How digital marketing is included in a company’s business marketing strategy
If you thought that there are businesses out there that are running at their optimal competitive capacity within their industry without any online media, then you are sorely mistaken. Digital marketing is another important sales channel in any business marketing plan.
Online marketing is now a part of nearly every businesses integrated marketing plan. It is also an ever-changing industry with new opportunities arising regularly. For example, the travel industry was very competitive and difficult to enter (we will cover barriers to entry below), but today digital marketers have found new ways to help even those with a single property that they want to rent out as a holiday home challenge the local hotels.
More recently we have seen the vacation rental travel business boom within the digital marketing sector as an increasing number of property owners use systems such as Lodgify’s to manage multiple properties.
On top of this digital marketers have been using the Lodgify vacation rental system tools to target property businesses and property owners within this industry. Online marketers are able to utilize the Lodgify website builder and channel manager tools to bring more exposure to vacation rental properties in what is a very competitive marketplace.
Sure, there are businesses out there still successful with no online presence, but these businesses may be able to afford to overlook digital marketing.
This is likely because they have one or all of the following to ensure success:
- Long term high paying customers that they have built a solid relationship. Their partnership/business agreement may be unbreakable due to building trust
- A quality sales team with fine-tuned sales processes and sales processes
- An area so populated that they get enough walk-in customers, word of mouth
- A brand name people know and trust
- A product/service that corners the market
These 5 points are all key to the success of any business’s continuity. However, if they do not partake in any kind of internet marketing activity, then they are not running at optimal competitive capacity.
If your business is not using any form of digital marketing, you stand the risk of being left behind or overtaken by a new competitor.
With so many new ‘Digital Marketing Consultants’ increasing their understanding of how digital media is accessed by the public, all it takes is one investor to put your business on the back foot. Someone with enough cash to finance a business in your industry that includes a hefty budget to hire a marketing company or tea, that can manipulate any niche could suddenly put your business could on the backfoot.
Barriers to entry have long been part of many successful business strategies helping companies such as Microsoft and Apple keep out any competitors in the operating system market
What is a barrier to entry?
A is explained quite simply. The current leading companies in an industry access every sales channel they possibly can. They have diligently investigated and researched their target market’s demographics, geographic, economics as well as internal and external influences.
In effect, any new competitor that attempts to enter this market and compete with the companies that have already invested huge sums of cash into knowing what their customers want and their customer’s buyer behaviour preferences would need to do the same.
Can you imagine the costs that are involved in doing this? For instance, Linux has tried to enter the operating system market as a competitor versus Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s OS. So far, they have failed, and even though they did make a small impact and threatened to become a third option for the consumer market, their challenge soon disappeared – this was simply because the investment to compete with the giant was just too costly.
How does this apply to digital marketing?
Ok, so Microsoft and Apple are overzealous examples. You may be thinking, well my business is nowhere near the level of these companies, and to be honest, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article if you were as big these companies because the content here is already well-known by companies of this size.
However, imagine this scenario:
You are a small to medium-size business. Your business is doing quite well using the 5 methods mentioned at the beginning of this article. Great!
But – and this is a BIG but…
Without investing in a digital marketing strategy, you are not cornering arguably the easiest and most cost-effective way for a competitor or new entrant to market themselves in your industry. Content is also very important.
Pay attention to digital marketing, invest in it, and make sure your business is online and known online at that.
By investing in a digital marketing strategy as a part of an strategy that opens communications lines and accessibility to information about your business, brand, services and/or product will give you three major advantages:
- You have access to a whole new online market
- You are opening yet more sales channels
- Most importantly: You are forcing any potential new threats to entry from other businesses looking to compete with you to add more costs to their budget
Let’s repeat number three in reverse:
If you do not have a digital marketing plan involved in your businesses IMC strategy, your competitors will have an easier time financing their entrance as a new player in your industry
Debatably you could say that any new entrant in the modern-day world would inevitably include a digital marketing strategy into their marketing strategy. This is true. However, without your business already competing for that potential online customer base, they could use digital marketing as their primary strategy to enter your industry.
For your budding new competitor, digital marketing is the cheapest way for them to spread the word. They could then gain traction quickly and this traction has the potential to spread word of mouth. Thus, your competitor starts to gain a return on its investment and eventually turn over a profit. Those profits will then, if your competitor is clever, be invested into competing in other sales channels that are bringing your completely offline business its customers.
You can imagine the outcome! Your business will start to lose market share and be on the back foot. Eventually, your business is forced to enter the digital marketing world, which if done correctly will help bring back some of the lost market shares. However, had your marketing strategy included digital marketing in the first place, it would not be fighting to regain market share!