By Greg Soltes
I work in a company that currently has 32 employees (two of which are interns.) Of those 32 individuals, I am the only one without any sort of marketing experience. The most marketing knowledge I have extends to my Marketing 101 class back in college. From that course, the only real thing I remember is the Three P’s. Or maybe it is four? I could not even tell you what words the “P’s” represent, so hopefully you get the point that I am not a marketing guy by any stretch of the word. Fortunately, as the Financial Controller, I am the only one in the company who knows finance/accounting, so I do provide some value.
This is my first blog (ever) and I am writing it to provide some context to what digital marketing is to folks like me who have limited knowledge of the subject. The most simplistic way I can describe digital marketing is that it helps your business be seen on search engines such as Google or Bing. The industry term used is “search engine optimization,” (SEO) which also happens to be the majority of what our business revolves around.
To help explain this further, here is an example that I encountered last month. Our company bought a new office that is having some renovations done before we move. In the meantime, I needed to find a landscaper to cut the grass and do a few projects on the property to maintain it. The first thing I tried was personal connections. Those did not work out because they were all too busy or at capacity. So, what was my next step to find someone to gain our business? If you guessed “Google it” you are absolutely correct. I typed in commercial landscaping Westlake, Ohio. After looking at a few sites, I gave two a call to ask for a price quote. The company that got back to me the fastest now has our business.
The example above illustrates the power of what digital marketing can do for you. Because this particular company had a good listing on Google and a solid website, they gained an account that will likely bring them over $10,000 in the next 12 months (for a smaller landscaping company that is huge.) Why? Simply because their digital presence was better than competing companies.
If you think about how you find people to provide the goods or services you are looking for, digital marketing makes perfect sense. Personal connections and word of mouth are the first thing you will likely try. Turning to Google or another search engine is the next step which makes it so important for businesses to maintain a strong presence online.
There are so many more aspects to digital marketing, such as pay-per-click, email automation, web lead follow-up, the list goes on and on. Although I now know significantly more than the average person when it comes to digital, there are still times when colleagues of mine try to explain things to me and I think they are speaking a different language.
After five months working in this industry I can tell you how powerful and important digital marketing can be for your business. If your business has some sort of marketing budget, you really need to consider digital. TV ads are wildly expensive, not to mention that cable is dying more and more every day. Newspapers have all but moved online. Radio ads simply do not fit for so many companies. Digital marketing is a great medium in which to allocate your marketing budget to help drive sales or hire potential job candidates.
To conclude, I am a numbers guy who ties everything to bottom line profit. If you want to drive new business while being able to extensively track results and ROI on your marketing dollars, digital marketing is the way to go. Technology and marketing continue to change at a rapid pace. Adapt or die!
About the Author
Greg is the Controller at ChoiceLocal Marketing who handles the finances for the company. Greg comes from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland where he was a financial analyst and is relatively new to the world of digital marketing. When he is outside of works he enjoys coaching youth hockey and traveling.
