Have you ever struggled in meeting your monthly and weekly sales goals because of the competition in mainstream marketing channels?
Selling something is not an easy task because you have to convince people that you are providing reliable solutions to them, and they must trust your brand and take desirable actions of your choice.
There is enormous research done on how to sell stuff. If you are a good salesman, then you can make a fortune for yourself.
Thanks to the evolution of digital mediums and the internet, the way we interact with each other and perceive information around us has changed drastically.
Now, your ideal consumer might not be reading the newspaper in the back seat while stuck at traffic. Today, the perfect customer might be listening to a podcast or surfing the Instagram stories in their free time.
There are so many tools and channels that we are exposed to right now that give us an enormous amount of content each day.
That being said, marketers have got an excellent opportunity to interact with their customers in a more personalized way in this digital age.
But all those people who want to try digital marketing for their business or want to build a career as an online marketer must know the scope of the industry.
Meanwhile, there have been people claiming that days of digital marketing are over, and we have reached the saturation point in this market.
Being an experienced individual in the marketing and sales industry, I have been practicing digital and mainstream marketing parallelly, and I would say that digital marketing days are not over at all.
The old school digital marketing has become a refined platform and evolved over the years. I’m going to discuss the scope of digital marketing below.
But before we dive into that, let’s do a brief introduction about digital marketing activity.
What is Digital Marketing
In a nutshell, digital marketing is the activity of promoting products and services by using digital technologies, mostly the internet.
We have got social media, search engines, emails, PPC, and several categories and subcategories of digital marketing to promote products and make money.
When it comes to the scope of this particular industry, it is going to be excellent.
Below are the reasons why I think that digital marketing is going to thrive in the coming time.
Internet Consumption is Increasing
Imagine what would happen if the internet is gone tomorrow? How would the human race do the day-to-day task if they find out the Internet is no longer available to them.
This could be a nightmare for so many people because the internet is the driving force cause of them.
The internet has changed the lives of millions of people in so many areas of life, be it professional or personal.
The internet holds a significant place in our routine tasks whether you want to close a business deal through a video conference, manage a team remotely or talk with your loved ones face-to-face, internet connectivity is required.
The internet speed provided by the service providers is also increasing each passing day. Since the demand of the internet is increasing, people are used to having excellent internet speed today compared to what they used to add a decade ago.
As shown in the graph on Statista, between 2007 to 2017, the average internet speed in the United States has a massive growth.
In the 3rd quarter of 2007, the average internet speed in the U.S. was 3.6 Mbps, and in the 1st quarter of 2017, internet speed rose to almost 19 Mbps.
With the growth in average internet speed, the number of Internet users is also growing, see the graph below.
That means brands can get more people covered through digital platforms.
The percentage at which the average internet speed in the United States has increased shows the requirement of the data.
That being said, please check the below graph to see the rise of the number of broadband subscriptions per 100 users in different countries in the last few years.
The graph explains that more people can afford internet connectivity.
Therefore, digital marketers have a vast potential to maximize their customer reach thanks to more popularity and usage of the internet.
As per Google, U.S. residents spend 40% more time using the internet compared to watching TV. That means the TV commercials and advertisements might not generate desired results it used because fewer customers are there to see the ad.
Since the internet drives most of the digital marketing channels, your potential audience grows exponentially; therefore, your marketing efforts will result in great results and higher ROI in the coming time.
Mobile is The Driving Force
Have you ever had the struggle to get more engagement and acquiring more customers for your business? The number of sales you made throughout a year is going to determine how successful your company has done business in the given time.
However, marketers and sales executives who struggle to get more sales online or offline usually miss fundamental characteristics of being a good marketer.
According to my personal experience, to succeed in sales and marketing activities, you must understand where people are investing their attention and in what actions they are focusing their energies every day.
Because you are trying to sell something to prospects. Now the prospects are not using the channels you are using for persuasion, then your efforts will give no profits.
You need to identify which devices, tools, and channels your targeted prospects are spending their time in to pitch your products.
Due to technological advancements in today’s world, mobile phones have become a driving force behind most of the tasks.
Gone are the days when mobile phones were only responsible for a mode of communication. Earlier, people used to have mobile just for making calls and send text messages.
Today, old school mobile with and physical keyboards are almost extinct as most of the people have touchscreen smartphones these days.
Android and iOS have radically revolutionized the smartphone industry and allowed manufacturers to sell more devices but also enable people to have an excellent tool and their disposal.
Smartphones have been aggressively used for entertainment, logistics, bill payments, internet accessibility, emails, social media, and multimedia content consumption.
Today, emails and social media accounts have been majorly accessed by people through smartphones. 52.2% of all web traffic came from smartphones in 2018.
In 2018, U.S. adults were spending an average of 3 hours and 28 minutes per day using smartphones. That’s almost 8% of total time on a given day!
User behavior is also responsible for the way people work in today’s world. Thanks to the rising gig economy, people have to be online all the time and be accountable for responding to customers and companies for daily work.
Since smartphones provide flexibility and portability, people stay online through a smartphone that gives a tremendous opportunity for advertisers and organizations to pursue customers through various modes of digital channels.
The advertisement which you are broadcasting for social media platform can be instantly consumed by the people who are increasingly using that particular social media channel.
Millennials are also using email applications in their smartphones, and therefore, they would instantly read your emailers on mobile.
Digital Ad Revenues are Increasing
The revenue can only determine the rise of any industry it is generating.
Have you ever invested in a particular business activity that is not generating any results consistently? Well, you can invest funds for a short period to experiment that specific channel.
However, if you see that that particular channel is not giving positive results constantly over time, you will stop investing them.
Similarly, the returns generated by digital advertisements skyrocketed in recent times that show the scope of the golden era of digital ads.
As far as organic marketing is concerned, like social media and search engine optimization, the return on investment is staggering. SEO and social media are free platforms, and you can unbiasedly share content online these days.
If you manage to target the right people online, they would not only become your consumers but become lifelong fans of your brand; and become advertisers, and promoters, and flag bearers of your company.
Because if someone likes the content of your channel, they will share it with their friends as well.
Therefore, if your digital marketing campaigns were able to give lasting user experience, you can have great word of mouth marketing benefits and have high returns from your marketing perspective.
This ripple effect created by digital marketing makes it a thriving platform for brands and ensures the excellent scope of digital marketing.
Time Spent on Social Media is Increasing
The way people utilize their time online, says it is a lot about their behavior and the scope of digital marketing.
So many people use social media to get news around the world. Millennials say that social media platforms are the first thing they check first thing in the morning before anything else.
The average time spent on social media platforms is also increasing with each passing day.
Therefore, it might happen that your ideal customer would be browsing Instagram stories instead of reading your advertising pamphlets, flyers, brochures, etc.
People check social media platforms before interacting with a brand. Some social media users are influenced by the lifestyle of micro and macro influencers and take their consideration seriously before making any purchasing decisions.
It is not overstating it to say that there are too many people online who could not live with social media platforms.
Women are the prominent user base of social media platforms. Around 60% of users of Facebook and Instagram combined are women. This is the crucial user number that shows the scope of digital marketing.
In a usual household, a woman who could be a mom, wife, daughter, sister, makes shoppings decisions and bring groceries at home. So, you can say that they influence their members’ buying decisions too directly or indirectly.
Their dominance of social media usage indicates that digital marketing has massive potential because decision-makers of households are consuming these channels heavily.
60% of the social media users are saying they are always connected with the web. (Source)
That means your flex banner or billboard might completely go unnoticed to your ideal consumers because the consumers might be busy in social media feeds.
When asked about why they spend time on social media, below are the top priorities of people who are being active on social media platforms.
The top four priorities are staying up to date with the events, finding entertaining content, kill their time, and getting updated about what their friends are doing.
These objectives represent the underlying psyche of any human individual. They always want to feed information in their minds, and social media is allowing them to do so.
This will help digital marketers and brands to pursue their customers and scale their businesses to social media and digital platforms like no other.
Brands Proactively Shifting to Digital Marketing
Brands and Organisations have understood the power of digital transformation, and therefore, they are investing heavily in digital platforms instead of mainstream media.
In 2017, the CEO of Adidas said that Adidas would step away from the TV commercials by shifting their promotional activities more on digital platforms and aspiring eCommerce sales.
The involvement of such big brands clearly says the scope of digital marketing in the next time.
When it comes to small to medium-sized businesses, social media is their favorite choice. 96% of companies say that they are investing in social media marketing. When it comes to Google ads, for each $1 spent, companies are making $2 in return. (source)
Moreover, worldwide ad spend is also predicted to reach $375 billion by 2021. And 70% of online advertisers have accepted that they want to increase their digital ad spend thanks to disruptive results they’ve achieved in due time.
Since brands and businesses are aggressively betting on digital advertisements, the scope of digital marketing would be thriving in the coming years.
The need for digital analytics, data scientists, marketers, and creative individuals would also rise in the next time to do the heavy lifting for the brands.
Conclusion
Do let me know what your thoughts about the scope of digital marketing are. Please share your feedback in the comments.