Digital Marketing

WHAT IS DIGITAL MARKETING?

What is digital marketing all about?

By digital marketing term, it generally comes to mind of all social media, Google, or anything related online.

But, any marketing method that includes an electronic device is digital marketing.

Digital marketing is even billboards, television, or radio channels.

Digital marketing which involves only the internet is basically called online marketing.

These days the internet industry is huge and companies/brands use different digital channels like search engines, social media, emails, and other platforms to connect to their customers.

Why digital marketing is important and we have so many social media managers, SEO specialists. WHY? Cause it works.

Print ads, television, and various other traditional phone marketing methods still exist, but can you imagine how much will you be missing out if you are not using the potential of online marketing.

Recently we see so many sponsored posts on Facebook, videos, and YouTubers promoting brands- all part of digital marketing.

Wherever the crowd is, you need to market your product there, and that is how online marketing is becoming such a dominant marketing method.

And a billboard ad will cost you a 10x that to give a Facebook ad.

With online marketing, you can even check your analytics, campaign success, and rate of conversions. So it is easier for you to understand which method is converting for you as a blogger or a brand.

HOW DOES DIGITAL MARKETING WORK?

As mentioned earlier, digital marketing exists in phone, print ads, and physical marketing formats.

But here we are mostly discussing online marketing methods like social media, email marketing, PPC ads, video marketing, and other web-based marketing methods.

Digital marketing is clearly promoting your work online to prospective customers.

Who will read your blogs if you do not market them and how will your brand products reach its customers if you do not digitally promote them.

And that is why digital marketing is important for any kind of brand awareness.

These days every other company has a website and blog to market its services or have a social presence.

TYPES OF DIGITAL MARKETING

Types or categories of online marketing are:

1. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)

This is the most popular way of digital marketing and it also involves less or no cost at all.

SEO is optimizing websites in a way that reaches higher rankings in search engines.

When did you last go to page 2 of a Google Search?

I guess never.

So that is what happens when you lag rankings.

But there are only 10 positions on the 1st page of Google and there are millions and millions of websites.

So how do they rank?

Well, there are different factors such as keywords, On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, and backlinks for a starting.

On-Page SEO:

On-page SEO is basically the optimization that can be done to your post.

Like keywords, URL, title tag, search volumes of keywords, and the length of the post.

Do not get wrong here, the length of the posts does not determine rankings but the more lengthy your posts are, the more the chances to put your primary and secondary keywords.

Check out:

7 On-Page SEO factors which affect your post’s ranking.

Off-Page SEO:

Off-page SEO is the activity that actually matters for your page rankings.

Backlinks are one of the MOST important factors for your site rankings.

The other off-page SEO is social bookmarking, answering in forums, guest posting, and so on.

Read 10 Off-page SEO techniques for digital marketing.

Technical Seo:

Technical SEO typically means the backend of your website like crawl errors. website speed, CSS-JS file optimization.

making sure the website is mobile-friendly, as 80% of searches happen to be from mobile now.

2. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM)

SEO is a part of search engine marketing.

SEM basically means the search engine visibility results from both paid and non-paid options.

SEM includes paid advertising and buying traffic through paid search listings.

When you search for a particular term on Google, notice that the first 2-3 rankings are the ads for the desired URL.

Those are the paid searches.

SEM is a technique in which we use paid ads to get more traffic to our websites.

3. CONTENT MARKETING

Blogging is an example of content marketing.

Blog posts, infographics, and any other digital product which creates brand awareness and leads to lead generation is content marketing.

Blog posts attract search engine traffic through SEO and in turn, give an opportunity to the sales team to market their products.

Content marketing is a strategic digital marketing approach to creating relevant and valuable content and marketing them to the right audience for profits from more sales.

4. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

This is the most interesting part of digital marketing as we all use social media for personal use or way of relaxing.

Whether its

Facebook
Twitter
Snapchat
Youtube
Instagram
Pinterest

All the social media channels are a huge success.

What digital marketer does is promote their brands and relevant posts or videos using social media channels.

Why do you think an Instagrammer with 1M followers gets hefty amounts to promote brand products?

Cause they have followers and likely these followers like her work and a presumption that they will like those brand products too.

5. PPC ADS

The PPC model once again is a part of SEM where the advertiser pays whenever they get a click on their advertisements.

You can start with Google AdWords or google display network and choose between ad formats like text ads or video ads or mobile or image ads.

6. AFFILIATE MARKETING

Affiliate marketing mainly stands for bloggers, YouTubers, and other influencers who recommend other brand products and earns a commission on them.

Affiliate marketing earnings are pretty high if done right and if you have the right kind of followers.

So, as a brand or company, you can tie up with other bloggers or influencers who are relevant to your niche to showcase your products.

7. EMAIL MARKETING

When did you last subscribe to any blog or have downloaded any digital product for free where you had to submit your emails? Well, we pretty often download PDFs or avail discounts or coupons in exchange for email ids.

Once the email addresses are submitted, companies or blogs use them for promoting their content, sometimes to give more discounts to some events or to simply drive traffic to their businesses.

A typical email marketing would look like this:

Welcoming customers.
Follow-up emails.
Promotional codes of some services or products.
Email to have a healthy relationship with customers or subscribers.

8. SPONSORED POSTS

By the name only it is understandable that as a brand you are paying some other brand or entity to promote your service or product.

Sponsored content is a huge part of video marketing. You can find video makers mentioning that “this content is sponsored by…”

Sponsored content is also blog posts and articles written about your brand.

Sponsored content should be done only in places where it is a natural fit and does not look like a big advertisement.

Types of Offline Digital Marketing

The age-old television ads are strong marketing media.

Television marketing is likely never going to fade.

Whether you are watching a KFC ad or a health drink. Television ads are pretty successful in presenting them to all ages.

Radio marketing is still a thing. People do come up with ads after every playlist.

Billboards can be seen everywhere. The live digital billboard ads that brighten up the streets are an attractive thing and it is here to stay for some more time.

When you go to any digital store you can see people going through the digital products demo.

Whether it’s a Kindle or a laptop, there are several digital products for buyers to be tested.

And how can we forget phone marketing?

The cold calls which come out of nowhere or after-sales service describing and promoting more new products from the company.

WHAT DOES A DIGITAL MARKETER DO?

A digital marketer sums up all the above points like email campaigns, videos, social media posting, and other digital marketing tools for brand promotion.

In the present era, online marketing is important for brand awareness.

The social media sponsored ads, and the sponsored posts, all seem pretty much important as a part of marketing strategies.

A digital marketer focuses on the key performance of each channel.

An SEO manager will clearly focus on the organic traffic and the keywords it is ranking for.

The timing they are receiving the most traffic for and do some more keyword research and will focus on its keyword performance.

Whereas social media managers will always focus on the number of shares, impressions, or likes the post is getting. Engagement is pretty important for a social media manager.

The post-scheduling and posting strategy.

These digital marketing operations may be carried out by a single marketing campaign or it could be broken down into individual campaigns.

However, a digital marketer’s work is to ensure the return of time management and track each campaign’s performance.

Even if you running a blog, these activities have to be done by the blog owner themselves.

A blogger gets actively involved in digital marketing activities like SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, affiliate marketing, and sponsored posts.

The idea is the same for any company or blog- brand awareness and getting eyeballs on your products.

HOW TO DO DIGITAL MARKETING AUTOMATION

While tapping into all the types of digital marketing, it may get difficult to manage everything and there is where the digital tool makes it easy.

You can have your email campaign with Mailchimp or ConvertKit.

The best part of Mailchimp is 12000 free emails every month to your 2000 subscribers.

So if you are having a very small business you can always start with the Mailchimp free plan.

There are social media post schedulers such as Hootsuite, Tailwind for Pinterest and Instagram, Buffer, and many more.

All come with a price after the free trials.

BENEFITS OF DIGITAL MARKETING

It is easier to create brand awareness.
Easier to be in touch both before and after sales with customers.
You can get viral with the right kind of social sharing.
With digital marketing, it is very easy to measure ROI.

From day 1 you can see the rate of opening your emails, website traffic, or lead generation.

You can maintain the buyer’s buying consistency by providing the right offer at the right time.

Digital marketing matter NOW as Facebook and Google generate more revenue than traditional marketing ways as it controls more eyeballs.

BRANDING

The next big thing is branding.

Branding is not a logo and a visiting card.

It has got a lot more than you can visibly see.

Branding is all about FEEL.

How do you feel when you land on a particular website? Or any stores?

Branding is what makes you decide whether it resonates with you or not.

There are so many brands selling the same thing. Why do you prefer one over the other?

Maybe it is their customer service, delivery time, or easy returns.

Millions of digital blogs sell so many ebooks, digital products, or PDFs mostly around similar kinda products.

Why do you feel to buy it from someone and ignore the other? Cause maybe she made it easier to understand or maybe he broke down things well or aversed to a beginner.

Branding is even about the VISION and MISSION of the company.

If you feel a brand is not feeling similar to the way you want things, you probably won’t go for it.

So, branding is all about resonance, relatively the feel, and not only about the logo.

BRANDING AND DIGITAL MARKETING

So, before we start with our digital marketing you should be aware of the feelings you are imparting to your visitors.

Have you checked any home decor sites for example?

The products they sell will tell you about their target customers.

It is nothing written on paper, it is just a feeling you will get.

This is why you should be clear about your target visitors or customers and then build a brand surrounding it.

By brand, I meant the feel.

Then you can start with digital marketing to showcase your RIGHT products to the RIGHT customers.

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