their fundamental tools — not only for building brand awareness but also for increasing engagement and trust in the brand. We have prepared a brief overview of what digital marketing really is and the opportunities it offers for achieving your brand’s goals and strategy — so let’s get started!

Table of Contents

1. What is digital marketing, or e-marketing?
2. Types of digital marketing
3. Digital marketing — benefits
4. Which type of digital marketing should you use?
5. Optimizing Google Ads campaigns
6. Do you need an agency for digital marketing?
7. Summary

Digital marketing — what is it and how to start using it in your business?

In the era of offline marketing, a standard advertising campaign was conducted in one of the following ways:

1. Flyer distribution,
2. Radio advertising,
3. Television advertising, or
4. Street banners.

All of these methods share the same fact — no ability to analyze campaign effectiveness. Unfortunately, in the days before the internet, running advertising campaigns was very much like a black box. It required a very large financial investment and did not allow for verifying campaign effectiveness, comparing different versions, A/B testing, or quickly collecting results in an understandable format. Moreover, traditional marketing did not allow for ad targeting and delivering them only to a narrow and interested audience. What if I told you that digital marketing has solved all of these problems?

Digital marketing encompasses the complete set of activities, strategies, and brand actions online that contribute to building a positive company image on the web, increasing sales, or acquiring customers through the internet. It is gaining popularity thanks to the advanced ability to target campaigns, fast return on investment, and the low budgets a company needs to invest to see actual, measurable campaign results.

Digital marketing — types

The most popular types of digital marketing include:

1. Paid search results (Google Ads — PPC) — the most popular online advertising method based on displaying ad campaigns at the top of search results. Based on a developed set of keywords, it is possible to present your business ad to users, which is typically displayed above organic results. These can be products from an online store’s catalog or a service company’s offering. Paid search positions occupy the first or last positions on each page, and their cost depends on keyword popularity and the number of clicks — Google charges advertisers based on a PPC (pay-per-click) policy, which means you pay for clicks. Based on industry specifics and expected results, Google offers different types of campaigns aimed at increasing brand awareness or sales.
2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) — The second method that delivers measurable results in a long-term perspective is organic search result optimization. Below the paid search results, there is a list of results arranged according to the search engine’s assessment. There are ways to make a target page rank better in Google’s evaluation, allowing it to appear higher in organic search results. SEO is a complex and lengthy process, but unlike Google Ads, it provides long-lasting results. After SEO work is completed, the site will remain visible at the top of the list without any expenses or costs — at least until it is overtaken by a competitor’s site.
3. Social media advertising — Since the emergence of Facebook, the era of social media began. The average internet user spends 20% of their online time on social media. This is precisely why another important digital marketing tool is social media. It can be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Regardless of the chosen advertising platform, social media marketing enables reaching potential customers or increasing brand awareness through graphic and text materials delivered to people who are initially interested in or searching for services/products offered by a given brand. Well-tailored and optimized social media marketing activities have an advantage over other methods, as social media advertising tools have significantly more targeting parameters. Due to the amount of time the average user spends on social media, Facebook and similar companies have a lot of information about each user. Shopping habits, preferences, and currently searched products or services are easily identified.
4. Content marketing — digital marketing does not exist without content — without text, copy, and descriptions. An important element used both to improve the quality of the landing page for search ads, as well as for SEO and increasing brand interest, is content. Creating proper descriptions for products, categories, and services offered by a company forms the foundation for domain indexing and increasing its visibility in search results. When properly developed, this content also has a positive impact on ad quality in search engines, since landing page quality and content relevance is one of the fundamental factors in Google Ads campaign evaluation. Through content creation, it is also possible to increase domain trust by building link profiles. This is based on acquiring incoming links to the site from pages that Google rates highly. This can be achieved by publishing sponsored posts linking to the site.
5. Influencer marketing — In recent years, another method for communicating information about services and products to potential customers has been gaining popularity — influencer marketing. This method leverages the recognition of individuals (known as influencers) to reach audiences through them. Every internet user has certainly seen well-known and recognizable people presenting products online. These can be cosmetics recommendations, service company descriptions, or hotel visits. Many people online draw conclusions about product quality based on the opinions of experts and well-known figures in a given industry. In recent years, influencers have appeared in virtually every industry. Through the right collaborations, influencer marketing can be used to advertise any type of product — from agriculture, through technology, to cosmetics.

Benefits of digital marketing

This point has already been partially addressed in earlier sections of the article, but for a summary, here are the 8 most important benefits of using the internet as a company’s primary marketing strategy:

1. Reaching customers regardless of the time of day,
2. Remarketing — the ability to tailor creatives to people who have already visited the site,
3. Brand image creation — building messaging consistent with the company’s identity,
4. Analytics — increasing knowledge about audiences and potential customers,
5. Reporting — instant information about campaign effectiveness,
6. Optimization — the ability to continuously improve and refine creatives for audiences,
7. Personalization — the ability to tailor campaigns to individual audience categories,
8. Targeting — the ability to very precisely target creatives to interested individuals.

Online advertising, regardless of its form and message, is a significantly cheaper and more effective way to acquire customers than traditional and local methods. Thanks to advanced methods of tracking results and campaign ROI, they are the fundamental tool for driving the desired traffic to a website. Combined with a well-prepared website, marketing is a universal tool that can be effectively used in any industry to increase sales, acquire customers, or build brand awareness. All marketing goals can be achieved with detailed reporting and analytics for every ad impression.

How to match digital marketing to your brand and its needs?

Every company has a different set of needs and different goals they aim to achieve through digital marketing. Sometimes a single brand has more than one goal, and the set of campaigns and advertising channels needs to be tailored to each one. Each marketing method should be used in a different scenario:

1. Acquiring conversions — for this purpose, search network campaigns targeting specific keywords are primarily used. They typically represent the last step in acquiring a customer. Keyword advertising allows a company’s offering to stand out among competitors.
2. Building brand trust — Building trust is often achieved through discovery and display ads, as well as social media campaigns. These are often graphic campaigns using advertising banners or product data from the store.
3. Increasing brand awareness — At the beginning of a company’s existence, it is very important to build brand recognition among audiences. This activity does not directly result in new orders or customers, but in the long run, it can contribute to increasing future conversion rates based on recognition. The same types of campaigns used for building trust are employed for this goal.
4. Communicating promotions — To share information about promotions, all types of digital marketing campaigns can be used. They can be added to search network campaigns as extensions, they can be social media campaigns, or display network banners.

Optimizing Google Ads campaigns

In today’s world, setting up a Google Ads campaign is relatively simple. This can be both an advantage and a disadvantage of digital marketing, as it also makes it easier to make mistakes, harder to manage and optimize such campaigns, and increases the probability of so-called “budget burning.” One of the most important tasks when creating a Google Ads campaign is properly selecting keywords (the phrases users type into Google) in a way that effectively utilizes the available budget and does not display ads to people who are not interested and for whom the probability of conversion is not sufficiently high. For easier visualization of examples in this article, let’s use a hair salon. The owner of a hair salon in Bielsko-Biala wants their ads to appear to people searching for hair salon services, appointment booking options, or those who are traveling through the city and type the word “hair salon.” Google’s algorithms are designed in such a way that adding the keyword “hair salon Bielsko-Biala” to a campaign will cause the ad to appear not only to people who type that exact phrase, but also to those who use various forms, extensions, and variations of that keyword. It is obvious that the hair salon would not want its ad to appear for phrases like “worst hair salon in Bielsko-Biala,” “which hair salon in Bielsko-Biala to avoid,” “where not to get a haircut,” or “how to become a hairdresser in Bielsko-Biala.” At this point, the first method of finding good keywords emerges — keywords are not just phrases that users type to see an ad; they are also expressions that should definitively block ad display. Therefore, when creating an advertising campaign, it is worth listing not only the phrases you would like the campaign to appear for, but also those that should definitively block ad impressions.

Do you need an agency for digital marketing?

The answer to this question is not so obvious. Considering that Google is constantly adding more intelligent campaign management options and improving campaign automation systems, one could assume that running advertising campaigns independently is possible. However, given the description of the work required for improvement outlined in the paragraph above — unfortunately, digital marketing conducted optimally and properly requires the help of an interactive agency or extensive knowledge. Employees of a good agency are certified Google partners, and their work on an advertising account not only pays for itself but also provides benefits that maximize the available advertising budget. One of our recent cases shows that the cost per click in managed ads can be reduced by up to 5 times, thereby increasing conversions (for details, feel free to contact us). An interactive agency typically has extensive experience in optimizing and creating advertising campaigns at any budget level. Their work not only improves results but also relieves the business owner of all the problems and difficulties associated with digital marketing.

Summary

Digital marketing aims to increase brand awareness through a complete set of activities designed to achieve the brand’s goals. Whether it is an advertising campaign or website SEO — digital marketing is currently the best way to drive traffic to your website. Online advertising campaigns can not only be precisely tracked. They also offer the possibility of optimization, which combined with a relatively low initial budget provides a significantly more efficient tool for executing marketing tasks in any industry. Traditional offline marketing limits the ability to track campaign results and does not provide measurable ROI.

If you have any questions or problems with running an advertising campaign for your business, please contact us. For all individuals who reach out to us by the end of July to improve or start running a campaign, we offer a free audit of your business and the first month of campaign management completely free of charge.