Can Digital Marketing Really Impact The Buying Decision?

Digital marketing has become an integral part of corporate industry for the last few years. Since it continues to shower some appreciable result; even the brands that are not online are choosing digital marketing to increase their visibility online to help customers find their way to brick and mortar stores. The main reason behind the hype of digital marketing is its effectiveness to reach the targeted market and audience. There are some of the great benefits which digital marketing strategy offers to the businesses including reaching a targeted audience, brand awareness, improved online visibility, and many more.

If you will thoroughly analyze the present marketing scenario, most of the potential customers are available only browsing through different websites to come across certain products they have been looking for. Considering the business ethics, consumer perception is one of the most crucial factors that help a business to flourish while building a trustworthy customer base. The ultimate aim of every business is to increase sales by finding out the factors that can drive consumer’s buying decision. Perception usually varies from customer to customer and the quality of product and services also play some influential role. Hence, for a business or from marketing point of view, it is essential to track down on the pattern and perception of consumers, including what exactly motivates or influence a consumer in purchasing or not purchasing a specific product so that they can be addressed with the most effective and efficient marketing strategy.

In order to improve their business growth, most of the organization seeks help from the digital marketing expert. The basic of digital marketing services include search engine optimization, search engine marketing, social media optimization, e-mail marketing and more. Social media platforms have become a great platform as it provides certain insight about customer engagement. Use of such digital marketing platforms has made communication easier, effective as well as result oriented. The most popular social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others have millions of users thus help businesses to target a larger community of audience while providing a chance to interact with the potential consumers.

How digital marketing influences consumer behavior?

Here are some of the insights which might help one understand the consumer’s behavior in digital era

1. Use of social media platforms
   
   
   In this digital world, most of the people are active on social media websites and they are the one who decides which social media platform the brand should be most active on and consider for expanding its business. The social media accounts work as a mediator between consumer and business, providing business with a platform to step ahead of its competitor by interacting with the consumer and providing them with the best possible product and service.


2. Intolerance among consumers
   
   
   Consumer nowadays wishes to get the most from the business. They look for immediate reaction or response for their actions and quality customer service. Manually providing such quality service could be difficult but with the help of digital platforms businesses become sufficient enough to respond to customer’s queries clear and fast.
   
   
   Moreover, consumers can easily share their experience and views regarding any particular product or brand which might be positive or negative. It has been said that consumers are most attracted towards negative news or reviews in comparison to the positive one. Hence, the businesses are using online reputation management strategies to convert the negative image of the brand into positive one, so that they can easily cater to the potential customer.


3. Consumers have become experimental and doesn’t mind switching
   
   
   The mindset of consumer is said to have changed completely. Earlier people used to have trust-issues with a new brand, product, and services; they usually prefer to stick with some well-known and reputed brand rather than switching. However, consumers now have become welcoming towards new products which are of good quality and take time to applause their features as well. This experimenting behavior of consumer along with the integration of digital marketing that helps create awareness has made way for many start-up companies.

How social media is influencing purchasing decision?

Social media has become a key component for organization to build marketing strategies for. 74% of shoppers make the buying decision based on social media reviews and engagement according to some reports. B2B and B2C both are said to be highly benefitted by the influence of social media on purchase of goods.

• Review from social influencers
  
  
  An individual who has some significant followers on social media are said to be social influencers. Since they have larger audience to influence and interact with; brands request them to promote their products so they can easily target their consumers. The social media post of influencers greatly effects purchasing decision of people following them. 45% of global respondents said that reading reviews, comments, and feedback influences their shopping behavior and especially if has been made by some well known social media influencer.
  
  
  Hence, businesses have started looking for influencers who attract followers that are aligned with their targeted audiences. However, there are some influencers who also make some non-sponsored to help their followers with affordable and significant choices.


• Presence of brand on social media
  
  
  Earlier the look and feel of the brick and mortar storage were considered to be an influencing factor in decision making of consumer. However, with the change in time and behavior of potential buyer, the attention has shifted from physical store to an online presence. It has been noticed that most of the online consumer prefer to connect with brands that have well-maintained, active and strong social media feeds along with some decent count on followers. As a good number of followers ensure consumer that people are aware of the brand and hence, increases the chance of purchase or clicks.


• Search engines on social media
  
  
  Social media platforms are no longer treated only as the medium to connect with friends and families. It has become an essential part of online marketing strategies. In addition the potential buyers have started searching for the product or services on social media which means that keywords have started playing bigger roles. A business which offers great result for the searches has higher chances of getting good returns on their social marketing strategies.


• Creating contest to increase the engagement
  
  
  Since social media platforms have been used for building marketing strategies and connecting with targeted audience. Running a contest has become a new trend which brings several benefits to the businesses. Depending on the type of business, service, products, and engagement of followers, businesses often create some existing contest for the existing followers while aiming to increase in the number and brand awareness. The contest designed by the brands are said to provide people with certain gifts if they complete the provided task during the provided time. The winners are often chosen randomly, but such an amazing contest excites the potential buyers while improving the brand awareness of business.

In a nutshell, influence of digital marketing in the changing the consumer perception about business and products have widely benefitted both the worlds (consumer and corporate). For the companies which still doesn’t have online visibility or strong social media feed, it’s not too late to get on the board and start practicing digital marketing. Develop some great strategy with experts and switch from traditional marketing techniques to digital and reap the maximum benefits of digitalization!