It is quite important to say that digital marketing is a concept to consider in this era if you’re a business owner or want to start a business. Digital marketing is the use of the Internet, mobile devices, social media, search engines, and other channels to reach consumers.
Digital marketing has become the major technology for businesses around the world to thrive. It is not a coincidence that the pandemic has caused millions of businesses around the world to leverage the online space for continuous relevance.
According to Statista, during a February 2019 survey, 57 percent of respondents stated that they had used a mobile retail app to search for more information about a product or a service. That is to tell you that consumer behavior began to change a long time ago.
Now that there is a pandemic, millions of businesses around the world have been forced to shift their businesses online. This method is easier than doing business physically for most businesses. Below are some of the benefits of doing business online
1. It lowers start up cost:
Considering the rent for a physical store, you will have to pay up to hundreds of thousands of naira if you are in Nigeria. This is totally out of the picture with an online business. You can save the money associated with owning a physical store for the enlargement of your business online. You don’t have to pay the dry cleaner, the security guard, and so on.
2. Borderlessness:
Before now it is a regular belief that for you to do business in a particular area, you have to be there physically. Why that is true for a few businesses today like being a medical doctor, a car mechanical engineer, etc, millions of businesses have moved online. It is even more rampant now that the pandemic has forced businesses online.
As long as there is a solid internet connection you can live anywhere and still run your business online. There are several people who live in one country and have their hosting in another. You could even move to a low-cost country and do your business in an expensive area where the money is without being there physically.
3. Increase in interactivity:
Doing business online increases interactivity between businesses and their customers. Business owners are so busy that they don’t have the time to respond to messages from their customers. This is usually to the detriment of the business. Many businesses have gone under because they are not able to communicate effectively with their many customers.
The customer is king. You have to be able to respond to each of their needs and questions whether. Doing business online gives you the opportunity to do this easily and as well have time for many other things.
4. Increase in cash flow:
Doing business online gives you the opportunity to have your products or services sold to people in other countries you have never been to. As a digital marketing expert, I have a good number of students who have taken my course and training from different parts of the world regardless of my location.
This new way of doing business has improved my income as I have access to more people. It is better than doing business in one location and hoping that people find my institute for learning. Businesses understand this today and even though they still have physical stores, they have also invested in doing business online for more sales.
At the beginning of this article, I defined digital marketing as the use of the Internet, mobile devices, social media, search engines, and other channels to reach consumers. That is to say that marketing is the heart of business without which the essence of doing business would be defeated.
It is important that as a business owner doing business online, you reach your consumers at their convenience level. That is what makes them buy from you. Let’s say you own a store and call it XYZ Shoes down the road. Here you sell shoes and other related materials. You have probably been convincing people in the area to buy from you for weeks with no reasonable purchase.
Then this new shoe business from another territory came to town leveraging digital marketing. It runs consistent and interesting adverts to the potential customers in your area showing them the different shoe options on their mobile phones and laptops. What do you think will eventually happen? You are likely to lose many potential customers to the new business without knowing who your competitor even is.