Who Should Ride the Digital Wave?
I often get asked who should utilize digital marketing? My biased answer: Everyone. My unbiased answer: Everyone! While not all forms of digital will be right for every business, 2020 pushed us into the digital-first world and made it clear that digital media is a requirement for your business, regardless of size.
The digital ecosystem is endlessly complicated. Even after working in the industry for over 13 years, the multiple media types, technical details, and rapid evolution of the space have allowed us to only scratch the surface of what digital offers. At its core, digital marketing comes in two forms: Paid media and Organic media. While Surf Rider Media focuses on Paid media, every company should understand the difference. As well as be able to define their Paid vs Organic strategy, and how they work together. To put it simply; Paid media is promoted through monetary promotion while Organic relies on viral sharing and trends.
What should your business focus on? At Surf Rider Media we believe that Search and Display should be the pillars of every paid digital media strategy. Search campaigns will drive cost-effective, efficient, and qualified users to your site. Customers who are proactively looking for your product, or competitor. Think of a customer looking for a car, and a car salesman responding to their inquiry in real-time. Whereas display brings new opportunities to find and attract new users. It increases brand awareness or direct response and delivers your message to users who are not actively thinking of you, your product, or your brand. Think restaurants who want to promote their new lunch delivery special on Monday morning, as office workers start to get hungry.
The opportunities that both Search and Display bring to a small business are endless. From learning insights about your audience, driving traffic on your slowest days, to serving ads to customers searching for your competitors. Digital marketing’s precision targeting is its true differentiator and provides a major competitive advantage to businesses who effectively utilize the medium. It offers an opportunity that your traditional billboards or newspapers simply cannot match.
The efficiencies and opportunities of digital media are too large to pass up. With the continued growth and transformation of the digital world, not participating in digital is a recipe for failure. Digital is no longer a luxury reserved for large businesses.
Can you name any marketing tool more efficient than the internet?
