If you are a business owner or marketer, you have likely wrestled with the idea of promoting your business online. The online world can be scary to jump into, but it is well worth it. You are able to save time and money while driving more traffic to your website. Your web content can work hard for you, so you can devote your time and money to the million other tasks you have to do.

Check out these 7 reasons going online can help you.

1. The traffic is already there

You can reach the most people with the fewest resources. You could try to chase down everyone on the street and tell them about your business and latest promotions, but you are limited by time and location. Why not go to where most of these people already are everyday? The web.

According to the Pew Research Center, 87% of American adults use the internet, and 74% of these internet users use social media.

Without using the internet, how much time and money would it take you to reach 87% of the people in Sioux Falls? How about in South Dakota? In the Midwest? It would be impossible!

2. Your work is never lost

Your work is not lost once it is published. In traditional media like newspapers or mailers, your ads appear in front of your audience once, and then your message and your money are lost forever.

When you go digital, your content can be viewed over and over; continuously circulating around social media, email, and the web. Let’s take a blog post for example. You write a blog about the newest product or service your business offers. This blog can then be shared and advertised on social media, which drives more traffic to your blog and website, which directs to SALES. And once someone buys a product from your website, you can then direct them to check out other blogs which starts this whole loop over again.

3. You can analyze your results

This is one of the biggest advantages to web marketing. Opposite of traditional media like newspaper or magazine ads, you are able to see how many people have viewed, clicked, and acted on your ads, posts, blogs, and website. Once you have tracked all of this data, you can analyze it to determine what worked and what didn’t. This will help you figure out how your money and time is best spent.

Just like your content, this data does not disappear until you decide to get rid of it. You are able to compile massive amounts of data that will help you produce highly effective marketing plans in the future.

4. You need to stand out from the crowd

Our world is flooded with options. When you Google a problem or need you have, like “restoring wood floors,” you will end up with thousands of results that have anything and everything (and sometimes nothing) to do with restoring wood floors. How many of these results are you actually willing to click on and read?

Most searchers do not make it past the first page (or 10 results). In fact, according to HubSpot, the top 3 non-ad search results receive 60% of all clicks.  You should be creating all of your web content with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. Some website design companies (like us!) provide advanced SEO services that are easy and painless. Using these services will keep your business relevant and ranking well for the search terms your target consumers are actually researching.

Fun Fact:  Search engine optimization in Sioux Falls does matter.  50% of all searches from mobile devices are conducted with the intention of finding local results, and 61% of these searches lead to a purchase.

5. You can personalize your message

Do you ever wonder why you see Facebook ads that seem very personalized to you? The marketers that produce these ads specify the audience they want their ad to target. When you market on the internet, you can control who you sees your advertising. Not only does this cut down on costs; it also helps you produce more qualified leads that actually want what you are selling.

6. It is fast and flexible

You can produce high quality work quickly. You do not have to go through long media buying and implementation processes. Once you have done your research, you are able to move quickly and produce timely and relevant content.

What if you made a typo or your graphic designer forgot a logo and you published your work? No worries! With web-based ads and webpages, you can quickly go in and edit your mistakes. It is also easy to edit old information to keep your messages up to date.

7. You can nurture customer relationships

When using digital media systems and software, you are able to collect customer information and track customers’ actions. You learn about your online customers just as you do with your face-to-face customers. Once you have learned about them, you can provide them with personalized inbound marketing materials that meet them where they are in the buying process. This is the marketing of the future. 

We hope these 7 reasons helped you realize the benefits of taking your marketing plan online.  If you would like to check out additional resources, take a look at one of the blogs to the right.  For more information on how 5j Design can help you with your online strategies, click the inbound marketing button below.