Why You Need A Digital marketing Strategy

 Be where your customers are     

This may seem like an obvious thing to say however – the internet is growing! Some fun statistics can be seen below.

• Every day there are more than a billion searches on Google for information (Google data, Sept 2010)
• 200m mobile clips are streamed on YouTube every day (YouTube Blog, January 2011)
• There were 107 trillion emails sent on the Internet in 2010 (royal.pingdom.com, January 2011)
• Global advertising spending in measured media is expected to exceed $500 billion for the first time ever in 2011 (GroupM, December 2010)
• Worldwide Internet traffic grew 62% in 2010 (TeleGeography’s Global Internet Geography, Oct 2010)
• 7 out of 10 people (71%) in the developed world are online (International Telecommuncations Union, Oct 2010)
• Globally, 47 billion Instant Messages are sent every day (royal.pingdom.com, April 2010)
• Facebook has More than 500 million active users. More than 500 million active users (Facebook statistics)
• 140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day (twitter blog)

It’s not just about numbers – Strategy is the key

So the numbers are one thing however just thinking about your own online habits will probably highlight the fact that the web is becoming absolutely integrated into our lives. It tends to be the first port of call when we are researching topics, checking out companies (and individuals), shopping online, looking for product reviews and so on.

For those organizations that are increasingly having to rely on a successful internet performance to grow their business,  a digital marketing strategy is the key. These organizations will often have to invest significant time and money to remain competitive. They need to know where and how within their business the internet impacts. This in turn justifies a business case and helps them compete in what is becoming an increasingly sophisticated, and in many ways intimidating, marketplace.

“Build it and they will come”?

The ‘Build it and they will come’ misguided mantra is still all too common in the business world when it come to web presence and online marketing. The rise of social media and associated hype has also perpetuated the myth that you can generate massive interest in your company just by the creation of a Facebook page or Twitter account. The reality is that to be truly effective online businesses need a well planned digital marketing strategy that serves to direct everything they do online, from website development to social media interaction, list marketing, online PR and so on. Without a properly executed strategy and a joined up approach to marketing on the internet many businesses will never reach their target audience via the web.