“Digital marketing is an umbrella term for all of your company’s online marketing efforts.” – HubSpot
You have big dreams as an entrepreneur. You want to acquire loyal customers, develop a committed team, and establish yourself as a market leader.
With this easy guide, you’ll learn what exactly is digital marketing, what types of digital marketing techniques are commonly used, the effect that digital marketing can have on your business’s growth and how to get started with your own marketing strategy step-by-step, with this beginner’s guide.
Digital Marketing (Part 1) : What & Why
- What is digital marketing?
- Why digital marketing is important for businesses?
- Different types of digital marketing
- How to do digital marketing?
1. What is Digital Marketing?
Definition of Digital marketing: design marketing (also known as online marketing, internet marketing, or web marketing) is any type of marketing or advertisement delivered through traditional and new digital channels such as websites, social media, mobile apps, email, or search engines.
Digital marketing is usually done online and offline and it includes different types of paid and non-paid digital marketing strategies such as:
- Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Email marketing
- Content marketing
- Mobile marketing
- Social media marketing
- Forum marketing
- Affiliate marketing
- Marketing automation
- Influencer marketing
- Referral marketing
2. Why Digital Marketing is Important for Businesses?
Digital marketing is ideally placed to help you achieve your business goals because it is so flexible, trackable, and scalable. Let’s look at some of the most important ways that digital marketing can help your company:
- Lesser Costs. Traditional marketing is much more expensive than digital marketing. When you concentrate on digital marketing, you will cut costs while still achieving excellent results.
- Promotes purchases. These strategies are naturally oriented toward driving online sales and conversions because digital marketing takes place online. Digital marketing is necessary if you want to sell goods online.
- Boosts sales. To generate sales, digital marketing campaigns can employ both paid and organic strategies. Digital marketing offers you the ability to increase your company’s bottom line regardless of your budget.
- Precise Targeting. You can target users based on demographics, preferences, and even devices using digital marketing platforms. As a result, you’ll be able to communicate with the right person at the right time, maximising your marketing efforts.
- Expands Reach. You must constantly broaden your customer base, regardless of the size of your business. Digital marketing allows you to attract consumers all over the country and even the world, allowing you to grow into new markets and even sell internationally.
- Enhances Brand’s Reputation. Increasing brand recognition is critical for any company, whether it is new or established. Digital marketing will help you promote your brand to new customers and build a positive image with existing ones.
3. Different Types of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing encompasses more than a dozen inbound channels, each with its own set of tactics and tools to help you achieve your business objectives. Here’s an explanation of some of the most common—and most effective—types of digital marketing strategies to help you understand these marketing channels and how they can support your company.
a. Content Marketing
The development and promotion of all forms of material, whether written, audio, or visual, is referred to as content marketing. Blog posts, case studies, videos, podcasts, and other content marketing assets are examples. Customers are attracted to and guided through the sales funnel by a strong content marketing campaign.
What are the advantages of content marketing for your company?
- You can earn people’s confidence. You gain trust when you produce helpful content that solves customers’ problems. Build confidence over time and it can lead to sales.
- It is possible to raise brand awareness. The more high-quality content you produce, the more opportunities you’ll have to introduce your brand and improve your search engine ranking.
“85% of marketers say improving content quality has made their marketing strategy more successful.” – Content Marketing Institute
b. Email Marketing
Customers are contacted directly in their inboxes via this channel. Anything from sale notices to remarketing notifications may be used in an email marketing plan. Small companies can use email service providers (ESPs) like MailChimp to help them implement these campaigns more effectively, but email marketing experts can also use other tools to create a profitable strategy.
The key to email marketing success writing inspiring headlines and high-converting copy that motivates people to take the next step. The more applicable your emails are to what potential customers want, the better they will work to strengthen your relationship with them, ensuring that they remember you when they are ready to buy.
What are the advantages of email marketing for your company?
- You should expect a significant return on your investment. The total return on investment for email marketing is 3800%. For every ₹100 spent on advertising, email will produce ₹3800 in revenue.
- You will keep your expenses minimal. You don’t have to pay for an ad every time you want to communicate with consumers because email marketing allows you to get straight into their inboxes.
c. Social Media Marketing
Globally, almost 4.20 billion people use social media, equivalent to more than 53% of the world’s total population. The number of social media users around the world grew by 490 million in the past 12 months.. That means you can’t afford to neglect social media when it comes to marketing your business. Social networking is an excellent tool for establishing a personal bond with consumers.
You can communicate with consumers on their favourite channels using social media marketing. To build a loyal audience and sell goods, you can use YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, and other social media sites.
What are the advantages of social media marketing for your company?
- You have the ability to form bonds. Making connections and growing a community is easy with social media. Social networking will help you increase consumer loyalty over time.
- You have the ability to provide customer support. You can rely on social media for easy, cost-effective customer support because it allows for public commenting and private messaging.
d. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO refers to techniques and tactics that improve the website’s visibility in Google search results, with the aim of ranking in the top 10 results for key search queries.
Improvements and optimisations to the site’s data; the layout of the site, including navigation, links to and from site pages, and even some backend code; and links from external websites to your own because of the quality of your content are all examples of this.
What are the advantages of SEO for your company?
- You have the potential to gain new customers. Customers are more likely to locate your website as they look for terms relevant to your business thanks to SEO. Having customers to your website, whether they’re just doing research or ready to buy, is the first step in winning their company.
- You have the ability to create authority. Your company will become an authority on key topics if you rank high for common search queries. You can build your reputation over time and generate even more sales.
e. Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
PPC advertisement is primarily used to aid in the achievement of marketing objectives such as brand recognition, content downloads, newsletter sign-ups, website traffic, leads, and, of course, conversions.
You’ve already noticed that when you Google a search word, a few ads appear at the top of the page. AdWords serves these advertisements, and your PPC plan should ensure that your ad appears at the right time to reach the people you want to reach. These advertisements can also be seen on mobile devices. These ads receive a lot of clicks as a result of their placement, which means more traffic, sales, and leads for your business.
What are the advantages of PPC for your company?
- Generate leads and sell products. PPC advertisements are perfect for driving sales and gathering contact information from warm leads because they can reach consumers at any point of the sales funnel.
- Remarketed to existing customers. Established customers or warm leads who haven’t purchased yet can be targeted with PPC advertisements.
f. Affiliate Marketing
You authorise others to expand your audience, scale traffic, and drive revenue for your company with affiliate marketing. Then, for each sale you make, you pay a fee to your affiliate. You can either join one of the big, well-established affiliate networks, such as Amazon Associates. Start your own group of affiliates but you will need to find a way to track the success of your affiliates.
What are the advantages of affiliate marketing for your company?
- Boost sales and traffic without putting in extra effort. You will get more sales with limited extra work because you depend on affiliates to market your products and bring more prospects to your website.
- Get valuable endorsements. To drive sales, affiliates often write in-depth reviews or write endorsements. Affiliate marketing can provide enormous value because nearly 90% of customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
g. Referral Marketing
Customers that arrived at your site through a connection from another website are known as referral traffic. Blog posts with links to your company or listings in online directories are a popular source of referral traffic.
What are the advantages of referral marketing for your company?
- Receive warm leads. Customers who visited your website have shown an interest in what you have to say. They’re easier to turn as warm leads than cold leads.
- Enhance your SEO (search engine optimisation). Search engines trust your website more as you create more referral ties. You will refine your SEO over time, which will improve your search engine rankings.
