If you have an online store, some degree of digital marketing is essential to drive traffic and sales. On the other hand, don’t feel like digital marketing is futile if you don’t have way for visitors to transact business online. At the end of the day, marketing isn’t just about sales, but about conversions.
Not about sales?
I want to be clear that the end goal for most businesses is indeed to make a sale. If sales aren’t coming in, any business would be in big trouble. But sales aren’t usually the initial goal of digital marketing efforts, and in most cases a sale simply can’t happen as step one.
A great way to look at it is through the eyes of a marketing funnel, where you continue to add value to potential customers until (some of them) eventually make a purchase from you. This post has some great insight on how that comes together and things you can do to get your funnel in place.
In the case of the marketing services that we sell at GreenMellen, no one visits our site and immediately becomes a customer, nor should they. Our kind of work, as with most of yours, requires some time on both sides to find the right fit. In the meantime, we can keep working people down our funnel with email marketing, Meetup events, and other things to help us get to know one another.
Digital sales
If you have an ecommerce shop, your digital marketing is more likely to lead to digital sales, but depending on what you’re selling you still might need to take people down a path first.
Digital marketing is essential for almost every business, but set your expectations appropriately, and set up systems to help ensure that you’re able to make the most of every interaction that a visitor has with your brand.
