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Digital marketing in Uganda. What are the benefits?

The key to marketing is engaging your audience in the right place and at the right time. In this digital age, the straightest path to marketing success is to meet your audience online, on the platforms where they spend the most time.
 

What is digital marketing, exactly?

Digital marketing is a marketing approach that involves the use of the internet and other digital technologies such as mobile phones, personal computers, digital platforms, and media to promote specific services and products. Many enterprises have already benefited from prioritizing digital marketing over conventional marketing techniques. As you will learn in this article, unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing channels allow you to monitor their progress in real-time. Consequently, it is a lot easier to assess marketing campaigns and implement necessary changes. Irrespective of your company’s industry, digital marketing will help you achieve dramatic increases in sales and profitability. Its interactive nature will allow you to grow your customer base in a brief period.
 

Summary

  • Digital marketing strategies are the most cost-efficient approach to marketing your business
  • Digital marketing helps you measure your marketing success.
  • Digital marketing allows you to target the individuals who are likely to take interest in your service or product.
  • Your customers are on social media – digital marketing will help you reach them.
  • Digital marketing allows you to target the individuals who are most likely to by your service or product.
  • It will help you find motivated buyers.
  • Digital marketing helps you interact with mobile internet users.
  • It helps you quickly adapt your strategy to changing consumer sentiments.
  • Digital marketing is a level playing field that allows your business to be more competitive.
  • It will help you prepare for the Internet of Things (IoT).

 

Digital strategies are the most cost-efficient approach to marketing your business.

Digital marketing will spread the word about your business in a cost-effective manner. Traditional marketing principles make it really hard for business owners with limited resources to compete against large corporations for ad space. However, with digital marketing, small businesses can guarantee significant returns on investment, even when they’re competing against large brands. Example: a small enterprise can show ads for its products or services to over 1,000 people for less than $5 through social media marketing. The same amount of exposure would cost more than 10 times as much with direct mail and about 5 times through television advertisements.
Conventional marketing often involves hidden costs. In contrast, the only actual price to digital marketing is the time taken to achieve specific goals because its returns will always reimburse the initial investment. Although content marketing, search engine optimization, and social media marketing don’t produce results overnight. That said, there are digital several digital marketing tactics like display ads and pay-per-click that guarantee instant results. These strategies can be combined to achieve both short and long-term benefits.
 

Digital marketing helps you measure your marketing success.

Whether marketing is conducted through digital or conventional means, it is a commitment whose true results are felt after some time has elapsed. However, while it is hard to accurately measure the success of a traditional marketing campaign like direct mail and radio advertising, all digital marketing strategies are measurable – you can account for every dollar spent, and track its returns.
Digital marketing analytics removes the need for educated guesses and shows you what’s working in your marketing strategy, what isn’t, and what you need to remove. With real-time digital campaign tracking, you can determine the internet marketing practices best suited to your market, and adjust your efforts for improved success. You can also learn from your findings to design better campaigns in the future. For instance, let’s assume that you want to launch a social media marketing campaign for a new service. You’ve decided to publish a series of social media posts for 3 weeks. With social media analytics, you can determine which of your posts were most interesting to your target market segment and which ones got the most conversions. You can then use these findings to improve replicate that success in future campaigns.
 

Digital marketing allows you to target the individuals who are most likely to by your service or product.

When you rent billboard space or place an advertisement in a print magazine, you’re taking a blind guess and hoping your message will find its intended audience. Even though there are ways to increase your chances of success with this approach, it doesn’t beat digital marketing’s targeting capabilities.  Digital marketing allows you to ensure that only a specific type of consumer views your content. SEO will enable you to engage consumers browsing the internet for topics and content directly related to your business. With pay-per-click and display advertisements help you draw consumers with a direct intent to buy products within your category. With accurate targeting, you will get better results from your marketing campaigns. You needn’t worry about your ads reaching people who aren’t interested in what you offer and can rest assured that you’re investing in strategies that will work.
Most consumers start product research through the internet. Do you recall how many times you’ve turned to Google or a similar search engine to find information on a business or a commodity you were thinking of buying? Your target market is no different – they use the internet to study products before committing to a purchase. Research suggests that over 90% of all online browsing starts with a search engine query.
Before consumers discover which product or service they need to solve a particular problem, they’re going to use a search engine. They also prefer to compare multiple channels of information such as search and social media before choosing to contact a particular brand. This creates a significant opportunity for small businesses to engage potential clients to convert them into loyal customers. By providing relevant, compelling content optimized for search engines, you will improve your online visibility and tap into an endless supply of demand.
 

Your customers are on social media – digital marketing will help you reach them.

This is arguably one of the most remarkable benefits of digital marketing. With conventional marketing tactics, you will eventually experience limitations in the size and scope of your campaigns. Print ads are restricted to a specific location, market, and time frame – broadening your scope will cost you dearly.  In contrast, with digital marketing, you can have an extensive yet targeted reach. The only limitations will be your strategy and creativity. Regardless of your industry, it’s likely your buyers spend significant portions of their time on social platforms like Twitter and Facebook. 2.5 million people use social media in Uganda alone. It is a large potential market waiting to be exploited. Digital marketing will help you reach relevant customers. Social media companies like Facebook offer complex targeting features that allow you to reach the consumers most interested in your services or products. In addition, social media channels provide effective platforms to engage and communicate with your audience.
 

It will help you find motivated buyers.

SEO is a highly effective digital marketing technique that confers several benefits. Optimizing your site’s content for web engines allows you to reach more internet users. Using relevant keywords that target consumer intent will bring targeted traffic to your website, which will increase conversions. SEO isn’t just for multinational corporations. Consumers are looking for local businesses online, and according to Google, many of these searches result in a purchase. Local SEO is also a valuable asset for companies with branches in different geographic locations like restaurants, clothing stores, and service-driven businesses.
 

Digital marketing helps you interact with mobile internet users.

Through digital marketing, you can engage consumers who browse and consume content on mobile devices. Over 50% of all internet users access the web through a mobile device. Digital marketing will help you reach them and convert them into repeat customers.
 

It helps you quickly adapt your strategy to changing consumer sentiments.

With conventional marketing channels like newspaper advertisements and television, you have to wait until a campaign ends to evaluate its effectiveness. Though you can use that information to improve your strategy for later advertising campaigns, there is little you can do in the course of a campaign. As a result, it can take weeks or months to identify the best marketing strategies. On the other hand, digital marketing allows for real-time assessment of your tactics, so you can optimize your strategy “on the go.” With website analytics dashboards like Google search console, you can view incoming traffic, which pages your visitors visit, and how long they spend on each page. You can also identify peak site traffic and follow conversion rates. All this information will help you improve your marketing success over time. Example: let’s assume you have created several blog articles for your content marketing strategy. You want to decide if you should continue with a specific topic or find something new to explore. You can quickly look through your analytics dashboards to see how many individuals are reading your blog, and how many are converting. Assessing your content marketing strategy’s effectiveness will allow you to maximize the success of your content marketing plan.
Digital marketing is a level playing field that allows your business to be more competitive.
Small business owners often find it challenging to compete with bigger rivals due to budget limitations. Digital marketing offers a more even alternative. While traditional marketing requires large investments to achieve effective results, digital marketing techniques are more cost-effective, and they allow businesses of all sizes to reach their audiences. Digital marketing also makes it easier for small companies to present themselves. Although small brands may not have the financial resources to create expensive videos, fixtures, and other presentation materials, they can easily create a clean, attractive website that gives users an excellent experience.
 

It will help you prepare for the Internet of Things (IoT).

The internet of things is a framework of interconnected computing devices, digital and mechanical machines fitted with unique identifiers and the ability to transmit information over a network without the need for human-to-computer or human to human interaction. The IoT evolved due to the confluence of several technologies, machine learning, real-time analytics, embedded systems, and commodity sensors.  IoT technology is closely associated with the concept of smart homes, including appliances and devices like home security systems, lighting fixtures, cameras, and other home appliances that support one or more common ecosystem and can be controlled through devices linked to that ecosystem such as smart speakers and smartphones.  In Uganda, companies like Fenix Power have used IoT technology to design expandable, lease-to-own solar home systems that provide phone charging, television, and radio through MTN mobile money. In agriculture, IoT can and is being used to develop efficient ways to improve crop yields.
Through digital marketing, you can reach a vast audience, measurably, and cost-effectively. Compared to traditional marketing methods, digital marketing will save you money, allow you to reach more customers, and enable a personal connection to your audience that guarantees long-term sustainability for your business.