What is Digital Marketing?
Promoting your product and Marketing through Digital channels is called digital marketing. It is not limited to the internet but also includes other channels like mobile phones and android devices, applications, and much more.
Technology has changed the consumer’s buying behavior and it is necessary for businesses to adjust accordingly. In today’s world, a marketing strategy is incomplete and is more likely to fail if it is lacking in digital marketing avenues. According to Marketing Charts, an increase of 50% in the digital marketing budget has been noticed since 2016.
Significance through numbers
A simple scale I will put forward for you to elaborate on the significance of digital marketing is the amount of money an average brand is willing to spend on digital marketing. According to Salary.com, an average digital marketing manager working for an average brand earns 7 to 8 thousand dollars each month. This is just the salary for a manager of the digital marketing department and not the total expense of the department which will easily fall somewhere ten to a hundred times this amount (including salaries of other team members and paid promotions and other expenses for resources).
Building on these numbers it is safe to assume that one moderately well-doing brand is spending at least a million dollar on digital marketing and this should give you an idea of the worth of the entire industry. This is the money that brands and industrialists are putting in digital marketing. How much do you think digital marketing is generating from them.
According to Digital Global net worth of the digital marketing industry in US is 192 Billion Dollars. This is the sole worth of this industry in US and you can only assume the global worth of this marketing industry which provides you a platform to reach consumers around the world.
Forrester Research has shared that online consumers already dedicate 52% of their media hours to digital channels and this trend is expected to inflate exponentially taking the net worth of the Digital Marketing Industry for UD to $306 billion by 2020.
Tow Way Marketing Approach
Good old-fashioned linear marketing approach (e.g; billboards, television advertisements and newspaper ads) was one way, conveying a stipulated message towards consumers. The modern consumer wishes to network and engage with the person or brand they are buying from. They prefer to give feedback and appreciate two-way active communications. Thus the non-linear and two ways marketing approach digital marketing is providing are more valued and successful. Consumers feel a lot more satisfied and confident in making a purchase possessing the ability to make inquiries and give direct feedback towards the company. It is also easier to give a review of the brands.
This channel has not only made ‘interactions’ possible but has also facilitated suppliers and consumers to reach international markets without much cost and delay. It has offered a competitive benefit to the companies to achieve maximum potential and has proven to be most effective towards brand awareness.
Digital Marketing Strategy
Three main marketing strategies are paid media marketing, earned media marketing, and owned media marketing. Paid media marketing is obviously any marketing strategy for which you are paying to any of marketing platforms. It includes Google ads, Facebook advertisements, and any other paid campaigns. Earned Marketing Strategy is on the other hand is a digital word of mouth.
It is when the consumers share your links on their social media platforms and recommend your products to other consumers in their circle. This strategy brings authority and value to your brand and domain. The third and last type is owned digital marketing, which is when you promote your product on the platforms owned by you such as your website and social media accounts owned by your brand.
Digital Marketing Campaigns
Different digital platforms offer you to run paid or unpaid campaigns to promote your brand or product. Once you have strategies on how you are going to market your product on social media platforms, it is important to achieve your goals by designing and following through with the campaigns.
Responsive Web Designing
Its importance cannot be emphasized enough. In 2016, welcoming the increased traffic from mobile devices, Google declared its ranking algorithms have shifted to a mobile-first strategy. To help your mobile pages load faster AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a very good tool and it’s an open-source code. You might need professional help from a web designer who can work with RWD.
Multiple Aspects of Digital Marketing
SEO – Search Engine Optimization is the spine of digital marketing and holds up all other platforms and strategies used. According to Omni Core, search engines drive 93% of all website traffic; therefore it makes sense to optimize your website for search engines. It is not essentially a discipline of digital marketing but an entirely independent tool that supplements Digital Marketing driving all its aspects. It is always wise to hire a specialized SEO experts to help you with this complex but extremely beneficial tool unless you are expert enough to willing risk your time, money, and other resources. Things you need to know if you wish to handle your SEO on your own are the following:
- Choosing SEO Friendly Website Domain (yes you need to understand SEO even at that early stage)
- Knowing SEO Tactics & Methods (White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO)
- Understanding of SEO friendly Design & Layout
- Optimization of Keywords, Meta Tags, Title and Anchor
- Link Building and Mobile SEO
- Knowledge of basic activities carried out by Search Engines for example crawling, indexing, processing, calculating relevancy, and retrieving results
- On-Page and Off-Page SEO strategies
- SEO Copywriting, etc
SEM– Search Engine Marketing is an overlap or love child of SEO and Digital Marketing. It is paying for sponsored ads on search engines for generating traffic towards website and generating sale leads. There are several synonyms and acronyms relevant to SEM such as Paid search ads, Paid search advertising, CPC (cost-per-click), PPC (pay-per-call), PPC (pay-per-click), and CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions).
According to Omni Core, Google is responsible for 96% of Smartphone search traffic and 94% of total organic traffic. This makes sense to invest your marketing money into a search engine to help you get customers. Without going through all the troubles of SEO you can simply pay search engines to display your website on the top of the first page of search results.
It caters to the channels that benefit from the SEO and assist in digital marketing. It includes websites, blogs, and infographics. But as you know, easy come easy go, traffic driven in through paid campaigns is not as good as organic traffic. As you can see Google is also contributing towards the organic traffic so perhaps you should not leave that stone unturned and push for organic traffic through SEO for organic traffic which is more beneficial in long run.
SMM–Social Media Marketing is a practice of employing social media platforms and related channels for promoting your product and content. It is valuable for creating brand awareness, directing traffic towards the website, and generating sales leads. All social media platforms provide opportunities for paid and unpaid promotion. Promotional videos (both paid and unpaid) on YouTube and Facebook are highly advantageous and powerful. Video content doubles your chances of making sales.
Content Marketing– It is the practice of generating content around your product that will also interest the consumer. Your content must be relevant, interesting, and informative for users to pay attention and take interest in. If implemented correctly it should act as an effective lead magnet and should attract decent leads to your website. A good example is writing a generic blog relevant to the niche of your product/services and smartly placing a recommendation of your product in it.
For example, a brand that specializes in hiking shoes and joggers can write a blog about ‘tips for joggers’ or ‘things to take with you on hiking’ and place their product discreetly in the recommendations. If you are offering beneficial information to the visitors which is not solely directed towards your product it generates goodwill, which can easily be converted into user loyalty and sales.
Influencer Marketing – Sometimes also referred to as native marketing, is displaying sponsored content with other non-paid content on the websites or accounts of social media influencers. Common examples are sponsored videos are done by YouTube vloggers, sponsored posts by Instagram stars, and sponsored BuzzFeed videos on their Facebook and YouTube accounts. Sometimes they give a review in exchange for the free supply of the product. Brand endorsement helps both the influencer and the brand providing more exposure and content to both.
Affiliate Marketing – It is a commission-based marketing strategy, where a company gives performance-based commission on their sales. It is also about trust, if a makeup artist is trusted by her viewers, consumers following her will gladly opt for the brands she is using and recommending. Therefore affiliate marketing and influencer marketing could go hand in hand. People, who have a decent following on the internet, can generate affiliate links and post them on their websites and social media platforms to benefit from this strategy. Every sale made through the affiliated link will be rewarded with a commission. Many big platforms like Amazon and YouTube are offering affiliate programs.
Automated Marketing – It refers to the set of software (both online and offline) which helps you to automatically regulate your other marketing strategies. Most marketing departments get assistance in automating recitative tarts including but not limited to sending weekly or monthly newsletters, lead generation workflow, social media posting schedule, analytical campaign tracking, and reporting.
