We are living in a digital world, and all brands who wish to reach their audience need to have an online presence. And how to promote that digital presence to reach its full potential? This is where digital marketing comes in. In this article, we will talk about digital marketing, why it is important, and how to do it properly so that you can step ahead of your competitors.
Here’s all you need to know about digital marketing…
What is Digital Marketing?
It’s also called “online marketing” digital marketing is an umbrella term used for all kinds of marketing efforts on digital platforms. Ads you see on websites you visit, on your social media accounts, and in the “free” apps you are using are all examples of brands trying to reach their audiences via digital marketing campaigns. While “traditional marketing” includes mediums such as magazines, billboards, and direct mail, digital marketing occurs on electronic devices and online platforms.
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Types of Digital Marketing
There are a lot of ways of doing digital marketing- which gives a lot of flexibility to brands, while making it somewhat difficult to pinpoint the right strategy. Here are the most popular types of digital marketing that you should know:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization is basically optimizing a website to be more compatible with search engines’ standards -mainly Google’s- so it ranks higher on search results. SEO operations mainly include technical (code) modifications, content optimizations, and link building. SEO plays a central role -or so it should- in every brand’s digital marketing strategy, as it directly increases organic search traffic, which of course means more leads, more conversions, and a bigger audience.
This is an important topic. To get more information on search engine optimization, you can read our SEO article. article.
Content Marketing
Content marketing can be described as distributing helpful content to get leads and conversions. Content marketing can also be viewed as a part of SEO, as in order to rank higher in search results, websites need quality content. It is a great way of not just driving traffic, but also building a lasting relationship with your audience.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is any operation that aims to drive traffic and leads/conversions by communicating with people on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Social media marketing is a very effective way of getting attention for brands, as social networks have huge user bases, and they make it reaching the correct people as easy as possible, with precise targeting capabilities. It is a very cost-effective method of digital marketing, and plays a major role in building a faithful customer base.
To get more information on social media marketing, check out our social media marketing article.
Pay-per-click (PPC) Marketing
If you wish to get ahead of your competitors -there are a lot of them, no matter what business you are doing- sooner or later you are going to have to pay. And PPC is doing just that. It is basically buying visits for your website. You post an ad on an online platform, and you pay every time someone clicks on that ad and lands on your website. Popular types of PPCs are display ads, search ads, social media ads, Google shopping ads, etc. It gives fast results, and with good targeting it might get you a satisfying number of leads/conversions.
To learn more about this topic in detail, read our article on PPC advertising.
Email Marketing
As the name makes it quite clear, email marketing is any operation where you try to reach your audience using emails, to get leads and/or conversions. It is a very old -but still effective- digital marketing practice. Email marketing is also a cost-effective way of doing digital marketing, and it is relatively easier to do when compared to some of the more intricate methods on this list. It helps you build credibility and establish authority, and when done right, it might increase your website traffic and help you build stronger relationships with your audience.
Read our detailed article on email marketing to get more information on this subject.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is basically a performance-based advertising model in which one user promotes the other’s products and/or services on his/her website, and receives a certain commission for this. For example, if you are a Twitch streamer and if you have a sponsor that shows its ads during your stream, that’s affiliate marketing. Or if you are posting links of the products you are promoting from your social media account, again, that’s affiliate marketing. Influencers are great examples of this. Affiliate marketing can be highly effective if you can find the right content creators/platforms with the right audience.
Native Advertising
Native advertising is marketing without marketing. To make it more clear, it is advertising using the type of content that makes it less obvious that it is advertising. It is a content-led type of advertising, and is usually featured alongside non-paid content so it blends. Sponsored posts on viral sites can be good examples to this method.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is to use certain software with the aim of making different digital marketing campaigns more effective. With marketing automation tools, brands can atomize repetitive tasks such as posting on social media, sending marketing emails, etc. It helps to collect and analyze user data and to implement targeted marketing campaigns, and it also saves marketers a lot of time by automating tasks they would have otherwise done manually.
Benefits of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing has a lot of benefits to brands, both in terms of building reputation and getting conversions. Here are 5 main reasons for doing digital marketing:
Digital is where it’s at!
Let’s first address the most obvious one: we are -as we have said before- living in a digital world. People use online platforms for shopping, education, entertainment, and socializing- basically almost everything is done online now. This means -especially if your audience is on the younger side- you have to have an online presence that attracts your potential customers, and that is virtually impossible without at least some form of online marketing.
A cost-effective way of reaching your audience
Online marketing is not only cheaper than traditional advertising, but thinking about it, it reaches a much broader audience as well! With digital marketing, you can just create a viral post and get the attention of hundreds of thousands of people in a very, very short time, for free! Of course, this is an extreme example, but, the idea is, there are a lot of things you can do -posting on social media, sending promotional emails, creating content- to engage with people with very little investment, which means you don’t need big budgets to start to get in the game.
Easy to quantify & analyse the results
It is quite difficult to measure how many customers-to-be your traditional ad attracts, and how exactly they react to it. With online marketing, on the other hand, you can precisely track how your campaigns are performing, and how people are interacting with them, getting a lot of valuable information along the way.
Makes it easy to bond with customers
Especially if you have a good social media marketing strategy, online marketing is a great way of actually bonding with your customers, an important step in getting a loyal customer base. Because with online marketing, you are not only reaching them with your content, but you can interact with them: they will react to your posts, share them, and ask you questions with comments or tweets -which you should answer!- all of which is actually a very good -and mostly free!- chance to bond with them.
Easier to personalize
The more personalized your ad campaigns are, the more successful they will be. It is just what it is. Though it is not that easy with traditional advertising, with all the data and all the helpful tools you have in online marketing, you can easily personalize your ad campaigns to reach the correct people.
Digital Marketing Tips
There is no basic answer to this, as the answer depends on your goals, your audience, your platform of choice, your budget, etc. But, to make a general outline, here are the basic steps to most successful online marketing tips:
1- Define your goals
Clearly define what you want the most from a successful online marketing plan. Your goals will help you define your strategy.
2- Know your audience
Who are you targeting? The more you know about your potential customers, the easier it will be for you to create ad campaigns that will convert them.
3- Find some balance between paid & free approaches
It’s great to invest in PPCs if you have the budget, but if you are not taking care of your website with SEO, it is more or less meaningless. Remember that paid doesn’t mean more important, and try to find a balance between different strategies.
4- Do your keyword research
Keyword research will tell you all you need to know about your audience’s search habits. If you know what words they are using when searching for a product/service, it will make it easier for you to reach them.
Read more on keyword research.
5- Create quality content
There are a lot of ways of creating engaging content- you can write informative blog posts, shoot entertaining videos, post cool images, etc. The thing is to be able to create the type of content your audience will respond to, as it is the main thing that will attract their attention. (and keep them coming back.) If you have good enough content, sooner or later you will find the best way to market it, and reach your audience- and to be honest, people will find it themselves. But if your content is weak, no matter what your online marketing efforts are, it won’t convert.
6- Pay attention to reports
Reports tell you virtually all you need to know- all you need to know about your customers, all you need to know about the performance of your ads, all you need to know about your website; everything! Learn to read them well, as this will get you more experience, and of course help you create better performing campaigns in the future.
7- Always keep your website mobile-friendly
People are always busy with their mobile devices, which means they are most likely viewing your website on a smartphone. If your website is not mobile-optimized, no matter how good your content is, you will almost always fall behind your competitors.
8- Automate your tasks
If you can, buy some affordable tools and automate certain repetitive tasks- such as sending newsletters or posting on social media platforms. This will not only save you a lot of time, but help you be more organized in your operations.
9- Be active on social media
As we have said before, social media is where you will engage with your audience the most, so use it wisely. Just posting content will not be enough, so you should find fun ways of interacting with your audience, and responding to their reactions. This will help you grow a stronger bond with them.
Conclusion
As you can see, when it comes to digital marketing, you have almost unlimited options. The thing is, you have limited time, energy, and sources, so you have to plan your strategy wisely, and recognize the best platforms to reach your audience, and find the best ways of doing so. Even if you don’t get the results you desire right away, you will get a lot of experience along the way, and as you keep doing it, both what you have learned and the actual data you have gathered will serve you for better future campaigns. One thing’s for sure; in this day and age, if you want your brand to grow, you don’t have the luxury of overlooking the importance of online marketing.