Impact of Digital Marketing On Consumers in 2023

The impact of Digital Marketing has been unprecedented on consumers as well as businesses. We are no longer strangers to the immense utility of leveraging digital channels to convey our messages most effectively. In this article, we will discuss the impact of digital marketing on consumers over time. The market scenario has gone through a momentous change with the proliferation of several digital channels. That includes websites, blogs, social media, and different applications. Every digital medium today is a platform for businesses to connect with consumers and provide more value to them.

Digital Marketing or online marketing strategies are the different components that we bring together to create a comprehensive campaign to promulgate brands, products, and services in the webspace.

Today, in the din and bustle of everyday life, people are hard-pressed with time. Ambitions, the fulfillment of duties, and creating a balance between personal and professional life take up a large chunk of our time every day. The consumer has evolved and explores the dynamic online medium for a better experience regarding every aspect of life.

There has been a tectonic shift in the way consumers glean information today. The digital domain has influenced people from all age groups and generations. Not just the young and the youth, everyone is enamored by the exquisite advantages of the digital domain.

With smartphones dominating the digital device space in our life, consumers search for any information they want on smartphones. Consider your personal experience. Today, when you look for a product or a service which is the first place you go to? Majority of the time you consult the internet to get relevant information.

This has become a habit for everyone all across the globe. Whether quickly trying to memorize the ingredients of a particular gourmet dish, or looking for a review of an institution, everything is majorly searched online today.

The world of online marketing has opened up immense opportunities for businesses across all sectors. Corporate organizations and businesses are striving to provide consumers with the best possible information possible today online.

Regular technological developments and changes are taking place in the web arena today. They are meant to improve the quality of content served to online searchers. Thus, digital marketing has proved to be one of the key elements that shape a consumer’s thoughts and ideas about a brand and its features.

Some statistics to prove the impact of digital marketing on consumers

• According to Salesforce, 75% of consumers look forward to a consistent experience across digital channels that they choose to engage with.
• More than 80% of consumers expect to receive an immediate response to marketing or sales questions/queries according to Smallbiztrends.
• A whopping 87% of shoppers today start by searching for products online (retaildive). This astounding figure gives you an example of the impact of digital channels on consumers. Therefore, digital marketing has to provide more unique content to engage customers for a more comprehensive experience.
• Moving on to some other statistics, self-service is an important aspect of exploring the online domain. This is reinstated by the fact that 67% of consumers prefer self-service over-communicating with the company representatives for their queries. (Zendesk)
• We discussed how consumer experience should be one of the most important in the priority list of businesses. This is because 80% of consumers express that they expect the company experience to be as important and fruitful as its products and services. (Salesforce)

• The number of voice assistant users is expected to reach approximately 123 billion by 2021 as per e-marketer

• Providing information as and when they need it is one of the most important in determining factors for the success of a business. From a recent study, it has been proved that 51 % of smartphone users have successfully purchased from a company that they actually didn’t intend to. But did it because the information was provided at the time they required it. (Business2community)
• Where social media is concerned, a study has proved that 88% of online customers do not prefer buying from brands that do not respond to social media customer service complaints(business 2 community). Moreover, more than 45% of online consumers expect brands to provide customer service on a platform like Facebook. (Neil Patel)
• To sum it up, smartphones have completely transformed the scenario of marketing trends and industry. It is so useful for everyone that businesses must have a mobile responsive website today. 70% of mobile search leads to some positive action within an hour. (Forbes).

1. The Proliferation of Social Media

How digital media impacts consumers is incomplete if we do not take into consideration several social media channels. The rise in popularity of social media channels made businesses realize the untapped potential of these mediums.

Gradually businesses started to leverage the advantages offered by these channels. Social media today has various features that help to advertise and promote products.

Instagram-sponsored posts, Facebook ads, and YouTube ads are several examples where consumers get targeted advertisements. They are great channels for the promotion of a particular product or service.

Remember advertising and creating a brand reputation on social media is no child’s play. We might feel that the popularity of social media channels ensures the visibility and exposure of your brand. But it depends on how efficiently you advertise them on these mediums. You have to incisively study the consumers’ tastes, preferences, and behavior, and then decide to use social media for promotion.

Digital advancements and technological expertise have given us the advantage of tracking a consumer’s preference based on the searches they make on the internet. It is also possible through cookies that track a consumer’s digital footprint on sites and social channels.

Social media with all its distinctive features can make a business highly successful provided it resonates with the customer base. There are various ways in which your consumers show appreciation on social media.

Viral content is one such method. You must have often heard of content getting viral on social media. This is content that has been widely appreciated and has appealed to the masses.

Your consumers on social media can share, like, and subscribe to your channel, and help it grow. Another very positive feature of digital marketing is that you can share content across different channels.

This helps in better visibility and recognition of your brand. For example, something that you like on Instagram can be shared on different social media platforms as well as digital channels like LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and Quora. It not only creates great opportunities for website traffic. It also helps to influence a wider range of audiences from complementary niches by getting qualified leads for your products.

2. Customers now want the best

Digital marketing has been responsible for consumers getting much more in-depth information on a particular subject. This has led to consumers wanting the best information on everything. To leverage this mindset, you have to provide the most high-grade content you can to your prospective consumer.

Your content should appeal to the sensibilities of your target and existing customers to create successful goodwill for your brand in the online domain. Customers today want exhaustive knowledge of a particular subject. However, you have to capture the attention in the first few seconds of them going through your content.

There are so many options available that the consumer today is spoilt for choice. If you are not able to convey the most important parts of your brand effectively in the first few sentences, you are bound to lose leads.

Learn the art of effective Content Writing from the Best Content Writing Course

3. Engagement and Rapport

With so many businesses vying for attention and recognition in the online domain, it is important to employ all opportunities for customer engagement to build the reputation of your brand.

Engagement and communication have become very important aspects of doing business today. Every digital channel provides consumers with a platform to talk about different products. Here, they can’t talk about what they like, what they don’t, and what are features stand out for them in a particular brand.

For any business, the element of word-of-mouth publicity plays a vital role in catapulting the business to greater heights. When the content you provide is authenticated by your existing customers, you tap into a wide range of audiences. This helps to get more leads and ultimately more prospects, customers.

When you make a genuine effort to connect with your consumers and engage with them, it instills a sense of trust in them. Your sincerity is validated when you solve some of the confusion and questions effectively.

It is very important to practice empathy when you are in business. Digital channels are omnipresent today. Some mediums are accessible to us 24/7, 365 days a year. This inevitably makes business accessible to the consumer all the time.

Therefore, you have to make a concerted effort to reach out to your consumers and adjust their grievances as soon as possible.

4. Reviews are Important

When your existing customers corroborate the information you provide, it automatically gives you recognition in the shortest time possible.

For example, consider an e-commerce giant like Amazon. They have a range of products and sellers who continuously make efforts to provide the best of services.

Suppose an n online consumer clicks on a particular product and scrolls over to the review section. It is these few more minutes that can make or break a company’s reputation. When the consumer sees a series of positive reviews it is likely to induce a positive response. Negative Reviews can damage the reputation beyond repair.

5. Customer Care should be emphasized

We have mentioned earlier how customer engagement is vital to the goodwill of your business. It helps you to create staunch loyalists among your consumers. These are brand advocates who promulgate your product and believe in their superiority genuinely.

You have to formulate an impeccable customer care service to impress and charm your consumers. Remember, this can go a long way in establishing your business as the numero uno brand in your particular sector.

Digital channels come with the advantage of being able to connect you to your customers whenever they want. Try to provide your customers with immaculate customer care solutions for all their complaints, problems, and confusion.

Do not ever be rude or patronizing to your consumers. That can be very detrimental to the interest of your brand. And once you lose your brand reputation, it is very hard to get back on track winning the confidence of your consumers again.

Poor customer care is a death knell for a business. And more so in this digital age where there is no dearth of businesses operating in a particular sector.

Register for A Free Demo Session

6. More relevant information dissemination

Customers today look for focused, utility-driven content that can answer their questions quickly. Therefore, businesses must create, formulate, and distribute content that provides value to the maximum.

Professional courses to check out

• Technical Writing Course
• SEO Course
• GST Course

In this regard, the aim should not be to display the distinctive features of your product or service. It should be to delineate how these features will come to a consumer’s use. 

You will find your consumers in one or more of the digital and social media channels. Therefore you have to strategize a judicious content dissemination policy where you include all the popular channels.

For Example,

You want to promote your disinfectant which has become an extremely coveted product in the pandemic. Your target consumers are present on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Quora, and LinkedIn. You have to tailor your content in a way that resonates with the audiences on each of these platforms.

That is the true test of being a great digital marketer. If you can do this properly there is no stopping you from being at the top of the mind of your focus customer.

7. Authentic Information

The first principle of writing content for any digital marketing effort is to be successful in providing authentic information. This will help consumers to gain knowledge about the product and make an informed purchasing decision.

Now, if you have distributed information that is false and does not hold good the promises you made, customers will be turned off of your products and will never go back to using them.

Even if it helps you make sales in the short run, your business will suffer ultimately. They will always steer clear of your brand, products, and services and all your efforts will be for naught.

Also in this era of digital marketing reviews, testimonials have become extremely easy to post and view. Consumer behavior is greatly impacted by both negative and positive reviews. But negative reviews have a greater effect on the consumers purchasing decisions

Explore, experiment. research and then make a concrete decision regarding content that you will disseminate. The online arena has helped businesses to thrive immensely. But, it has also made it mandatory to distribute real and true information.

8. Consumer Psychology is important to comprehend

Several factors influence the consumer’s perception and opinion of a brand. Economical, cultural, social, personal, and even political ideas and opinions influence the consumer’s decision.

So, the first thing that a business needs to do is to determine how to successfully position its brand. This requires extensive research on the consumer and what stimulates them to make a particular purchasing decision.

There are several effective digital marketing techniques to do so. Engagement is a prime way of knowing your customer. Incentives like offers, discounts, value services can give you a fair idea of the thought process of any consumer.

Your incentives go a long way in satisfying your consumer’s wants. You on the other hand get an incisive understanding of their preferences and choices. Their income range, educational qualifications, gender, are integral elements.

9. Voice Search

This is another aspect of digital marketing that has transformed the mindset of consumers and made them more aware and alert in terms of expectations from businesses.

Voice search is becoming more and more popular with 48% of consumers using voice for just general searches (Adobe). The reason is transparent. It is easier to speak and ask what you want than type it every time.

This is the reason why businesses and e-commerce platforms are continuously improving their applications and websites to accommodate the consumers’ preference for voice assistants.

According to Search Engine Watch, searches are three times as likely to be locally based. This is because assistants provide more focused results in less time. With various assistance like Google assistant, Alexa, and Siri people are getting more and more used to voice assistance while exploring the online space.

The question arises as to why your business needs a voice search strategy among other digital marketing components.

Your sole aim is to provide an improved customer experience and voice search helps you to do exactly that. It is a fascinating tool that helps customers get desired results in a few seconds. This means voice search also provides optimal customer service that helps to strengthen the bond between the consumer and the business.

With newer tools, applications software, and websites emerging every day it is important to keep abreast of digital technologies. This will not only help you to stay informed about everything relevant to the online domain. It will also help you to realize your goals, objectives, mission, and vision of your business in a better manner.

10. Personalization

You have to harness the advantages of personalization to be able to impact consumers’ behavior effectively. Personalization needs to be an inevitable aspect of your entire marketing strategy. Digital marketing thankfully provides enough scope for you to personalize like never before.

With digital marketing small, medium, and large enterprises have immense room for improvement and success. This invariably means that the competition is higher and everyone is out there trying to gain the attention of target consumers.

The obvious way to ensure that you develop and sustain your reputation as an authority leader is to incorporate personalization for more precision in your marketing efforts.

Based on your traffic and website visitor’s intent, you can provide them with options for similar products. Incorporate different digital modules like email marketing, SMS marketing, push notifications, and others.

Personalization helps to forge a bond that is for the long run. It provides customers with the conviction that your business is there to help them. You, on the other hand, enjoy an extraordinary online reputation by providing value through recommendations, news, and information.

It not only helps you in the initial stages of the sales funnel when you are attracting leads. Personalization helps even after your sales funnel is completed. You have higher chances of customer retention when you practice personalization wisely.

However, there is also a negative side to it which is bombarding your existing customer with emails, newsletters, intrusive ads continuously.

Your personalization technique requires you to be judicious in disseminating information that will not overwhelm your consumer. It is also better when you maintain a certain semblance of organization as you recommend and personalize your digital efforts.

It helps consumers to concentrate on their intent, choices better when they receive information and when they require it.

Top businesses, digital marketing agencies, and e-commerce platforms have a sagacious approach to this. They ask for permission from their customers as to when they would like to receive notifications of the latest development and news. Based on the details provided by these consumers, these top business organizations distribute information.

For example, 

One customer might want updates on production services daily. On the other hand, someone might want it twice a week. With personalization, you can determine the preferences of consumers.

Conclusion

Here, you have the 10 points that give you a comprehensive understanding of the impact of digital marketing on consumers. The bottom line for any digital marketing activity is to provide your customer with the assurance that you care for them. It is to make them understand that you value their association and would go to great lengths to provide them with the most precise information possible

However, as reiterated time and again, do not undermine the importance of providing real and honest information. In today’s digital age it is extremely easy to find out if you are making false promises or providing incorrect information about your brand.

You should exercise the highest level of discretion when you are providing information on your products and services. Your customers are your primary assets. A genuine effort to win their trust will make you successful. Adopt an affable approach and be consistent with your tone.

Digital marketing gives customers access to several choices for a particular product or service. Make sure that you are diligent in providing them with the best service possible for you online. This reaps great results as consumers applaud your efforts genuinely and turn brand advocates.