Introduction

Marketing has been a crucial contributor to businesses since time immemorial. Mankind has used, created, and refined marketing methods as time goes by. Only after the invention of the printing press and its popularization, did marketing take a steep curve in importance. Magazines and newspapers became the primary marketing tools in the age of mass media. After the inception of multinational corporations, innovations in marketing were seriously considered worldwide. Advertising not only became a critical component of businesses but also formed the foundation and backbone of companies. Everything changed with the popularisation of the internet. As social media grew in size and strength, it became a powerhouse for advertising firms. Unlike all other mass media, the internet is highly interactive and personalizable. This alone makes it stand apart from the rest of the mass media competitors. What's more, the internet is a highly efficient network of computers spread across the globe. This makes it lighter and faster than all other offline media. Due to these qualities, the internet has become both popular and useful.

Businesses identified this opportunity and started their usual tactics on the internet. However, sooner or later, they realised the size and potential of the internet. Moreover, the internet is complex in its own way. There, certain combinations of parameters decide the success of the business instead of raw money or prestige. As a result, to use this to their advantage, businesses have started to invest heavily in experimenting on the internet. Together, these give new businesses a few rules to follow on the internet. Chief among them is the need for strategy. In this article, we will discuss the advantages and importance of strategy in the digital world.

Why digital

The internet is one of the major mass media on the planet. Due to its sheer size and popularity, it is the desired marketing platform for companies of all sizes. After the popularity of mobile internet more open source software like Android and Linux, and the popularity of Windows and Mac on PC, the internet userbase had seen exponential growth. Currently, there are over 5 billion individuals who are internet users. That is two-thirds of the world's population is on the internet. Among these, at least 4.65 billion people are active social media users (Source: Statista).

The internet user base, however, varies across countries (Source: Our World in Data). While rich countries have the lion's share, poor countries are still struggling to make ends meet. The internet is subject to heavy censorship in countries where freedom of speech is suppressed. India, however, is one of the most promising countries for internet-related businesses. Due to the lowest costs for mobile internet, it is a lucrative country for technology-related industries(Source: First Page Sage).

Meet them where they are.

One of the important lessons in marketing is that customers are always the priority. It is not productive to make them come to you through many luxury brands that do just that. However, most small businesses do not have this luxury, prestige, or brand recognition before they start. As a result, it becomes the business's duty to meet the customers where they are and introduce their brand there. In this highly digitalised world, most customers are online. According to Statista, an average individual spends 2 hours and 21 minutes on the internet. Just a few seconds during this time is enough for brands to build their identity and recognition. This is where digital marketing and strategy come in.

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What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing, or online marketing, is all the marketing activities of businesses on the internet. The internet includes search engines, social media sites, news sites, company websites, emails, and other websites. All these can be leveraged to make the brand visible and familiar to prospective customers. Furthermore, companies can engage with their customers through interactive platforms like real-time chatting, regular emails, and text message campaigns. These can be self-regulated by an internal team, outsourced to other companies in the field, or paid for with money.

What is a strategy? Why do you need one on the internet?

A strategy is defined as a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty. Though strategy was, and still is, primarily a military-related term, it is equally applicable to businesses and team sports as well. In this case, having a solid strategy can take you further towards your desired goal by either defeating your competition or avoiding them altogether. Having a digital strategy is critical for several reasons. Here are some of them.

Options

The internet is huge. Due to its interactive and open-source nature, there is no single authority that controls it. There are a multitude of companies that bring people together for social interaction in the virtual world. They come online for information and services. There are prominent search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Also, there are dozens of popular social media sites. There are many video hosting sites and photo-sharing platforms. Thousands of news websites, blogs, and networking sites are on the internet. While some platforms are popular with professionals, others are used exclusively by millennials. The platforms are dependent on the personal preferences of the user base. In that case, it is easier for new business marketers to go all-in on all of the popular platforms. Doing so can be terribly unproductive as there needs to be constant effort from content teams to adjust to different platforms.

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Paid vs. free/organic

The internet is unique in its way. Here you can use marketing with or without money. While paid ads can bring you visitors and help in conversion, there are also many methods where you only give your best efforts, information, and value to internet users. This is called "organic marketing." In that case, search engines and social media sites bring users to your doorstep rather than you going knocking over theirs. Choosing one or the other needs a strategic approach.

Algorithms

On the internet, and in particular on social media, algorithms play a crucial role in distributing content or bringing new customers to business accounts. Though paid ads can bring customers to social media accounts, keeping them interested requires quality content. Working with the algorithm requires an informed strategy on the part of businesses. On social media, paid ads as well as organic traffic require careful strategic planning from business owners, content creators, and SEO teams. With experience, coordination, and trial and error, businesses can use social media platforms for the best results.

Consistency

Most of the internet is updated regularly. While blogs and websites update on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis, other social media platforms require updates more frequently. Being active on social media takes businesses a long way. Being consistent on social media needs strategic planning, execution, and adherence to the plan. It needs team coordination, customer psychology, market analysis, and creative content creation. Above all, it needs posting at the right times for maximum reach. On some social media websites, hashtags play a major role in identifying content. Hence, researching relevant hashtags requires a strategic approach. On paid ad platforms like PPC, Facebook ads, or LinkedIn sponsored messages, research plays a key role. Demography, age groups, interests, and occupations must be considered to personalise the ads.

Variety

Social media users are looking for news, entertainment, or knowledge. Having a strategy for what type of content you create can lead customers through all three categories of content. Resorting to only one of the content categories can severely affect the reach of content. The Internet is highly creative. Users are looking for new ways, news, and knowledge of the world. As the internet is becoming the primary source of information for many, there are many formats for information sharing. Photos, videos, texts, infographics, listicles, articles, and blog series are all a variety of ways people comprehend information. On social media sites, disappearing stories and messages have become popular. Such a variety of information sharing can keep visitors curious for more. Having a strategy can be the best thing for all content types.

Quality

As discussed earlier, internet users are constantly searching for news, entertainment, or knowledge. They are wary of shallow viral content, click bait, and wasting time on the internet, though they can't help it. Indeed, internet addiction has become a new term to define scrolling on social media to feed procrastination. Quality content, on the other hand, can keep customers curious, informed, and satisfied with their time. Quality content boosts engagement and results in maximum reach over the internet.

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Reputation risk

Though the internet can be used to drive traffic and boost conversions, it can also be used to have negative effects as well. The Internet is full of misinformation and fake news. If any fake news about your company goes viral on the internet, it can have catastrophic effects on your business. Tesla is a living example of this. A fake video of Tesla's autonomous car crashing into a Robo prototype surfaced on the internet, which sent Tesla's stocks plummeting down. However, due to the vigilance of the company, it disproved the video and set things straight. The digital strategy involves possible countermeasures against fake news about the company and its products. Having a strategy with risk analysis can save the company from disaster, as virtually no company is safe from this threat (Source).

The Benefits of Digital Strategy

A strategy helps in goal setting.

Having a strategy can help you identify clear-cut business and marketing goals. It helps you to create a buyer persona that is genuinely interested in your product or service. It helps in defining and limiting the audience for your marketing campaigns, thus saving time, money, and effort with maximum ROI. Unlike other forms of media advertising, such as those seen on television or in magazines, a digital strategy allows for daily monitoring and adjustment of marketing campaigns.

The strategy helps against fierce competition.

A strategic approach to digital marketing can help you beat the competition. It can also help in avoiding the competition altogether. Small businesses do not stand a chance against big brands that can spend money on expensive ad campaigns through television or sponsoring world cups. These large businesses can also easily source money from investors and run ads in multiple languages across several countries. Small businesses can use digital strategy to become more relevant where money is not a key player. By using long-tail keywords, they can avoid keyword competition. With a content strategy, businesses can increase traffic and conversions through SEO, email marketing, and blogging.

The digital strategy reduces the cost of marketing.

Strategic digital marketing can be very cost-effective. By investing in quality content creation, businesses can attract customers from all over the internet. For example, brands can use email marketing to get massive ROI at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing methods.

A recent Litmus report found that email marketing ROI stands at 4,200%, or 42x. For every dollar businesses invest in email marketing, they receive $42 in return.

Businesses can also invest in blogs and articles. Through providing quality educational content, businesses can easily attract prospective clients from the internet. According to Hubspot, those who use blogging in their marketing strategy are 13 times more likely to get a positive ROI.

Easy to measure

Having a digital strategy can make it easier to test and measure marketing campaigns and their ROI. With A/B testing and analytics, businesses can easily measure the performance of their campaigns.

Build brand awareness.

A digital strategy helps businesses consciously build brand awareness and reputation among customers. It helps in measuring customer engagement through sales funnels. By measuring conversion at each stage of the sales funnel, businesses can gain valuable insights into customer expectations and psychology.

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Conclusion

Digital marketing is a boon from the age of the internet. Most of humanity is already using the internet and social media. This provides a valuable marketing platform for businesses. Already, there are several marketing solutions on the internet ranging from free to paid services. IT giants like Google and Facebook have created a massive user base as well as a means of marketing to them. Still, there are several more options where marketing can give businesses a higher ROI without spending more than required. Due to a multitude of platforms, solutions, and software, businesses are confused without a solid digital marketing strategy. Due to the reach and engagement levels of the internet, businesses can easily leverage these platforms to gain customer loyalty. Through strategic SEO, email marketing, and blogging, small businesses can outperform large companies. Due to the sheer volume of the internet and internet-related platforms and technologies, having a well-defined digital strategy is a key to success.

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