As business reels from the pandemic, and uncertainty about brick and mortar’s future in retail persists, we thought it best to look at addressing how digital marketing can help businesses rather than frighten them.
Let’s take a look through the lens of searches throughout the years. Cast your mind back to 2012, a year where the video with the most Google search hits happened to be ‘Gangnam Style’, and the most Googled event was Hurricane Sandy. During this year, it was calculated that Google was receiving roughly y. Fast forward 10 years later, and the searches per day have more than doubled to .
These are some fun stats, but what’s the point? Well, it’s an explanation as to why business is, and will continue changing. Everyday, every year, and every decade, we have seen exponential growth in the reach and influence of online search engines, and social media platforms. As time has pressed on, the internet’s impact on our daily lives has increased.
We have seen a rise in the amount of digital marketing tools that exist over the decades, and as such the ways in which you can advertise has drastically shifted away more and more from traditional methods. There is commonplace understanding that old marketing techniques are no longer as influential and impactful as they once were as a result.
With so many ways to advertise today, it’s worthwhile looking at what tools are out there today, and what that means for business as a result. Speculation surrounding a closing of all physical stores is mentioned as a consequence of the explosion of online shopping. It’s important to dissect what merit this claim has, and also what impact marketing in general can provide to your business and its operations. Follow along as we go on a bit of dive into a personal understanding of our brand of marketing, a understanding, that hopefully doesn’t leave you feeling lost in a world of tech giants, and storage containers devoid of personality.
Has online shopping killed the high street?
Adam Greenfield’s in The Guardian paints a rather bleak picture of our seemingly dystopian existence, where we shift the matter of inconvenience and friction to someone else in order to receive the goods we desire. A flickering laptop screen light paints a pretty picture that entices you toward the ‘buy now’ button. “Like virtually all companies with a major online presence, Amazon employs an army of experience and service designers to map the ostensible “pain points” of bourgeois existence, and devise ways to circumvent them. You don’t need to look any further than the recycling bins outside houses, stuffed full of smile-branded cardboard, to realise those designers have succeeded.” Says Greenfield.
While the story looks bleak, with armies of UX design geniuses working to keep your attention online, and a highly efficient system guaranteeing minimal wait-times, there is something worth mentioning from the perspective of the human condition. We are social creatures. People have been attending the marketplace since agriculture and creation became lucrative enough to share. What is certain about shopping in person is that it does carry a level of hassle. A hassle that the online world endeavours to nullify through click-through convenience. However, nothing can compete with the impact of engaging with a person, in person.
While the pandemic shut us in, what we saw in instances of relief, was a bounce back in brick and mortar spending, and a shift to .
A report from the has stated that “arguing that the pandemic accelerated pre-existing trends might be true overall, but not at a more granular level. Places with the highest pre-pandemic online share are not the ones which saw the biggest online shopping boost. Instead, it is more likely to be a result of the severity of the restrictions. When restrictions were briefly lifted, back in August, bricks and mortar spending returned to its pre-lockdown levels in all 63 cities. And footfall data from our High Street Recovery Tracker confirmed that people did return, showing that there is still demand to go to the high street.”
Considering the fact that total spend in the retail sector declined in the pandemic period, and a number of online stores shut as well as brick and mortar stores too.
There are two elements to keep in mind here after all this:
Digital Marketing Tools To Boost Your Business
Digital Marketing tools have grown significantly in necessity for business over the years. The reason being a massive boom in internet speeds, online user design, and an ever-increasing online marketplace.
The truth of the matter is that older advertising methods just don’t have the same appeal and reach as they used to. The numbers and exposure that you can attain from online methods is so easily recorded and tracked. Your target demographics are more intensely categorised and identified, and as a result you will have a better understanding of the who, what, where and why of your customers.
What this ultimately means for brick and mortar stores, is that they need to adapt to modern times to survive; this can be done by advertising online.
Let’s touch on the Castle Jackson Digital Marketing methods we believe set businesses up for online success.
Google Ads
Google Ads (GA) is one of the most popular online advertising methods used today. With billions of daily users, Google holds the majority share of search engine clientele, with over 90%. It is a surefire way to get your business ranking highly on the search engine results page, and it is based on a cost per click model. What this means is that you will only get charged if a user takes action on your ads.
GA provides a ‘keyword planner tool’ that gives you a deeper understanding of related keywords that are popular on Google at any given time. This allows you to do some research behind popular terms that your business can show up under, and makes it easy for you to add or subtract keywords based on what trends arise.
This paid search method is the most popular for a reason, and what you can gain is incredibly helpful to your business goals. An increase in leads, conversions, and online traffic all come along with a strong Google Ads campaign. You also get a much more detailed view of the audiences you cater to.
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