Any marketing that involves the reference to electronic devices can be used by marketing specialists to provide promotional messaging and track its impact through the buying process. Digital marketing, in practice, refers to marketing campaigns that display on a computer, phone, tablet, or other device. Online video, display ads, search engine marketing, paid social ads, and social media posts are all examples. Digital marketing is frequently contrasted with “traditional marketing” methods such as magazine advertisements, billboards, and direct mail. Surprisingly, television is frequently grouped with traditional marketing.
Did you know that more than three-quarters of Americans use the Internet every day? Not only that, but 43% log in multiple times every day, and 26% are online “almost constantly.”
These percentages are even higher among those who utilize mobile internet. 89% of Americans use the internet at least regularly, and 31% use it practically constantly. As a marketer, it is critical to leverage the digital world through an online advertising presence, brand building, offering a fantastic customer experience that attracts more potential customers, and more, all through a digital strategy.
A digital marketing plan enables you to engage with existing customers and persons interested in your product or service through various digital channels such as social media, pay-per-click, search engine optimization, and email marketing.
What exactly is digital marketing?
Digital marketing, often known as online marketing, is the promotion of brands through the use of the Internet and other types of digital communication to interact with potential clients. This comprises text and multimedia messaging as a marketing channel in addition to email, social media, and web-based advertising.
Essentially, digital marketing is any marketing campaign that utilizes digital communication.
Digital marketing vs. inbound marketing
For good reason, digital marketing and inbound marketing are frequently conflated. Many of the same methods are used in digital marketing as inbound marketing, such as email and web content, to mention a few. Both exist to attract prospects’ attention and convert them into customers during the buyer’s journey. However, the two approaches have opposing viewpoints on the link between the instrument and the aim.
Digital marketing takes into account how specific technologies or digital platforms might convert prospects. A brand’s digital marketing strategy may include numerous channels or focus entirely on one. For example, a corporation may develop content solely for social media platforms and email marketing campaigns while disregarding other kinds of digital marketing.
Inbound marketing, on the other hand, is a comprehensive notion. It assesses the aim first, then examines the available tools to identify which would effectively reach target clients, and then where in the sales funnel that should occur. Assume you want to increase website traffic in order to produce more prospects and leads. When building your content marketing plan, you might concentrate on search engine optimization, which will result in increased traffic.
The most essential thing to understand about digital marketing and inbound marketing is that you don’t have to pick between the two as a marketing expert. They actually operate best together. Inbound marketing gives structure and purpose to efficient digital marketing activities, ensuring that each digital marketing channel works towards a common goal.
What is the importance of digital marketing?
Marketing of any kind can help your business prosper. However, because of the ease with which digital media may be accessed, digital marketing has grown in importance. In fact, there will be 5 billion internet users worldwide in April 2022.
There are numerous ways to leverage digital marketing tactics to communicate with your target audience, ranging from social media to SMS messages. Furthermore, digital marketing offers low upfront costs, making it a cost-effective marketing strategy for small firms.
Digital marketing for companies versus marketing for consumers
Digital marketing tactics are effective for both B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) businesses, but best practices differ greatly between the two. Here’s a closer look at how B2B and B2C marketing strategies leverage digital marketing.
- B2B clients have longer decision-making processes, resulting in longer sales funnels. These clients respond better to relationship-building techniques, whereas B2C customers respond better to short-term offers and messaging.
- Business-to-business transactions are typically founded on logic and evidence, which professional B2B digital marketers convey. B2C content is more likely to be emotional in nature, with the goal of making the buyer feel good about their purchase.
- B2B decisions frequently require the input of more than one person. The marketing materials that are most effective in driving these, of course, every rule has an exception.
- A B2C company that sells a high-ticket item, such as a car or computer, may provide more informative and serious content. As a result, whether you’re B2B or B2C, your digital marketing strategy should always be oriented toward your specific consumer base.
Examine your current audience in order to establish well-informed and focused web marketing efforts. This ensures that your marketing efforts are effective and that you can attract potential clients’ attention.
Different types of digital marketing
As many specializations exist in digital marketing as there are ways to interact with digital media. Here are few major examples of digital marketing methods.
Search engine marketing
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a marketing tool rather than a type of marketing in and of itself. According to The Balance, it is “the art and science of making web pages attractive to search engines.”
What matters most in SEO is the “art and science” component. SEO is a science since it necessitates extensive research and weighing of various contributing criteria in order to attain the highest possible placement on a search engine results page (SERP).
The following are the most significant factors to consider when optimizing a web page for search engines today:
- Content quality Level of user involvement
- Mobile-friendliness
- The quantity and quality of inbound links
In addition to the factors listed above, you must optimize technical SEO, which includes all of your site’s back-end components. URL structure, loading times, and broken links are all examples of this. Improving your technical SEO will help search engines browse and crawl your site more effectively.
The systematic use of these criteria makes search engine optimization a science, but the inherent unpredictability makes it an art.
The ultimate goal is to appear on the first page of a search engine’s results page. This ensures that customers looking for a specific inquiry connected to your brand will be able to simply find your items or services. While there are numerous search engines, digital marketers frequently concentrate on Google because it is the industry leader.
There is no quantitative formula or consistent rule for ranking highly on search engines in SEO. Google and other search engines’ algorithms change relatively constantly, making precise forecasts difficult. What you can do is closely monitor the performance of your page and alter your strategy as needed.
Content Marketing
As previously said, the quality of your content is an important component of an optimized page. As a result, SEO plays a significant role in content marketing, which is a strategy centered on the dissemination of relevant and valuable material to a target audience.
The purpose of content marketing, like any other marketing technique, is to generate leads that will eventually convert into customers. But it does it in a unique way compared to traditional advertising. Rather than luring prospects with the prospective value of a product or service, it provides value for free in the form of textual material, such as:
- Blog postings
- Newsletters
- E-books
- Transcripts of video or audio
- Whitepapers
- Infographics
There are numerous statistics that demonstrate the importance of content marketing:
- 84% of consumers want businesses to create engaging and useful content experiences.
- 62% of firms with at least 5,000 employees create content on a daily basis.
- 92% of marketers agree that content is a vital asset for their firm.
Content marketing, no matter how effective it is, may be difficult. Content marketing writers must be able to rank high in search engine results while also engaging individuals who will read, share, and interact with the business further. When the information is relevant, it can help to build solid relationships all the way down the pipeline.
It is critical to define your audience in order to generate great content that is both relevant and interesting. Who do you hope to ultimately target with your content marketing efforts? You can select the type of content you’ll publish once you have a deeper understanding of your audience. In your content marketing, you can utilize a variety of content formats, such as videos, blog posts, printable worksheets, and more.
It’s a good idea to follow content marketing best practices regardless of the type of material you publish. This entails creating information that is grammatically correct, error-free, simple to grasp, relevant, and intriguing. Your material should also direct visitors to the next stage of the sales funnel, whether it’s a free consultation with a sales professional or a signup page.
Social Media Marketing
By engaging individuals in online discussions, social media marketing can increase traffic and brand exposure. Social media marketing may be used to emphasize your business, products, services, culture, and more. With billions of people spending time on social media platforms, concentrating on social media marketing might be beneficial.
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the most popular digital channels for social media marketing, with LinkedIn and YouTube close behind. Finally, the social media channels you employ for your business are determined by your objectives and target audience. For example, if you want to find new leads for your FinTech firm, targeting industry professionals on LinkedIn is a fantastic option because they are active on the platform. Running social media advertisements on Instagram, on the other hand, may be better for your brand if you run a B2C focused on younger consumers.
Because social media marketing involves active audience engagement, it has grown in popularity. At 96%, it is the most preferred content medium for B2C digital marketers, and it is gaining traction in the B2B realm as well. This year, 61% of B2B content marketers boosted their use of social media, according to the Content Marketing Institute.
Social media marketing includes built-in engagement analytics that can help you evaluate how well you’re reaching your target audience. You get to choose whatever types of interactions are most important to you, whether it’s the number of shares, comments, or overall website clicks.
Your social media marketing approach may not even include direct purchase as a goal. Many firms utilize social media marketing to engage viewers rather than immediately convince them to spend money. This is especially typical in brands that cater to older audiences or provide items and services that are not suitable for impulse purchases. Everything is dependent on your company’s social media marketing objectives.
It is critical to follow best practices while developing a social media marketing plan. Here are some of the most crucial social media marketing best practices:
- Create high-quality, engaging content and respond to comments and inquiries professionally.
- Make a schedule for your social media postings.
- Post at the appropriate time
- Employ social media managers to assist your marketing efforts.
- Know your target audience and which social media outlets they use the most.
Check out the comparison of our free social media management tools with others to discover more about how Swapnil Kankute can assist you with your social media strategy.
Pay-per-click advertising
Pay-per-click, or PPC, is a type of digital marketing in which you pay a fee each time someone clicks on one of your digital advertisements. So, rather than paying a predetermined fee to continuously broadcast targeted advertising on internet channels, you only pay for the ads that people interact with. It’s a little more complicated as to how and when people will view your ad.
Search engine advertising is one of the most prevalent sorts of PPC, and because Google is the most prominent search engine, many businesses utilize Google Ads for this purpose. When a place on a search engine results page, commonly known as a SERP, becomes available, the engine fills it with what amounts to an instant auction. Each available ad is prioritized by an algorithm based on a number of parameters, including:
- Ad relevance Keyword quality
- The standard of the landing page
- The sum of the bid
When someone searches for a certain topic, PPC adverts are put at the top of search engine result pages based on the parameters listed above.
Each PPC campaign contains one or more goal actions that visitors should take after clicking an ad. Conversions are these acts, which might be transactional or non-transactional. Making a purchase is a conversion, but so is signing up for a newsletter or calling your home office.
Whatever conversions you set as your target conversions, you may track them using your preferred digital marketing platforms to assess how well your campaign is performing.
Affiliate promotion
Affiliate marketing is a digital marketing strategy that allows people to earn money by advertising the products and services of others. You might be the promoter or a business that works with the promoter, but the method remains the same.
It operates on a revenue-sharing model. If you are the affiliate, you will receive a commission if someone purchases the item that you have promoted. If you are the merchant, you pay the affiliate for each sale they assist you in making.
Some affiliate marketers prefer to review only one company’s items, perhaps on a blog or another third-party site. Others have many merchant links.
The first step, whether you wish to be an affiliate or locate one, is to connect with the other party. You can launch or join a single-retailer program, or you can use internet channels meant to connect affiliates with merchants.
There are numerous things you can do as a store to make your program appealing to potential promoters if you wish to deal directly with affiliates. You must equip those affiliates with the tools they require to succeed. This covers both incentives for excellent results and marketing tools and pre-made content.
Native marketing
Native advertising is a cloak for digital marketing. Its purpose is to blend in with the surrounding information, making it less noticeable than advertising.
Native advertising was developed in response to today’s customers’ skepticism towards advertisements. Knowing that the ad’s creator pays to have it run, many consumers will believe that the ad is biased and will ignore it.
A native ad avoids this bias by first providing information or amusement before moving on to anything commercial, thereby minimizing the “ad” component.
It is critical to accurately mark your native adverts. Use phrases such as “promoted” or “sponsored.” If those indicators are hidden, readers may spend a large amount of time engaging with the content before realizing it’s advertising.
When your customers know exactly what they’re getting, they’ll trust your content and your brand more. Native advertisements are intended to be less intrusive than standard ads, but they are not intended to be misleading.
Influencer promotion
Influencer marketing, like affiliate marketing, is based on collaborating with an influencer–a person with a significant following, such as a celebrity, industry expert, or content creator–in exchange for visibility. In many circumstances, these influencers will recommend your items or services to their social media following.
Influencer marketing is effective for both B2B and B2C organizations seeking to reach new audiences. However, because they are effectively representing your brand, it is critical to collaborate with trusted influencers. The improper influencer can erode consumer faith in your company.
Automation of marketing
Marketing automation is the use of software to fuel digital marketing initiatives, increasing advertising efficiency and relevance. As a consequence, you may concentrate on developing the plan for your digital marketing efforts rather than on laborious and time-consuming activities.
While marketing automation may appear to be a luxury item that your company can do without, it has the potential to greatly boost the connection between you and your audience.
Statistics show that:
- Personalization appeals to 90% of US consumers as “very” or “somewhat” appealing.
- 81% of consumers want brands they interact with to better understand them.
- Although 77% of businesses believe in the value of real-time customization, 60% struggle with it.
Marketing automation enables businesses to meet the growing demand for customization. It enables brands to:
- Collect and analyze consumer data
- Create marketing efforts with a specific audience in mind.
- Send and post-digital marketing messages to the appropriate audiences at the appropriate times.
Prospect engagement (or lack thereof) with a certain message is used by many marketing automation solutions to determine when and how to contact out next. With this level of real-time personalization, you can successfully design an individualized marketing approach for each customer without investing additional time.
Swapnil Kankute’s marketing automation solutions or its tool enable you to engage with your audience via behavior-based automation, transactional emails, date-based automation, and more.
Email Marketing
The idea behind email marketing is straightforward: you send a promotional message and hope that your prospect clicks on it. However, the execution is far more difficult. First and foremost, you must ensure that your emails are desired. This entails having an opt-in list that performs the following functions:
- Individualizes the material in the body as well as the subject line
- Indicates clearly what type of emails the subscriber will get.
- An email signature that includes a clear unsubscribe link
- combines transactional and promotional emails
You want your prospects to perceive your campaign as a valuable service, not just a marketing tool.
Email marketing is a tried-and-true approach in and of itself: It was voted the most effective lead generator by 89% of professionals polled.
It can be even better if you include other digital marketing tactics like marketing automation, which allows you to segment and schedule your emails to better meet the demands of your customers.
If you’re considering email marketing, here are a few pointers to help you create effective campaigns:
- Segment your audience in order to send relevant campaigns to the appropriate people.
- Check that emails look fine on mobile devices.
- Make a campaign timetable.
- Conduct A/B tests
Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing is a type of digital marketing approach that allows you to interact with your target audience via mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. This can be accomplished by SMS and MMS messages, social media notifications, mobile app alerts, and other means.
It is critical to ensure that all material is mobile-friendly. According to the Pew Research Centre, 85% of Americans own a smartphone, thus creating content for PC and mobile displays can help your marketing efforts go a long way.
The Advantages of Digital Marketing
Because it reaches such a large number of people, digital marketing has grown in popularity. However, it also provides a variety of other benefits that can help your marketing efforts. These are just a handful of the advantages of digital marketing.
A large geographic reach
When you submit an ad online, people can view it regardless of where they are (assuming you haven’t restricted your ad geographically). This makes it simple to expand your company’s market reach and engage with a bigger audience through various digital platforms.
Cost-effectiveness
Digital marketing not only reaches a larger audience than traditional marketing, but it also costs less. Newspaper ads, television commercials, and other traditional marketing alternatives often have substantial overhead expenditures. They also provide you less control over whether or not your target audiences see such communications at all.
With digital marketing, you may develop just one piece of content that will drive people to your site for as long as it is live. You may set up an email marketing campaign to send messages to certain consumer lists on a regular basis, and you can easily adjust the timetable or content if necessary.
When all is said and done, digital marketing provides significantly more flexibility and client interaction for your ad budget.
Results that can be measured
To determine whether your marketing plan is effective, you must first determine how many clients it attracts and how much revenue it finally generates. But how does one accomplish this with a non-digital marketing strategy?
The typical approach is to ask each consumer, “How did you find us?”
Unfortunately, this does not apply to all industries. Many businesses do not have one-on-one talks with their clients, and surveys do not always yield accurate answers.
Monitoring results in digital marketing is simple. Digital marketing software and platforms automatically track the number of intended conversions, whether they are email open rates, home page views, or direct transactions.
Personalization is now easier.
Digital marketing helps you to collect customer data in ways that traditional marketing cannot. Data collected digitally is far more exact and specific.
Assume you provide financial services and want to send out unique offers to internet visitors who have shown interest in your business. You know that targeting the offer to the person’s interests will yield better results, so you plan two campaigns. The first is for young families who have looked at your life insurance products, and the second is for millennial entrepreneurs who have thought about their retirement plans.
Without automatic tracking, how can you collect all of that data? How many phone records would you have to review? How many client profiles are there? And how do you know who read or did not read the booklet you distributed?
All of this information is currently available to you through digital marketing.
Increased customer contact
You can communicate with your customers in real time thanks to digital marketing. It also allows them to communicate with you.
Consider your social media approach. It’s fantastic when your target audience sees your most recent content, but it’s even better when they comment or share it. It means greater chatter about your product or service, as well as improved visibility with each new participant in the conversation.
Customers benefit from interaction as well. As people become active players in your brand’s story, their degree of engagement rises. That sense of ownership can foster strong brand loyalty.
Conversions that are simple and convenient
Customers can take action instantly after reading your ad or content using digital marketing. The most immediate return you can hope for with traditional marketing is a phone call shortly after someone watches your ad. But how often do people have time to contact a company while cleaning the dishes, driving down the road, or updating records at work?
With digital marketing, they can immediately move along the sales funnel by clicking a link or saving a blog post. They may not make a purchase right away, but they will keep in touch with you and provide you the opportunity to communicate with them further.
How to Develop a Digital Marketing Strategy
Getting started with digital marketing can be tough for many small businesses and new digital marketers. However, by following the steps below as a starting point, you may develop a successful digital marketing strategy to improve brand visibility, engagement, and sales.
Set SMART objectives.
Setting specified, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals (SMART) is essential for every marketing strategy. While you may have many objectives, try to focus on those that will move your plan forward rather than cause it to stagnate.
Determine your target audience.
It is best to establish your target demographic before beginning any marketing strategy. Your target audience is the group of people you want to reach out to based on shared characteristics such as age, gender, demographics, or purchasing behavior. Knowing your target demographic will help you decide which digital marketing platforms to employ and what content to include in your campaigns.
Make a budget.
A budget guarantees that you are spending your money wisely and effectively towards your goals, rather than splurging on digital marketing platforms that may or may not produce the required outcomes. Consider your SMART goals as well as the digital channel you intend to use when creating a budget.
Choose your digital marketing outlets carefully.
There are numerous digital marketing avenues available to you, ranging from content marketing to PPC ads and beyond. Which digital marketing platforms you utilize is frequently determined by your goals, target audience, and budget.
Improve your marketing efforts.
When the campaign is finished, make sure to analyze the data to see what worked well and where you can improve. As a result, you will be able to create even more effective commercials in the future. Using digital technologies and software, you can receive this data in an easy-to-read dashboard.
Growth is generated by digital marketing.
Digital marketing should be a key component of practically any company’s overall marketing plan. Never before has it been possible to maintain such regular contact with your customers, and nothing else can deliver the kind of personalization that digital data does. The more you embrace the possibilities of digital marketing, the more your company’s growth potential will be realized.
