In the past, companies had to use different marketing strategies such as direct mail, radio, newspapers, magazines, television, and more to access their desired audience.
As technology advances and people are spending more time on the web and on social media, businesses need to find ways to connect with their intended consumers through these digital outlets.
And this is how digital marketing came to life.
Some common digital marketing tactics include:
- Paid advertising
- Affiliate marketing
- Email marketing
- Content marketing and SEO
- Social media marketing
- And more
But what exactly is digital marketing?
Advertising that makes use of digital technology and the internet is known as digital marketing. These strategies are typically more economical and simpler to carry out, which makes them a preferred choice for marketers.
- Start By Doing Comprehensive Research
Prior to devising an online marketing plan, it is necessary to conduct a thorough market analysis.
Gaining knowledge regarding your target customer, rivals, and the standard of your sector are part of this. Understanding these factors will help you determine business goals.
Here’s what you should consider:
- Your audience: When it comes to your audience, you need to understand your customer profile, their spending power or buying patterns, and their behavior. This way, you can communicate with them effectively and create online marketing strategies that relate to them.
- Your competitors: By understanding who your potential online competitors are, you’ll be able to replicate their online marketing strategies and figure out ways to beat them at their own game. Additionally, a competitive analysis can help you gain valuable insights and determine what tactics will work for your brand.
- Market expectations: By analyzing competitors, you’ll also learn emerging trends and industry standards. You can combine this data with users’ demands to determine what you should be doing to attract more customers and get ahead of your competitors.
- Set SMART Goals
After you have identified your target market and competitors, you can create digital marketing objectives. These goals will direct your plan and aid you in tracking advancement.
Utilizing the SMART goals approach can help you set objectives or aims.
What exactly is the SMART approach?
SMART is an approach to goal setting which is designed to make objectives achievable.
Here’s how you can do this:
- Specific: A specific goal is clear and outlines what you want to achieve.
- Measurable: Your goal should be measurable – you can make goals measurable by relying on metrics. It’s important to measure goals since this can help you track progress.
- Achievable: Your goal needs to be achievable and realistic. To do this, you should outline how you’re going to achieve that goal. This includes listing down the tasks required and figuring out if you have the resources to achieve the objective.
- Realistic: Your goal needs to be attainable. As a result, you need to set a proper timeline and ensure that you’re capable of achieving it.
- Time-bound: Creating a timeline is a great way to ensure you work towards the goal. To do this, you should give your goal a specific time period. And once this period lapses, you’ll need to check if you’ve achieved your goal or not and decide if you should continue working towards it.
- An Engaging, Responsive Website
As the number of individuals engaging with businesses through their smartphones and tablets continues to increase, it is imperative to make sure that the same, responsive experience is offered to all users regardless of the device they are using. It should be just as simple for a user to interact with or finish a task on your website, content, and social media using their phones as it would be on their laptop. The wearable market is looking hopeful; it is predicted that the total amount of connected wearables across the world will rise to over 1.1 billion by the year 2022, which is something to take note of. Do not overlook anything related to mobile technology – we guarantee that you will feel remorseful if you do.
- Measured Search Campaigns
Is SEO dead? We were really cracking ourselves up with that joke! SEO remains an important factor for success, however, the number of requirements and Google’s continually improving algorithm have made it trickier to keep up with than it used to be. However, it is important to remember that search marketing does not solely focus on SEO, and the potency of pay-per-click campaigns should not be overlooked. The primary factor in achieving success with either PPC or SEO is monitoring and evaluating performance so that you can get the most out of your marketing investment.
- Email Marketing
Email marketing is surprisingly disregarded and not taken advantage of, even in today’s modern world. Reaching out to your intended audience by way of email is one of the strongest strategies to increase visits, participation, and conversion rates. You are neglecting a great chance and an important element of a victorious digital marketing plan if you have not used email marketing.
- Add Social to the Mix
In the last twelve months, we have discussed the critical importance of customer service to the foundation of a business or brand. In our view, social media provides an opportunity to astonish consumers with extraordinary customer service. Raising your presence in social settings can help make people more aware of your brand, and adds reliability and insight to your sector’s message. Although many companies found it challenging to see the use of social media, they are beginning to realize it is not just a passing trend.
- Join the Dots With Content Marketing
Oh, content marketing – a favorite among digital professionals for many years. As businesses invest more heavily in content, there is an increased urgency to devise, arrange, and supply marvelous, unicorn-like content that will captivate anyone who reads it. No, that is not true, particularly not the part about the unicorn. In all seriousness, content is gaining in significance to the point that you must be able to plan, cooperate, and systemize your content marketing plan so as to be successful.
- Paid Advertising
Paying for ad placement or cost-per-click (CPC) is a digital marketing approach that necessitates marketers to offer money to display their promotions on a platform such as Google.
It’s referred to as PPC because the advertiser must pay a charge to the platform or search engine when a person clicks on the ad.
PPC ads can be beneficial for organizations that desire to make a profit and gain success in a short amount of time since they can target a broad group of people in a timely manner.
- Measure, Tweak, and Improve
Everything in digital marketing boils down to value. Many organizations and businesses have limited funds but want significant outcomes. To achieve this goal, it is essential to always check, refine, and advance whatever is being done to make sure the most beneficial results are obtained.
How Digital Marketing Works
Promoting products and services and increasing a company’s market share are the main focuses of marketing. For success, it necessitates a blend of marketing competence, sales, and the capability to provide products to customers. Experts in the field of marketing, both those working in companies and those employed by marketing agencies, carry out these duties.
Companies typically concentrated on advertising via printed materials, television, and radio. Although these possibilities remain in existence, the advent of the internet caused a change in the way businesses connect with their clients. That’s where digital marketing came into play. This type of marketing entails taking advantage of websites, social media, search engines, and applications to create a connection between the corporation and its patrons that involves marketing plus input from customers.
Firms have had to adapt their marketing tactics as technology progresses and new trends emerge. In the early stages of digital marketing, email emerged as a widely-used promotional strategy. The attention changed to search engines like Netscape, which allowed companies to label and use keywords to get their names out there. Thanks to advancements like Facebook, businesses have the capacity to monitor data to meet the demands of customers.
Digital devices such as smartphones allow businesses to more easily promote themselves and their offerings to shoppers. Research indicates that individuals favor utilizing their phones to access the internet. It should not be unexpected that the majority of people make the decision to buy something (often using their mobile devices) before they actually commit to the purchase.
Sources and Receivers
Those who create ads are usually referred to as providers, while those who view the advertisements are the recipients. Often, information sources are aimed at very precise, clearly identified audiences, such as McDonald’s targeting shift workers and travelers.
The company took advantage of digital advertisements because they were aware that this population was a significant portion of their late-night trade. McDonald’s promoted the Restaurant Finder app to consumers by placing advertisements on ATMs, gas pumps, and websites that are commonly visited by their customers.
Types of Digital Marketing Channels
It has been mentioned previously that marketing used to be done through newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. These are channels that still exist today. Digital marketing has gone through changes, and this process is ongoing. Below are eight of the most widely used strategies that businesses can use to augment their marketing activities. Remember that certain firms could utilize multiple platforms for their operations.
Website Marketing
The main focus of all digital marketing initiatives is a website. This channel is immensely powerful by itself, but it is also essential for running numerous digital marketing strategies. A website should demonstrate a company’s brand, product, and service in a straightforward and recognizable way. It should be fast, mobile-friendly, and easy to use.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
PPC (Pay-per-click) marketing gives companies the opportunity to connect with Internet users on various digital platforms using paid advertisements. Marketers can create PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertisement campaigns on Google, Bing, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, or Facebook, targeting people who are searching for terms related to the products or services they offer.
These campaigns can group users together based on their demographic traits (like age or gender) or target their individual interests or where they are located. The two most widely used advertising systems are Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
Content Marketing
The objective of content marketing is to contact possible clients through the utilization of content. Generally, content is posted on a website and then spread through various channels such as social media, email marketing, search engine optimization, and even pay-per-click campaigns. Content marketing is done using blogs, ebooks, online classes, infographics, podcasts, and webinars.
Email Marketing
Utilizing email is still one of the most successful methods of digital advertising. Many people fail to differentiate between email marketing and unwanted spam emails, however they are two completely different things. This form of advertising enables companies to make contact with potential buyers and anyone intrigued in their labels.
Digital marketers commonly employ a variety of digital marketing techniques to add leads to their email lists. Subsequently, they use email marketing to construct customer acquisition pathways in order to convert those leads into customers.
Social Media Marketing
The main objective of a social media marketing strategy is to increase recognition of the brand and build confidence in it. As you progress further in social media advertising, you can take advantage of it to generate leads or even apply it as a direct marketing or sales path. Posting advertisements and tweeting ads are two ways of using social media for promotional purposes.
Affiliate Marketing
One of the earliest forms of marketing, affiliate marketing has been revitalized by the internet. Influencers use affiliate marketing to advertise other individuals’ items, earning a commission each time a sale is achieved or a lead is generated. A number of famous businesses, such as Amazon, offer affiliate programs that generate millions of dollars in profits each month for websites that promote and sell their products.
Video Marketing
YouTube is amongst the most widely used search engines globally. Many individuals are relying on YouTube before making a purchase, whether it is to acquire knowledge, view an assessment, or merely to take a break.
There are different video marketing outlets such as Facebook Videos, Instagram, and TikTok that can be utilized to launch a video marketing initiative. Businesses experience the highest levels of success when video is incorporated into their SEO, content marketing, and wider social media marketing strategies.
SMS Messaging
Firms and charitable organizations also use SMS or text messages to share details regarding their most recent offers or present chances to keen customers. Political hopefuls seeking office utilize SMS message initiatives to disseminate positive information concerning their own agendas. As technology has progressed, text-to-give campaigns now enable customers to easily pay or donate through a straightforward text message.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Digital Marketing
It is important to remember that digital marketers employ key performance indicators (KPIs) in the same manner as traditional marketers. Quantifiable metrics that permit corporations to appraise their long-term success by contrasting it to their opponents are referred to as KPIs. This encompasses corporate plans, financial objectives and successes, everyday operations, and even advertising efforts.
The following are some of the most common KPIs that marketers can use to help companies achieve their goals:
- Blog Articles: Marketers can use this KPI to figure out how many times a company publishes blog posts each month.
- Clickthrough Rates: Companies can use this KPI to figure out how many clicks take place for email distributions. This includes the number of people that open an email and click on a link to complete a sale.
- Conversion Rate: This measure focuses on call-to-action promotional programs. These programs ask consumers to follow through with certain actions, such as buying a product or service before the end of a promotional period. Companies can determine the conversion rate by dividing successful engagements by the total number of requests made.
- Traffic on Social Media: This tracks how many people interact with corporate social media profiles. This includes likes, follows, views, shares, and/or other measurable actions.
- Website Traffic: Marketers can use this metric to track how many people visit a company’s website. Corporate management can use this information to understand whether the site’s design and structure contribute to sales.
