What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing has literally exploded over the past two decades, and more  particularly in a context of post-health crisis, where customers have turned massively to the Internet.

But what is a digital marketing strategy? Which disciplines are concerned? What are the benefits of maximizing your investments in digital marketing?

Digital marketing activates all digital levers

The digital marketing is often confused with theWeb marketing because it relies primarily on the web, but not exclusively.

Digital marketing actually refers to all the practices the aim of which is to promote a business, to capture leads and win new customers through various digital media:

To succeed in the game of markets that have become more and more competitive.

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The advantages and strengths of digital marketing

Digital marketing has established itself as THE current discipline for companies of any size and any branch of activity because real benefits can be drawn from it.

1. Being in touch with customers: relationship marketing

The discipline makes it possible to stick as closely as possible to the habits and requirements of current consumers by creating a relationship of proximity and trust with them .

The customer relationship is completely transfigured and digitized: companies know their consumers in depth and thus build a lasting and quality relationship with them. The loyalty and satisfaction rate are improved as well as the conversion rate of a commercial site. We are now talking about predictive marketing : that is to say the ability of brands to anticipate the needs of their customers and offer them exactly the products that correspond to them, even before having expressed the need.

2. Controlled costs: the ROI of digital marketing is anticipated, more certain and higher than with more traditional strategies

The digital marketing is particularly accessible in terms of budget as the costs are better controlled than in traditional media. It thus gives SMEs and VSEs the possibility of being able to be competitive and play on an equal footing with large groups with colossal financial capacities (disclaimer: read the following paragraph anyway to temper this statement ;-).The ROI (return on investment) of the actions carried out is thus more interesting.

3. Digital marketing gives you the gift of ubiquity

Thanks to digital marketing, the Larzac farmer can potentially sell his cheeses as far as China. Digital is a door open to the whole world. E-commerce sites, for example, run 24/7 and target local, national and international customers . The web being the vector of choice for digital, this form of marketing therefore knows no borders.

Thanks to digital marketing, all brands can give their image an unmatched scale. They can quickly boost their visibility both on social networks and on search engines in particular.

4. You can potentially go much faster with digital marketing

There are many success stories of unicorns (companies with a valuation of more than a billion dollars) who have built an empire in just a few years, very often thanks to massive investments in super sharp digital marketing strategies .

Digital brings a lot of flexibility and agility to companies . Launching a new product on the web, for example, is done much more quickly than in physical distribution networks and again at controlled costs. But also internally, digital is a game-changer. Employees of a company can work remotely, anywhere, anytime. Solutions in SAAS mode are an example of this radical change: a simple connection is enough to collaborate remotely. The recent health crisis is the perfect example of this acceleration.

5. Barriers to entry reduced

In many markets, before the advent of digital, it was necessary to be established in a sector, a technology, an existing park (…). The barriers to entry, beyond technological barriers, were commercial, relational, advertising. Significant resources were needed to conquer a new market or to shake up existing competition.

Digital marketing offers startups and SMEs the opportunity to rub shoulders directly with larger, more powerful companies. These startups and SMEs, with agility, creativity and simplicity can carve out the lion’s share, in particular by exploitingso-called growth hacking techniques.