In today’s day & age, we all have heard of Digital Marketing, Even if you never needed to know more about it. We all know there is a field called Digital Marketing. But What is Digital Marketing? And Why You Should Care!
Digital Marketing- The use of digital channels to market products and services to reach consumers.
By – Investopedia
Digital Marketing in simple words is online marketing.
Digital Marketing is the marketing of products and services using digital technologies, mostly on the internet through the devices like Mobile devices, websites, social media, search engines, and other similar channels.
Digital Marketing is a broad field, it attracts customers through
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- Mobile Marketing
- Pay-Per-Click Marketing
- Marketing Automation
Digital Marketing: Why it’s Important
At this age, if you want to launch a new successful business. Digital marketing is the most important tool to make that possible.
It’s not like a business cannot be successful without Digital Marketing. It can definitely be successful, But the difference will be like apples and oranges.
If you establish a brand through traditional means and it takes you around a year. With Digital Marketing, you can make it possible in nearly half of that time or even a quarter.
By using Digital Marketing you can collect valuable target audience behavior and all kinds of data.
Using their data you can implement new campaigns to better target your audience and obtain better results.
There are more than 5 billion internet users globally alone in 2022.
From social media to youtube and websites, there are many ways to use digital marketing strategies to better communicate with your audience.
And digital marketing is often more cost-effective compared to traditional marketing and helps us in measuring success on a daily basis.
Digital Marketing VS Traditional Marketing
While in Digital Marketing you use digital channels such as social media and electronic devices like mobile phones and tablets.
Traditional Marketing on the other hand involves traditional billboards, flyers, televisions, and broadcasts.
Traditional marketing is the established go-to marketing channel for everyone a few years back.
But with the increase of the Internet and its consumption, Digital Marketing has proved to be a viable option compared to Traditional.
If we go by number, More than 50% of marketers have already reduced their budget to provide more funds for their Digital Marketing.
And the share of Digital marketing will keep on increasing in the future.
Digital Marketing: Its Different Types
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the process of optimizing the content of your website to make it rank higher in the search engine.
A major objective of SEO is to increase your website’s visibility for as many users as possible and to increase organic traffic to it.
By using popular keywords and phrases, you can increase your content visibility and make it rank higher, and make a long-lasting relationship with your audience.
There are 3 types of SEO.
- On-page SEO-
On-page SEO refers to the optimization you do on your content.
By using popular keywords and phrases, you make your content more relevant to the audience.
You can also answer the most commonly asked question on the internet and bring a lot of traffic to your website.
- Off-page SEO-
Off-page SEO refers to the optimization you do on your website.
Like increasing the backlinks to your website, which helps in ranking the website higher in the search engine.
- Technical SEO
Technical SEO refers to the optimization at the backend of your website.
The compression of the images to better suit the internet makes them smaller to load faster.
Increasing the website loading speed and optimizing your website for crawling and indexing phases.
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing is the process of promoting your brand and your content on social media channels to increase brand awareness, get more traffic to your website or get more leads for your business.
Ads on social media, images, videos, or tweets are all ways to make successful social media campaigns. And your audience will be more likely to interact with you if you do so.
Many Digital Marketers help brands collaborate/partner with Influencers and popular content creators to make content or take part in trends.
The company creates posts where that resonate with its audience and increase the trust level between them. And brand awareness and drive more traffic.
Some popular social media channels are-
- Youtube
Email Marketing
Email Marketing is a quick way and direct way to reach your audience with any information you want.
Email is used to promote content, discounts, and events, Also to drive your audience directly to your website.
Email marketing is a proven marketing technique, around 89% of surveyed professionals name it as the most effective lead generator.
Many Digital Marketers use other marketing channels to add leads to their emails list, And through the email, they create customer acquisition funnels to turn them into paying customers.
Content Marketing
Content Marketing refers to the content used to reach the potential customers/audience.
Content Marketing is not outwardly promotional, but it is also used to educate and inspire customers. To inform the audience who are looking for that information.
When you offer the relevant content that the customer is searching for, It increases the trustworthiness between the two parties.
Content is usually published on the website and then promoted through different social media, email marketing, SEO, or SMM.
Some of the different Content channels are-
- Blog Post
- Ebooks
- Infographics
- Audio or Visual Content
- Online Courses
- Podcasts
Affiliate Marketing
An affiliate marketing program is a form of performance-driven advertising where you will receive a commission if you promote others’ products or services over your channel.
It works like a revenue-sharing model. If you’re an affiliate, you will get a commission for every purchase that was made through your link.
And if you’re the business owner who is running the affiliate program, then you will pay the affiliate for every purchase they help you make.
It is one of the oldest marketing that has grown with the rise of internet usage.
Many big companies like Amazon, Flipkart, and many others have affiliate programs where they sell millions to their affiliate channel partners to sell their products or to bring customers to their websites.
Pay-Per-Click Marketing
PPC is a form of Digital Marketing where you pay every time someone clicks on your ads.
Instead of paying a bulk fee to run targeted ads on a channel. When a customer clicks on your ads, you will be charged for each individual click.
One of the common types of PPC Marketing is Google Ads, which allows you to slot your ads on google search engine results pages at a per-click price.
Some of the PPC Marketing
- Google Ads
- Facebook Ads
- Twitter Ads
- Sponsored messages on Linkedin
Mobile Marketing
Mobile Marketing is simply engaging with your targeted audience on their mobile phones or tablets.
This can be done via SMS, MMS messages, social media apps, mobile app alerts and etc.
In today’s age, nearly everybody has a smartphone. Because of this mobile marketing is very viable.
On almost every website traffic is more than 50 percent through mobile phones.
Marketing Automation
Automation Marketing refers to software that automates marketing processes.
Automation marketing allows marketers to collect and analyze consumer information.
It can help design marketing campaigns for their targeted audience.
Marketing departments can automate repetitive tasks they would otherwise perform manually, some examples are-
- Email newsletters
- Social media posting
- Lead nurturing
B2B VS B2C Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing strategies work for both B2B (Business to business) and B2C (Business to consumer) companies.
But the strategies vary themself for each sector.
B2B
In the B2B sector, The clients have a longer decision-making process, as such the strategies centered around online lead generation.
Through your website and supporting channels, marketing strategies attract and convert high-quality leads for your salesperson.
B2B transactions are more logical and evidence-based
B2C
In the B2C Sector, The customer tends to respond better to short-term offers and messages.
In B2C the goal of the company is to attract an audience to your website and have them become customers without a need to speak to a salesperson.
B2C transactions are focusing on making customers feel good about a purchase.
Digital Marketer: What do you do?
A digital Marketer is a person responsible for using a variety of digital channels to generate leads and build brand awareness either through free or paid channels.
Depending on the company, industry, and role. A day in the life of a Digital Marketer would often include managing social media marketing campaigns, search engine optimization of the website, creating content for the company and overseeing other running campaigns, and doing performance checks.
Some examples of Digital Channels and the main focus
- SEO
In SEO, the marketer has to get the business to rank higher on google. Through the use of different search engine optimization approaches.
Primary focus- Organic traffic
- Automation Marketing
In Automation, the marketer has to manage the software that allows them to help them in customer understanding.
And also implement the strategies so that automation can help ease the workload and track each campaign’s performance and activities.
Primary Focus- campaign click-through rate, Email campaign click-through rate
- Social Media Manager
The Social Media Manager manager the social media accounts of the said business.
It can be different types of accounts depending on the company.
The Social Media Manager establishes a posting schedule for the company content.
Primary Focus- Posting, shares, following, and Impression
How to Become a Digital Marketer
There is no specific background required to become a Digital Marketer.
Only Digital Skills are required in this field.
Many people enter the digital marketing world through a range of different roles like- Content Writer, Copy Writer, SEO Specialist, Social Media Manager, and many more.
There is no need for a Marketing Degree to start learning about digital marketing.
These are a few steps that you can follow to start your future in Digital Marketing.
- Start learning about Digital Marketing fundamentals.
The first thing you need is to acquire knowledge about core fundamentals in Digital Marketing like SEO, SEM, Social Media Marketing, Advertising, and Emai Marketing.
There are many online courses available to acquire these skills both free and paid. Or you can just watch the videos on Youtube.
All the data and knowledge are available online for you to start your carrier in Digital Marketing.
- Learn how to use Digital Marketing Tools
A Digital Marketer’s best friend is its Tools.
You should start learning and start getting experience in using these tools. They make your life a lot simple and easy.
Tools help in measuring and tracking the performance of the running campaigns.
Some of the tools like are Google Analytics, Ahrefs, Moz or SEMrush, Mailchimp, Canva or Hubspot, and many more.
- Start building your Digital Portfolio
In Digital Marketing to start getting high-paying jobs and good clients, you will need to showcase your results.
At the start you will not have any work experience, show instead show them the projects you have done during your course.
Includes your works for example social media posts, blog posts, marketing articles, show the ads you have run, show them your website,
Show as much data as you can.
Publish a blog dedicated to your passion.
Create an Instagram or Youtube account to show your projects.
Conclusion
Digital marketing is all about marketing on the internet and other electronic devices.
Digital Marketing is now just as big, if not bigger than traditional marketing. And it will continue to grow with the evolution of technologies.
So If you are interested in Digital Marketing, this is a great time to get started.
There are many fields within Digital Marketing, so you can choose your field and become a digital marketing specialist for a prosperous career.
What is Digital Marketing? And Why You Should Care!
Basic Digital Marketing Courses to get started.
Free Digital Marketing Course
1. Fundamentals of Digital Marketing – By Google
2. Free Digital Marketing Courses and Tutorials – By Udemy
3. Become a Digital Marketing Specialist – By Linkedin
