Look, I won’t try and tell you how to run your communications. If you’ve worked in this field for a long time, you are already an expert in crafting authentic stories that engage your audience. In the past, you’ve done this through traditional channels: press, radio and TV. Today’s digital communications offers a whole new world of possibilities. Not quite convinced? Check out these five reasons why digital communications could be a game changer for you:

1. It’s easier to track ROI on digital media than on traditional media.

It’s tough to measure ROI for print, radio or TV campaigns. “Impressions” is a metric often reported for traditional channels, but this only tells part of the story. It’s important to know other metrics, such as how many people re-shared, what was the general sentiment, and how did your audience interact with the content and each other. These metrics are hard to measure using traditional media but easily accessible using website, search, and social media analytics.

2. You don’t need to perfect your messaging before publishing.

The beauty of digital communications is that you can send your message to your audience, instantly obtain feedback, and then re-work as needed. Sometimes a message doesn’t resonate the way we want it to the first time around, and that’s okay. Digital communications allows us to listen to our audience’s reaction and have a second chance at hitting the right chord with our messaging.

3. Audience targeting is easier than ever before.

Is your target audience middle-aged men living in New York with interests in woodworking, tennis and opera music? Before digital media, targeting an audience this specific would be nearly impossible. With today’s digital media capabilities, targeting specific, niche audiences is easy. The ability to create custom campaigns for specific audiences enables you to achieve higher conversion rates than you would with traditional media campaigns.

4. You can build your own community.

With social media, not only can you gather your audience in one place so you can communicate with them, but they can gather to also communicate with each other. Happy customers are your best advocates and by giving them a community of like-minded people, you create an army of supporters ready to amplify your message by sharing content with their friends. It doesn’t get any better than free promotion!

5. You will save money!

The ability to refine targeting and tailor messaging makes digital media ad campaigns less costly than traditional ad campaigns. There is also less financial risk involved with digital ad campaigns, since targeting and messaging can easily be adjusted mid-campaign. This means that you don’t have to simply accept a loss when you see that your campaign is under-performing.