Digital Marketing & Customer Influence

• Teo

Digital Marketing - Connecting People

By definition, digital marketing is that part of marketing that utilises digital means to promote products and services. It is truly amazing in the sense that it connects not only people but also brands with people. Nowadays, computers and mobile phones have become an inseparable part of our lives and we like having it all at our fingertips. With the help of digital marketing, everything is possible: reconnecting with a long lost friend, buying things on the go as you have no time to shop, or simply ordering takeaway for dinner. So basically, digital marketing has touched every aspect of our lives whether we realise it or not. However, as business owners, you must ensure that digital marketing is used wisely and promote your brand genuinely. Don’t just use it to promote your brand, use it to promote your beliefs and company values.

Age of Technology and Digital Marketing

With the help of digital marketing, there are millions of tools available, technology is definitely helping business owners around the world to reach their audience. Email marketing for example can enable you to send out a newsletter to thousands of people simultaneously. This would not be possible if it wasn’t for technology. Artificial Intelligence is another shining example of digital marketing’s glory. With the help of AI, large sets of broad-spectrum data can be analysed and better decisions can be made. Which in turn allows companies to gain a better perspective into customer behaviours and their buying habits. With all these technological advancements, you’re probably imagining robots already walking around in shops. Well, we’re not quite there yet! Luckily, technology in digital marketing still cares about the personal touch and connection. Take Siri for example, you can use it to do a million things like playing music, get the forecast, browse for information, and much more. It’s amazing and it’s helping customers find what they need and helping businesses get to their customers in an easy and accessible way too!

The Power of Choice

Another really cool aspect of digital marketing is relevant filtering. Online users can now choose what types of content they want to see. Clearly, companies want their brand to be the common preference, however, you need to work hard to get there. By nature, we people tend to seek something new and exciting in terms of products and services, so business owners need to use this and tell customers why they are the best, they need to have clearly defined values and not be afraid to share them online. This is the only way to get customers to understand if they share your values and then choose to see your updates. Finding the right audience requires extensive research and data analysis, so get ready to do some homework.

Niche Digital Marketing

Once you found what is your target audience, you might want to use the so-called Niche digital marketing. This is an advertising strategy that is aimed at a particular audience instead of advertising to everyone who might like a product or a service. Using this strategy means you are aiming a product or a service exclusively at specific groups of people, a small market segment. Be careful when using niche digital marketing though as you need to be very specific. Using such a marketing strategy requires thorough research of the wide market first, compiling and analysing the data, then narrowing it down to a specific target group. It’s a long process that requires skills and effort, but it pays off.

Attitude is Everything

If you are someone with a lot of experience in using computers and doing online shopping you might have noticed the shopping experience being faster. There are a number of factors why this trend is becoming widely spread. Our lives are increasingly faster with each day too, so our online purchases have to keep up. Digital marketing helps with all that in the sense that specialists put time and effort prior to launching products online in order to give a smooth and fast shopping experience to buyers. We like having our phones at our fingertips, so why not our yoga classes and pretty much everything else. According to specialists, by the end of 2020, the digital marketing industry is projected to be worth around £15.6 billion as opposed to just under £3 billion in 2007! This only goes to show how this industry is growing and at what pace, the rest is for you to conclude.

Era of Influencers

You may have noticed another trend guys, there are now several influencers. In case you don’t know these people can actually affect how successful a product is due to their large fan base. As time goes by, people understood that digital marketing is not all-powerful and wanted to have a say. At the end of the day we are human beings and hugely rely on recommendations from friends or people we know. And the time has come for influencers to make or break brands with just a few comments. Digital marketing is still very much alive, but if someone like Kylie Jenner said your product is a rip-off, that’s it, game over!

It’s important to understand the power of digital marketing and how it can be used to influence your audience. But as business owners, you should never underestimate the power of your customers. You are as successful as your customers allow you to be. Always stay true to your values, stay true to your customers, and always treat them with respect. Sometimes in business people forget how and why it all started and get carried away, don’t make this spooky mistake. Tell us how you use digital marketing to enhance your sales, what kind of strategies work and where do you think you could have done things differently. Feel free to join our discussion and tell us your story. What made you want to start a business, what kind of values are most important, and why?