What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies. Digital marketing is all about promoting business using digital channels like the Internet, website, blogs, social media platforms, video marketing, mobile marketing, email marketing, and the list is huge.
Digital marketing is not new. It’s been around since the Internet started. Now digital marketing is becoming popular due to an increase in internet users, mobile phone users and digital content consumption.
Digital marketing has become one of the most commonly used phrases these days. Although it’s easily used in a sentence, quite often it is not defined accurately. For some, it’s a synonym for “Internet Marketing” while others describe it as marketing using electronic devices.
Advantage of Digital Marketing?
It is no surprise that more and more people are devoting their time online to transact or research. According to a report by Forbes, about 82% of consumers research online. Marketers today are applying digital marketing tactics to reach to the consumers & here’s why you should use digital marketing for your business too:
1.Cost-Effective: Digital marketing is an economical and most effective way to promote your business as compared to traditional marketing. With a limited budget, you can create content & start your campaign. It is you who decides the budget which can even start from something as low as Rs.50/- depending on your business.
2. Real-time results — The moment your ad is live, you can view the performance. Additionally, edits can be done in real-time. This way you can understand the situation and take necessary action
3. PPC– PPC stands for Pay Per Click. It is a model where the advertiser pays the publisher each time their ad is clicked. Google Ads is the best and easiest platform for PPC.
4. Targeting — In the case of traditional marketing, there is no way to determine the number and the type of people who saw your billboard. With digital marketing, it is not easy to target audience based on their interest, location, behavior. You can create an audience based on your business model and push your ad to the right consumers.
5. Measurable results — Be rest assured about the analytics and reports through digital marketing. You will get the most accurate & realistic data that will help you in reaching your goals as well forecast your future sales
6.Conversion rates: It’s much simpler to get conversion online as the customer views the ad & takes action.
7.Easy Interface: Setting up ad accounts, building a website, managing social media have become straightforward and clear-cut with the easy user interface.
The disadvantage of Digital Marketing:
1. Privacy/security — Privacy is one of the biggest concern when it comes to digital channels. When you click on a product on an e-commerce website, you see the same product following you in most of the website/social media channels (remarketing/retargeting) This is done through cookies. As an Internet user, being aware of how this is targeted will help a user.
2. Ad blockers — Ad blocking or ad filtering is a type of software that can remove or alter advertising content from a webpage, website, or a mobile app.
How does Digital marketing help to grow business?
Digital has become a part of our existence. From shopping apparel to groceries, furniture & getting laundry delivered everything is online. With this new shift, marketers did not waste anytime and quickly adapted to use social media & other digital tools to push & pull the consumer which gave birth to Digital marketing.
But how to achieve your business or individual objectives using Digital/Internet channels?
No matter the size of your business, digital marketing is the most effective way to grow and achieve your goals which could vary from any of the following:
- Increase revenue
- Build brand awareness
- Market your product or service
- Decrease cost
- Improve efficiency
- Increase productivity
- High return on investment
- Identify loyal customers
Apart from these business objectives, digital channels can be used effectively for:
- Educating & engaging with potential users
- Increase website traffic
- Providing valuable information
- Building trust
- Customer reviews
- Grow online community
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| Business growth Laval |
Website
It is imperative in the digital age to own a website. If you are a business owner and don’t have a website you lose on the market opportunity. The information on a website helps in communicating with the customer about the product & overall business credibility. Think about it, any customer will do basic research before making a purchase, hence having a user-friendly and informative site is the first step in showcasing your authenticity.
Through digital marketing, you can learn how to design a cost-effective website, generate traffic, list your website on directories and search engines.
The basic rule is to design a website that is user-friendly, mobile-friendly and loads quickly. Here’s a link where you can check if your website is mobile-friendly: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
Apart from mobile-friendly or responsive design websites, AMP is becoming more important. Now you can build a website by just using AMP powered by Google just like building a WordPress site.
Search:
A user uses the internet to look for various types of queries. The search result may vary as per the keywords used by the searcher. Search engines like Google have various ways and formats of showcasing results. As business owners, it is our responsibility to utilize the tools provided by search engines and present content to get the best possible outcome.
But how do these results appear? What happens at the back end? To understand this, we need to understand SEO — Search Engine Optimization.
What are the fundamentals/parts of Digital Marketing?
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
SEO is a way of generating traffic to your website through organic search. It is the result which appears when a website is optimized at the back end using the right keywords. This helps search engine to showcase the best possible result to a user.
The most important factor to remember about SEO is that it is “organic” or “free”. When a user goes to Google, types in a search, the results Google brings up on the page are a mix of the website, blog, video, image, news depending to the keyword used.
- On-Page SEO: On the page, as the name suggests, is done for your own website pages. When you are creating a website, the data and technical aspects are completely in your control. For e.g: Blogs, personal website pages are optimized by following the right guidelines creating a user-friendly website, rich content with relevant keywords. All this will help in ranking your website on top search results.
- Off-Page SEO: Off-page or Off-site SEO is done through an external link. This basically implies, your website will rank better on the search page if the traffic is generated through other sources that your website. For example — Social media links, features/mentions/links from a higher traffic website. For example — If the Times of India gives a link to your website.
2. Social Media Marketing (SMM):
The term 'Digital Marketing' has several marketing facets as it supports different channels used in and among these, comes the Social Media. When we use social media channels, for example, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+ to market a product or service, the strategy is called Social Media Marketing.
It is a procedure wherein strategies are made and executed to draw in traffic for a website or to gain the attention of buyers over the web using different social media platforms.
Social Media:
Social media is the biggest aspect of Digital Marketing. Most of us have some footprint on social media platforms. It allows us to connect with like-minded individuals/groups, share ideas and build a professional network.
On a business level websites like Facebook & Instagram help to engage with the real-time customer, provide valuable information and reach out to a huge audience at minimal costs.
Advantage of Social Media Marketing.
1. Free Business page/channel — Creating a business page on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter is not only easy but it’s absolutely “FREE”!
2. Paid Ads — To reach out to target audience all social media channels requires paid ads.
3. Social Media Advertisement — SEA is a straightforward and effortless way to target a wide audience, increase profitability & reach business goals.
4. Influencers Endorsement — Influencer marketing has gained a huge momentum due to digital channels. It has become a career path for many through endorsements and reviews.
5.Email — Email marketing plays a key role too. It’s a way to stay connected & updated about the latest buzz in the market, your favorite brands, closing transaction deals.
6. Content Marketing: Unique content is what works on social media. If you want to stand out and make an impression in the digital realm, then your content has to be top-notch and versatile. Provide valuable information and educate the consumer through videos, images, text, audio, e-books, slide share.
Useful/Valuable information in various formats Video, Audio, Image, PDF’s, ebooks, PPT’s, Reports, Research downloads.Action — Do it now:
- Create visual content using https://www.canva.com
- Create an easy video using free Quik app.
8. Dynamic:- Digital Marketing is dynamic and on-going. It keeps evolving day after day and as users & marketers, we need to keep adapting to changes. Every day there is a new app that’s launched or new update by Google to its existing feature. Keep this in mind we must understand that digital marketing is not the only practice. So while you might be an expert in using Instagram, you also need to know about Twitter or Snapchat and make use of it to grow your business. Do not restrict your business with just one platform.
9. Brand Building — It is a known fact that brand building or brand reputation is a long-term process. While digital marketing gives you a push to create brand awareness, you must acknowledge that brand building with yield results with effort and continuation. So you might go viral in a day but how you sustain & use technology in the right way is the game-changer for success.
3. Email Marketing:
Email marketing in comparison to other forms of digital marketing is considered cheap; it is also a way to rapidly communicate a message such as their value proposition to existing or potential customers.
Yet this channel of communication may be perceived by recipients to be bothersome and irritating especially to new or potential customers, therefore the success of email marketing is reliant on the language and visual appeal applied.
In terms of visual appeal, some indications using graphics/visuals that are relevant to the message which is attempting to be sent, yet less visual graphics to be applied with initial emails are more effective in-turn creating a relatively personal feel to the email.
In terms of language, the style is the main factor in determining how captivating the email is. Using casual tone invokes a warmer and gentle and inviting feel to the email in comparison to a formal style. For combinations; it's suggested that to maximize effectiveness; using no graphics/visual alongside casual language. In contrast, using no visual appeal and a formal language style is seen as the least effective method.
