Digital marketing is the future of business. If you don’t use the power of digital strategies, you will fall behind in today’s competitive climate. Here are five ways digital marketing impacts business growth.

1. Traffic

In the old days of business, you had to purchase a storefront and hope people came to your physical location. This created a lot of barriers for new business owners. If they wanted to start a company, they had to spend money on real estate, taxes, insurance, and overhead from running the store.

Today, traffic works much different online. You can grow your business with digital marketing and spend only a fraction of what you would pay in the past. You can leverage Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, and even SEO (which is free). Instead of reaching dozens of people in a day, you can reach thousands all across the world. If you’re not using digital marketing to get traffic to your business, you’re missing out on a significant opportunity to grow your brand.

2. Sharing

With the current state of the internet, people love to share the content they are interested. With the proper digital marketing campaign, you can create content that engages your core audience and makes them want to show their friends.

People with business management degrees will tell you that creating shareable content is not about hacks and quick tricks. To go viral, you need to add real value. Differing ways to do this are: be provocative, say something on everyone’s mind, be entertaining, be funny, and be surprising. Your strategy may be unique, but always keep in mind that your end goal with content is to get as many eyeballs on it as possible.

3. Scalability

Your business needs to increase to stay up with the innovation in your market. One of the fastest ways to grow is to scale. Whether you need to hire people, get more products out into the market, or raise capital, scaling is made simpler with the internet.

For instance, you can raise money from crowdsourced investing platforms, taking out the hassle of knocking on the doors of venture firms in person. You can hire freelancers from any country in the world, leading to more flexibility, fewer overheads for insurance, and cheaper labor overseas. And of course, iterating products is faster than ever with software that allows you to preview inventions before pushing them into your market.

4. Expectations

Your digital presence allows you to manage your image in the eyes of your customers. Instead of wondering how they feel about your brand, you can take full control. You can set expectations about what you’re going to deliver. You can tell them how often you’ll email them, what your refund policy is, and what your company mission is. It can all be on your website.

5. Sales

Digital marketing is changing the game of sales. No longer do you need to make endless cold calls each day. Now, you can let your website and sales funnel do most of the work for you. Have a landing page that acts as a lead generation machine and cues your sales team up for greater success than ever before with qualifying stages on your site.

To take full advantage of digital marketing, you might consider learning about marketing in a business management program can give you the tools necessary to grow a business. After all, you need to be competitive to stay on top. With the power of digital marketing today, it is essential that you understand how to use it in your career. So seek the training and experience necessary to make your business succeed now and into the future.