Digital Business vs Digital Marketing: Key Differences
More and more entrepreneurs are gearing towards digital businesses rather than in-person companies. This is because there is heightened demand for online services, as internet users are at an all time high. With this in mind, it’s important to familiarize yourself with digital marketing strategies and the key features of digital businesses. Here is a curation of information to help you decipher the differences between these two entities.
1. Key Differences
There are several distinguishing characteristics between a digital business and digital marketing:
Digital Business – uses digital technology to facilitate and run a business. This would be considered a forward thinking business that puts digital technology at the forefront in order to transform products, services and customer experiences.
Digital Marketing – is the use of digital channels to increase the visibility of a brand. This can include using social media, email marketing and other online forms of advertising in order to connect with a target audience.
If you want a simple way to differentiate the two, you can think of digital marketing as the catalyst, which performs a lot of the leg work at the very top of the sales funnel. Whereas, the digital business has a focus on closing the sale following a successful digital marketing campaign.
2. Importance of Strategy
When it comes to creating a digital strategy for your business, it’s important to focus on your specific goals and tailor your strategies as such. May Media can help you analyze your current strategies and assess whether they’re a lucrative long-term solution for your business. With a combination of expert digital marketing strategies and laser focused goals, your website can reach peak performance.
Strategy is so important for digital businesses, as it ensures they’re able to keep up with an ever evolving, fast-paced industry. With a carefully designed digital marketing strategies it is possible to:
- Enhance brand awareness
- Attract wider audiences
- Target focused audience types
- Gather useful data
- Boost visibility
- Effectively generate leads and sales
- Improve search engine rankings
- Make excellent returns on investment
With all of these benefits, it’s clear to see why businesses of all types prioritize their digital marketing strategies when it comes to budget, time and effort.
3. Impact on Revenue
The impact on revenue for a business when digital marketing is involved is significant. Without the use of digital marketing, it would be extremely difficult to establish growth and drive brand awareness to a targeted online audience.
When digital marketing is in operation you can expect to achieve heightened brand awareness as more people can be reached via a multitude of digital platforms. On a similar note, customer loyalty and retention may also be improved as the overall user experience is improved when digital marketing strategies are used. These improvements can have a knock on effect on revenue as conversion rates are boosted and there are more referrals. Due to the personalized nature of digital marketing, it is also expected that revenue could increase by up to 20% due to the tailored nature of these strategies.
It should also be noted that digital marketing strategies are much cheaper to run compared to traditional marketing methods. This means that the return on investment is better, which will therefore lead to increased revenue.
4. Target Audience Engagement
In order to achieve a successful digital marketing campaign, audience engagement is key. This is why it’s important to track the levels of audience engagement for each campaign to ensure it’s producing the expected results.
What Exactly Is Audience Engagement?
This denotes the amount of interaction between a brand and its target audience via digital channels such as websites, adverts, social media accounts and more, which can be tracked and measured in numerous ways. From the number of ad clicks to page views, there are a whole host of ways to measure the metrics of audience engagement.
This is important because engaged audiences are much more likely to turn into paying customers who go on to refer the same products and services to people they know.
If you are looking to improve audience engagement, you need to conduct in depth research to make sure you’re using the right language, tone and phrases. When you speak their language, you’re much more likely to form an instant connection with them. Similarly, you also have to regularly facilitate the engagement by inviting your audience for their opinions on certain topics. Using polls, quizzes and surveys on social media are great ways to boost audience engagement and keep your brand relevant to them.
5. Tools and Technologies
There are a multitude of digital marketing technologies and tools that may prove to be invaluable to your business as you begin to test certain campaigns.
Some of the most popular tools and technology to invest in when you’re just starting out are:
Google Analytics – to track website activities, page views, and link clicks
Mail Chimp – for effective automated email marketing campaigns
Screaming Frog – for keyword research to enhance SEO on all digital platforms and websites
SEMRush – for in depth competitor research and data gathering for social media campaigns
Sprout Social – for social media scheduling and building stronger relationships with customers
Leadpages – for creating high quality landing pages that convert readers into paying customers
As you try and test your own digital marketing strategies, you may come across numerous tools that help your business gain even better results. It’s also worth speaking with a digital marketing professional who may be able to recommend specific tools and tech for your business type.
6. Measuring Success
If you’re hoping to measure the success of an upcoming or former digital marketing campaign, you can do so by tracking a number of metrics. Your goals will vary from campaign to campaign, so it’s always important to track the metrics that are most aligned with your goals. Some of the most common metrics to track include:
Return on Investment
Measuring the return you get from anything you’ve paid to advertise
Conversion Rate
Showing how often a certain campaign converts a lead into a customer
Click Through Rate
Measuring how well an advert, keyword link or social media post is performing
Bounce Rate
Seeing how many visitors navigate away from your website after viewing one page
As well as these common metrics, you may also find it useful to track the length of time a visitor stays on a page, the number of page views, keyword searches and cost of advert clicks. Whilst keeping your SMART goals in mind, you can analyze these results and learn from your outcomes for future digital marketing campaigns.
7. Future Trends
The world of digital marketing is fast-paced and continually evolving, and it’s interesting to look at what the future holds. Some of the most interesting digital marketing trends that may continue to emerge as time goes on include:
- Voice Search
- Interactive Content Marketing
- Virtual and Augmented Reality Campaigns
- Chatbots and Automation
- AI Content Creation
With interactive content marketing such as polls, and hyper-targeted AI content, who knows what the future of digital marketing could be. Rest-assured, technology provides businesses with endless possibilities when it comes to forward thinking marketing campaigns, revolutionary digital methods and immersive experiences that bring audiences closer to the action than ever before!
8. Key Takeaways
As you can see, digital businesses make the most of digital technology to improve their business model, services, products and overall customer experiences. Their purpose is to bring value, deliver a high quality experience and optimize each process within the business operation. On the other hand, digital marketing maximizes on digital channels in order to bring in more sales, convert potential customers and heighten brand awareness for a business itself.
If you’re running a digital business, or you’re interested in using expert digital marketing strategies to create a seamless synergy, get in touch and find out how May Media services can help your business to grow, thrive and excel in a competitive online space.
