The importance of digital marketing

According to statistics the average UK business allocates just 10-12% of its annual turnover to marketing. In recent years, a high percentage of this spend has been designated to digital.

Why? Although traditional marketing has its place, it can no longer work alone and fails to really engage with target audiences on a mass scale.

Remember, we now live in a world where the digital landscape continues to evolve at an exponential rate - where the average user picks up their mobile device more than 70 times per day, and where we are engaged and online 24/7.

For businesses large or small, digital skills are now a necessity for building and growing a brand; where understanding that digital hasn’t just become an optional marketing strategy, but rather a way of life for modern society, is vital for success.

What are the challenges in Digital Marketing? 

e-Careers has outlined the three key areas of digital marketing that have become a necessity for brand awareness and business development:

Get social

Social media platforms have exploded since the introduction of Facebook in 2004. Today, social media users don’t just follow and engage with friends, they follow and engage with businesses and brands – utilising social media to review brands and their representatives, whilst learning about their products and services.

Cold calling, flyer drops and print advertising just don’t compare – they don’t provide an interactive space for target audiences to really understand a brand, and what’s more they don’t provide a space for unique and consistent content generation or customer feedback.

Your website is your shop window

When you’re looking for a product or service, where is the first place you go? Google. Today websites are shop windows, where skills in SEO, content marketing and digital advertising are required to reach your customers as and when they are searching for your product or service.

Without a website, and in fact without digital marketing to direct traffic to your website, your brand or your business may as well not exist.

It’s in the data

We now have access to more data than ever before. Whether that’s obtained by platforms like Google Analytics or from demographic information extracted from Facebook. Businesses can now understand exactly who is engaging with their website, and their brand, and when. What’s more, this data reveals how people engage with brands, whether from mobile devices or desktops, and at what time periods – enabling businesses to really target their marketing message via the right channel and right device.

Filling the skills gap

There is, of course, far more to digital marketing than social media, web development and data analysis – but these three components are the foundations to reaching new customers in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Despite this being far from new information, it’s no secret that the digital skills gap continues to grow as advances in technology are introduced. Digital is now becoming so entrenched in day-to-day life that digital skills are not just down to marketers, but also for businesses as a whole.

To help fill this skills gap and aid business development through digital success, e-Careers has now teamed up with the Digital Marketing Institute (DMI) to deliver affordable and accessible digital marketing courses that will help professionals enhance their skills, and become more accustomed to digital in the workplace.

To find out more, please visit our digital marketing course pages, or contact one of our Training Experts on 0203 198 7700.

Test your digital marketing knowledge with our Digital Marketing Diagnostic and see where you'll need to improve to kickstart your digital marketing career!