Are you looking for a change in your job profile? Or do you want to be a successful influencer or marketer? Well, whatever it is that you want from the two knowing what is digital marketing and understanding the nitty witty of this field can help you.
Digital marketing is one of the most lucrative profiles you can have in these digital times. This is because the number of people going online is increasing many folds with every passing minute. It is also one of the most profitable and easy to master profiles if you are enthusiastic.
All you need to do is learn some basics and develop your skills. What’s even great is that once you master the field, there is an endless scope in the field of digital marketing.
To help you with understanding digital marketing, we have prepared an explanatory guide for you in the article. We will explain various aspects of the digital market, starting from what is digital marketing.
What Is Digital Marketing?
The first thing which you need to learn when learning about the new thing or field is to know what it is.
The digital marketing field encompasses all the methods for marketing that use the internet or electronic devices in any way.
In digital marketing, businesses leverage the various digital channels like social media, search engines, emails, and various other websites. They use these methods to connect with prospective and current customers.
In digital marketing, there are also a number of aspects involved like content marketing, native advertising, and more.
Why Is The Digital Marketing Vital?
Now when we know the answer to the question of what is digital marketing, let’s move on to the next aspect of the field – why is digital marketing vital to businesses?
The digital marketing in the modern times of the digitalized world helps the business to connect with a larger audience. It helps in increasing the reach in comparison to the traditional marketing methods.
The good thing about digital marketing is that it specifically targets the prospective audience who are most likely to buy the services or products you are offering.
What is even great about digital marketing is that it is more cost-effective in comparison to traditional methods. It also enables you to measure the success of your marketing on a daily basis through methods like website traffic monitoring.
What Role Does Digital Marketing Play In A Business?
For understanding what is digital marketing, it is essential to understand what role does digital marketing play in an organization.
The traditional marketing involves the marketing methods like print ads, physical marketing, or phone communication.
However, the problem with these methods is that there is no method to measure their success. This creates a problem as the marketer doesn’t know where they need to improve their marketing strategy.
On the other hand, digital marketing occurs through online and electronic methods. This allows the marketer to reach their prospective customers more easily. It also helps in better understanding the customer and thus, in turn, helps in formulating the marketing strategy accordingly.
Digital marketing also provides various other possibilities for the brands to reach the customers. Some of the common methods which digital marketing provides include emails, social media channels like social media influencers, video marketing, and search engine advertising.
Types Of Digital Marketing
For understanding what is digital marketing in the best way possible, we also need to understand its various types. A better understanding of the types and digital marketing services will also help you in selecting your field of specialization.
Below is a quick sketch of some common tactics and types of digital marketing:
Search Engine Optimization(SEO)
The SEO process involves optimizing a website so that it could rank higher on the result page of a search engine. This helps in increasing the organic traffic amount that a website receives. Some of the main channels that benefit through SEO include websites, infographics, and blogs.
The thing about SEO is that you can approach it through a number of ways that can help in qualified website traffic. These ways include:
On-Page SEO
The on-page SEO focuses on the content which exists on the page online when a user looks at the website. To do this, you need to research the keywords and their search volumes, along with their meanings or intent. This helps answer the questions that the readers ask and, in turn, helps in high ranking on the search engine pages, which are the result of those questions.
Off-Page SEO
This is a type of SEO that includes the page activities which you undertake for the optimization of a website. Some of the activities which impact the off-page optimization include inbound links, which are known as backlinks. In addition to this, the number of other publishers which link to your website and the authority score of the linking publishers. These are two things that impact how your keywords are going to rank on the search engine.
For a better score, you can go for methods like:
- Collaborating with other publishers.
- Write guest posts on the websites of other publishers, which you can use to interlink with your website.
- Generation of external attention towards your website.
- You can also earn the needed backlinks by using the right SERPs.
Technical SEO
The technical SEO focuses on the backend of the website and how the pages of your website are coded.
Some parts of the technical SEO are:
- Image compression.
- CSS optimization of file.
- Structure data.
These three are the major parts of technical SEO, which helps in increasing the loading speed of a website. This is one of the important factors which helps in increasing the ranking of the website in the eyes of search engines like google.
These are three parts of the SEO that helps in improving and maintaining the ranking of the website in search engines.
Content Marketing
The term content marketing denotes the promotion and creation of customer-oriented content. This type of digital marketing content is created for creating awareness for the band, lead generation, and increasing traffic.
There are various channels that can play a part in content marketing. These are:
Blog Post
The writing and then publishing of articles on the blog of a company. These types of blog posts help in demonstrating the expertise in the industry by the company. It also helps in generating organic traffic for the company. This increase, in turn, helps in the creation of new potential customers and thus increases sales.
Whitepapers And Ebooks
These are a type of long content which helps in further educating the customers who visit the website. It allows exchanging various content for the contact information of the reader, generation of the leads to the company, and more. This type of content marketing also allows for moving the people throughout their journey of being potential buyers.
Infographics
Sometimes the customers don’t want you to show what you do instead of telling. This is where the infographics type of content marketing comes into play. Infographics are a type of visual content that helps the visitors of a website to conceptualize the services.
These are three types of content marketing that are a part of digital marketing services.
Social Media Marketing
The social media marketing involves the promotion of the business through the various social media platform. This helps in increasing the awareness towards the brand along with traffic. It also helps in the generation of the lead towards the business you are promoting. There are various channels that you can use for social media marketing.
Some prominent social media marketing platforms include:
- Facebook.
- Snapchat
The good thing about social media marketing is that there are various tools that you can use for it. These tools allow for things like post scheduling, monitoring, and channel integration.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
The pay per click is one of the popular types of digital marketing. In it, you pay a publisher every time a site visitor clicks on the ad. One of the popular types of PPC is the Google Ads that allow the person to pay for the highest slots over the result pages of the search engine.
Other channels which you can choose for the PPC include:
- Paid Advertisement on the Facebook.
- Ad campaigns on Twitter.
- Sponsored messaging on LinkedIn.
These are some of the most popular pay-per-click channels which you can use. The good thing about these channels is that they allow you to go for the product-specific audience.
Affiliate Marketing
The affiliate marketing is a performance-based type of advertising. In it, you promote the services and products of others on your platform or website. There are various channels in affiliate marketing. These are:
- Hosting of the video ads by using the Youtube Partner Program.
- Posting of the affiliates links using your social media accounts and various online platforms.
The affiliate marketing what most social media celebrities undertake through their social media and other channels.
Native Advertising
The native advertising means advertising which is basically content-led and features on the platforms along with various other non-paid contents.
Marketing Automation
The term marketing automation refers to the tools and software that serve to automate your basic operations of marketing. A number of departments can automate the actions that are repetitive in nature and otherwise needed to be done manually. Some of the automation services include:
Email Newsletters
The email newsletters are one of the prime examples of marketing automation. In it, you can create a list of your subscribers and automatically send them newsletters relating to your products and services. This list of subscribers can be expanded and shrank according to the wish of the marketer. Thus it helps in avoiding the work of manually forwarding the mails.
Post Scheduling On Social Media
For the growth of an organization on social media, it is essential to post on a frequent basis. This is something that is an essential thing but posting manually can be an unruly process. This is where the post scheduling tools can hello in pushing the content on channels giving you time to focus on other things.
Lead Nurturing Workflows
The process of lead generation and then converting those leads into customers can be an exhausting and long process. This is where the lead nurturing workflows help you as they allow you to automate the process of sending emails that are lead-specific. This can be done once the customers fit certain predicted criteria like downloading an ebook and opening it.
Campaign Reporting and Tracking
The marketing campaign may include a lot of people, content, emails, phone calls, web pages, and more. In such situations, the automation of marketing can help in sorting everything on which you work but the serving campaigns. It also helps in tracking the performance of that particular campaign according to the progress of all things and components made over time.
These are some of the things which you can do with the help of marketing automation. Basically, automation helps in making the process of marketing a lot more easy and effective.
Email Marketing
There are a number of companies that use email marketing for communicating with audiences. The emails are generally for promoting the contents, offering discounts, and informing about events. All these things, in turn, help in diverting the audience to the business website of the company. There are various types of emails that a marketer can send.
Email marketing can include the following things:
- Subscription of blog newsletters.
- Follow up through emails to the business website visitors who download or purchased something from the website.
- Welcome emails for the customers.
- Promotions like holiday offer for specific audiences like loyalty program members.
- Similar series or the tips for the nurturing of customers.
These are some parts of email marketing that a marketer can use in digital marketing for the growth of a company.
Online PR
The online PR refers to securing online coverage using digital methods like blogs, publications, and other types of websites. This is much similar to the traditional PR campaigns but on online platforms.
The channels which you can use for maximization of the PR efforts are:
- Reporter outreach by the use of social media.
- Engaging and positive reviews of the company on online platforms.
- Positive comments on the personal blogs and websites.
Online PR is one of the main things understanding which is a major part of what is digital marketing.
Inbound Marketing
The inbound marketing is a type of methodology used in marketing. In it, the marketer attracts the customers and then engages and delights them on every stage of their buying journey. For inbound marketing, a marketer can use all the types of digital marketing tools and tactics which we have listed above.
Some of the examples of inbound marketing are:
- Pop-up Advertisement in the blogs.
- Commercial Advertisement vs. video marketing.
- Email spam vs. contact list of email.
Sponsored Content
In this type of digital marketing, a brand pays another entity or company to endorse or create content for endorsing the brand. One popular type of the sponsored marketing is influencer marketing. In this type of digital marketing, a brand hires a social media influencer to post content or videos which are related to the brand or company.
These are some types of digital marketing that you need to understand to answer the question of what is digital marketing.
How To Do Digital Marketing?
Follow these steps for doing digital marketing effectively:
- Define your goals.
- Establish a budget for all the particular marketing channels.
- Creation of engaging content.
- Conducting Keyword Research.
- Identifying the Targeted Audience.
- Strike balance between the free and paid digital strategies.
- Optimize the digital assets for the mobiles.
- Follow the digital marketing trends for better outreach.
These are some of the factors for doing digital marketing successfully and effectively.
Final Words
If you want to increase your customer outreach and grow your business, then digital marketing can be a platform for you. But knowing what is digital marketing before it is essential.
Digital marketing is one of the most effective methods which a business can use for promoting and increasing the customer base. It involves various factors and marketing strategies for it.