Email remains king in the types of digital marketing businesses. Fifty four percent of businesses view email as the most effective form of Internet marketing. However, a number of other types of digital marketing tactics aren’t far behind. More than 40 percent of the businesses surveyed believe optimized websites and blogs, search engine optimization (SEO) and social media are among the most successful online marketing tactics. Mobile marketing and e-commerce marketing are viewed as the least effective forms.
Contributing to email marketing’s success is the ease in which it is conducted. Eleven percent of the businesses surveyed thought email was one of the most difficult types of digital marketing to execute. Social media tops the list, with nearly 50 percent of businesses saying it was the hardest to accomplish.Content marketing and SEO were among the other toughest tactics to execute. Overall, the vast majority of businesses using some form of digital marketing report seeing positive results from it.
Businesses have a wide range of motives for using Internet marketing. Wanting to increase customer engagement, sales revenue, leads for their sales teams and brand awareness were the most important reasons. Reducing marketing and customer service costs are surprisingly least important. Majority of the businesses believe their digital marketing efforts are only getting better. In order to achieve all of their goals, there are a number of challenges businesses are facing:
The most challenging obstacle to success is clearly the lack of an effective digital marketing strategy.
Followed by an inadequate budget to fund programs.
Other challenges business must overcome to achieve better digital marketing results include a lack of training and expertise.
Inability to prove a return on investment and increasing competition.
