It’s no secret that marketing has changed considerably in recent years.

All types of businesses — from brick-and-mortar stores to large tech companies — have begun using digital marketing to promote their products and services, get their ads seen, and make sure their website lands higher on search engine results pages.

In the relatively brief amount of time since digital marketing became the norm, things have changed at a dizzying pace. Recent developments have demonstrated that digital marketing numbers are not what companies once thought they were. Nowadays, it’s clear that digital marketers need to go further than cultivating a large number of clicks, many of which may or not be from real people.

Listed below are the top marketing trends your business needs to consider.

Ad Clicks, Marketing Fraud, and the Bottom Line

In the past few years, there have been some high-profile lawsuits related to marketing fraud. For example, Uber won a case against Austin-based marketers Phunware for fraudulent advertisements.

As it turns out, even some of the largest and most respected marketing companies have been pointing to clicks as “proof” of business growth and revenue. And yet, companies such as Airbnb have discovered that they don’t lose all that much when they stop paying marketers for advertisements. Business owners everywhere are realizing that they need to pay closer attention to whether paid ads are actually making any difference to the bottom line.

Choosing SEO-Friendly Content Instead of Paid Ads

Digital marketing services should go far beyond placing online ads. Producing relevant content that is optimized for search engines will help your business website land on Google or other search engine results pages.

Website copy optimized for SEO makes a huge difference to a company’s level of exposure. Working with competent SEO professionals should lead to more people visiting your site. People rarely click ads, but they do tend to click through on Google searches. If you incorporate the right keywords and frequently post blogs and web pages that are properly optimized, SEO content could do a lot more for your business than paid advertisements.

Finding the Right Demographic

Just because your marketing company offers your business an expanded reach doesn’t mean that the right people are seeing your advertisements. Companies are starting to realize that their digital marketing needs to reach the right people.

Marketing expenses need to be quantifiable. Large numbers of engagements, as it turns out, don’t mean much. It simply isn’t enough to switch over from traditional marketing to digital marketing. Today, it’s imperative you make sure that your advertisements, website copy, and other methods of marketing are actually making a difference to your revenue.

An Increasing Trend Away From Outsourcing

In the recent past, marketing has traditionally been outsourced to agencies that provide the service for you. Nowadays, however, a lot of businesses are choosing to retain a greater degree of control and reduce expenses by keeping their marketing and advertising in-house.

New professional-level digital tools are being released every day. There are fewer and fewer reasons to pay someone else to do your marketing. This is especially true for a large tech business with plenty of data at its disposal. If your company is doing well, you might want to think about starting an in-house marketing division. Putting more resources into marketing your own business will actually save you some money in the long run.

An Ever-Increasing Emphasis on Social Media

Marketing must include social media, now more than ever. While few companies are seeing significant returns on their social media efforts, there is so much potential in utilizing social channels. You can use a variety of methods to improve your social media presence. Share posts, reply to comments, and make use of the analytics available on each social media site.

Track the number of shares and reposts from leads and influencers. Track the number of engagements. With social media, you can even do research into your target demographics. You can easily find out where they are and how you can best sell your product or service to them. Since a lot of this can be done on-site, be careful to avoid paying someone else too much to do what you could do yourself.

Greater Access = Greater Opportunity

Marketing has changed immensely in the age of the internet and it continues to evolve. No longer is it sufficient for your company to make a transition to digital marketing. The numbers provided by many of these companies don’t represent growth for your business.

The number of clicks per ad, as well as engagements with ads, social media posts, and website pages need to be quantified and turned into real revenue, not merely collected and treasured as theoretical vanity numbers. Pay attention to sales conversions. Do your best to cut down on the costs of marketing while doing your best to market your business in the best way possible. These efforts in tandem will lead to the growth of your company.