This post could just as well have been titled “The real value added by digital marketing”.
The questions this posts seek to answer are:
Q1. What is it about digital marketing that gives it an edge over other marketing media and methods?
Q2 What is the maximum benefit that can any organization can get from digital marketing ?
Answer to Q1.
In a previous blog post, we listed ten reasons why organizations should prefer digital marketing over other marketing methods. Three reasons in particular give this medium a killer edge. Here they are.
1. Digital marketing has very strong TARGETING capabilities. One can reach niche audiences best suited for one’s product or service in many unique and efficient ways and that too reach such audiences all over the world.
2. The second advantage that is uniquely digital is ENGAGEMENT. The variety and depth of engagement possible – starting from social engagement (likes, shares and follows) and going all the way to re-targeting, getting leads and online sales – is not seen in any other media.
3. The third unique advantage is MEASURABILITY. Digital is the most measurable medium in history. Each view and interaction of an ad can be tracked and counted. Ad platforms can even track whether an individual has fully or only partly seen a digital ad.
Thus, digital provides Measurable Engagement across Targeted audiences, MET for short.
Note that we are not saying digital is the only marketing that should be done, rather we are simply pointing out it’s USP.
Answer to Q2.
When we consider that
(i) the Targeted audiences in digital marketing are usually also large in size (ii) the Engagement includes sales and business leads (enquiries) and
(iii) for a given marketing objective, the absolute costs in digital are lower than the costs in offline media, the MET advantage gets further multiplied.
At Interskale, we believe that the careful and methodical application of digital marketing enables organizations to grow their business month on month, year on year. Therefore the answer to the question “What’s the maximum benefit that can be got from digital marketing?” is simply ‘Business Growth’.
Unfortunately, in digital marketing, very often the discussions on outcomes are only about the number of impressions or clicks. But today digital marketing has the power to directly improve awareness, lead pipelines, sales and brand perception.
The key role of any organization’s marketing head or Chief Marketing Officer is to deliver growth in unit volumes and revenues and deliver an increase in market share. And to make this happen, digital marketing is increasingly the most effective method she or he has available.
Why are we so confident that digital marketing can lead to robust business growth?
At Interskale, we have ourselves used digital marketing to get solid business growth for our clients.
And importantly, digital marketing has some very important champions driving it’s use. Some of the world’s marquee companies, such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Yahoo, derive a lion’s share of their revenues from digital advertising.
E.g.Google Ads contributes to about 85% of the total Alphabet (Google parent company) revenues. It is thus all-important for Google to make Google Ads more and more useful to advertisers. New features and capabilities are indeed frequently added. And – we don’t have an exact number but – we estimate that hundreds of highly talented engineers are assigned exclusively to Google Ads to make this happen.
Agencies like Interskale then harness these ad platforms for the benefit of their client organizations.
While innovation is happening in digital advertising – and more is to come – most organizations have yet to fully exploit its existing potential. In digital marketing, the best ROI is yet to come.
