Name: morphsites
Address: The Undercroft, Eaglewood Park, Ilminster, Somerset, TA19 9DQ, United Kingdom
Telephone: 01460 984284

26 August 2021 7 mins

What is Digital Marketing - & why your business may need it

Greg Pankiewicz

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing is a fairly broad term but in essence it's how you attract people to your business online.

Remember that thing called the High Street?
In traditional marketing, physical shops market themselves by location, product displays, signage, promo activity adverts and more. Their goal? To get people through their doors. They know that once someone's inside, the chances of a sale improve dramatically.

Now think about you website. It's online, yes; it has your logo, sure. But does anyone actually ever find it? Think of a beautifully signwritten shop, with wonderful products - tucked away down a back alley out of sight that no-one ever finds.
Digital or online marketing helps point people to your site, showcases your products or services via adverts and most importantly connects your with potential customers.

Types of digital marketing

Here's some of the major areas that digital marketing covers:

SEO. Search Engine Optimisation. This is linked to improving your natural or 'free' listing on Google. But make no mistake, it certainly isn't 'free' to get yourself high up on these fiercely contested positions
PPC. Pay Per Click or Paid Search. Often refers to Google Ads but also covers Shopping Ads and Bing Ads along with others
Google Shopping. Linked to PPC but is only available for Products and always appears with a product image
CRO. Conversion Rate Optimisation. The process of increasing the number of valued activities on a website, such as buying a product or submitting an enquiry via a form etc.
Online trust. Reviews can make or break an online business. Collecting them should be a standard business practice and are an excellent way to build brand awareness.
Video content. This has been one of the fast growing digital marketing channels for several years now and makes it easy for consumers to quickly consume digital content. Again, another great way to build brand awareness for new products, services or start-ups.
Email marketing. As users register with you, you can collect their email address and then send highly targetted emails, letting them know about new products, offers and promotions.

Why digital marketing is important

We're going to shock you now - despite being a digital agency, we say the answer may be 'no'.
You may be very well established, with a large loyal customer base and an order book so chocka you can't ever fulfil it. In which case, congrats! You've completed the business game and are set! Pass Go and collect £200.

If however this isn't you, then digital marketing probably needs to be part of your business plan. Simply put, if you are looking for new customers then you need to be marketing yourself online. If you don't think you do, simply search for what you do in your location and you'll likely see your competitors listed online and advertising themselves vigourously.

Get more information about your customers. For free!

Marketing your business online also allows you to collect really valuable information about both current and potential customers.
Via cookies, standard tools like Google Analytics allow you to see a massive amount of data about users of your site and it's associated digital marketing channels.
Ever wondered why someone didn't buy from you? Or which product gets most interest - and why?
Standard measurements available to you could include:

Amount of time spent by users on your site and its most popular pages
Who's looking at you online and when
How they accessed you i.e. desktop, tablet, mobile devices.
Your best converting products (and your worst!)
Number of valuable actions taken such as phone calls, contact forms submissions and blog subscriptions.
Cost and ROI of your different forms of digital advertising

Armed with all this data, you (and your digital agency) can make changes to really hone in on what works, what doesn't and how to beat the competition.

How much does digital marketing cost?

Depends.
For a small local business you may need to only spend a few hundred pounds per month, sometimes a lot less.
For larger regional and medium size companies, budgets typically range in the high hundreds to low thousands on a monthly basis.
For national or large companies, monthly budgets in the five figures are common. They often have dedicated marketing teams - something a small business simply can't afford.

But we can't emphasise enough that what you need to budget is entirely dependant on your business goals. We always recommend a fact finding audit along with thorough digital marketing planning before embarking on a major spend.

Will digital marketing work for me?

Yes!
But you have to find a good digital partner (umm, hello!) that will work with you. Beware of anyone claiming to "get you to the top of Google for XXX keywords". There are no guarantees (as with any type of advertising) but we will do our homework to ensure you get a good ROI.
And if our research shows it just isn't likely, we'll recommend an alternative digital marketing strategy.

Still not sure? Why not get in touch and we'd be happy to give you some advice

Greg Pankiewicz

Project Manager

I help manage our clients project's from start to finish. When I'm not busy talking too much, you can find me with my ridiculously small dog or tinkering in my garage on my car collection.