3 Reasons Why Investing in Digital Marketing Will Continue to Rise

3 Reasons Why Investing in Digital Marketing Will Continue to Rise

The role of digital marketing is becoming increasingly obvious to companies around the world.

In recent years, digital marketing has gone a long way since its early days. New trends in technology have seen it adapt and evolve to what it is today. Likewise, the amount of spending needed to keep up with these trends has also increased in number. Companies have already increased their digital marketing budgets exponentially and will continue to do so in the near future, and here’s why:

1. The advent of the Internet Age

With the new advances in technology, traditional offline marketing is becoming a thing of the past. Funds are being invested in the digital sphere due to its accessibility and wide range of use. Nowadays, internet campaigns target the large majority of the world’s population. There’s a huge audience out there that can be reached over the web, far greater than any standard offline marketing medium could ever engage. This is especially the case with social media, which have already become so integrated with our culture that it’s hard to imagine life without them. Companies are fighting for their customers’ attention on Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms day in day out. 
According to some recent statistics, 64,7% of social media teams deal within the marketing sphere, customer service takes second place with only 17,1%. Furthermore, if the predictions are true by 2019 social media spending is going to rise to 17.3 billion. In addition to social media, there are other notable segments of digital marketing that require investment including email, display, and paid search marketing to name a few. Adapting to new technological trends is essential for marketers as the most innovative approaches will often land greater results. 
However, this will require a lot of forward funding from businesses and companies alike for the development of new software, analytics and research platforms to be ahead of the pack. Likewise, those that don’t increase their digital marketing budgets accordingly will be left trailing behind their competitors.

2. Shift towards consumer engagement

Marketing has changed drastically over the last 50 years. In the past, companies did their marketing by broadcasting commercials at their consumers. Today, marketing is very consumer-oriented and it’s actually the customers who do all the detective work when they search for a product. This is why businesses have shifted towards consumer engagement and customer loyalty. It’s not just about brand awareness anymore, it’s about offering a more personalized experience for their customers. As a result, more money is being funneled into online customer retention and loyalty programs than ever before. 
Moreover, there’s also the trend of re-platforming websites for a richer, more responsive user experience, focusing more on the quality than on the quantity of this kind of engagement. Traditional display and click ad strategies are becoming obsolete, as users keep turning a blind eye on them, especially with the increase in ad-block software. The best way to overcome this problem is by using native ads; namely, ads that look similar to the content around them, as Jason Hornung explains in one of his blog posts “It sounds counter-intuitive, but the best way to get noticed is to actually blend in”. By employing this strategy, ads offer a lot more to the reader in the sense that they are now more user-friendly and are placed logically around the text, rather than being just plain annoying when they randomly pop up and poke everyone’s eyes out.

3. Video content is more expensive to make

Finally, the flagship of any digital marketing has to be video content. People are more inclined to see a short one to two-minute clip than they are willing to read a wall-of-text on their screen. According to Cisco, there will be 17,000 hours of video content by 2021. The number of square videos will increase to 78% on Facebook’s news feed alone, and live streaming will rise to 13% of all the video content done over the internet. Currently creating video content is the most expensive form of digital marketing as it requires a lot of work and expertise to be done correctly and effectively. Poor-quality videos can become laughing stocks on the internet and backfire completely by being turned into internet memes and such. Marketers will have to include larger budgets for video content creation in the near future if they are to keep up with these trends or invest in new tools to simplify and shorten the time needed to create video content for their marketing strategies. 
Whatever the case may be, the role of digital marketing is becoming increasingly obvious to companies around the world. With the rapid advancement of technology nowadays, it’s only a matter of time before a new, more expensive, form of digital marketing emerges to take the lead.

Posted by Nate Vickery

Nate Vickery

Nate Vickery is a business consultant focused mostly on SMB marketing and management. Nate is the editor-in-chief at one business blog - Bizzmarkblog.com. You can follow Nate @NateMVickery

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