Understanding Digital Marketing

Digital marketing has raised market strategy to a whole new level. Effective digital marketing helps businesses in building brand awareness, boost lead generation and increase their revenue. Because of this, it’s no surprise that it has been adopted by all industries because of the measurable results it has been producing for them. As digital marketing becomes more mainstream today, business owners are expected to know a thing or two about it.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing, also referred to as online marketing, is the practice of utilizing different digital channels to advertise brands, products or services to potential customers. Through internet and electronic devices, some of the digital channels that businesses can use are social media, search engines, display advertisements and video marketing. This gives them the shot to easily reach a large market regardless of time and location.

Top Five Benefits of Digital Marketing

There are different types of digital marketing, but marketing specialists agree that its benefits all boils down to the following:

Increases Brand Awareness

Being on different digital media can grow your business, increase brand visibility and gain potential customers. Online marketing makes it easier for businesses to be seen by the public through any forms of digital advertising. Having a strong brand identity grabs the attention of consumers and allows you to stand out from a large pool of competitors on the internet. Thorough marketing planning may involve creating a signature aesthetic and a great logo design. However, it is best to prioritize analyzing the interests and demographic of your market to know when and how to reach them and effectively increase brand awareness in general.

Targeted Audience

Every marketing expert will say that digital marketing offers the best ways to connect with a targeted audience. It has something to do with the marketing tools available today that allows you to specify marketing campaigns and online advertisements according to the gender, location, age group and interests of the audience. To kick off, a digital marketing expert usually creates a buyer persona that helps in understanding the needs and wants of the ideal customers. This can be an ideal basis for marketing campaigns so that the objectives and the goals are all still met without straying off the trend.

Measuring Success in Real-Time

Measuring success of campaigns are made possible by various web analytics tools at hand. It is more convenient to collect and analyze information on websites traffic, number of visitors and reach. Since data, such as key performance indicators, is available real-time, marketing teams can make necessary changes and improve the campaigns without any difficulty. For instance, social networking and other ad platforms such as Facebook advertising and Google ads provide these trackable metrics.

Low-Cost Marketing Effort

Traditional marketers can attest that digital marketing is cost-effective. Digital marketing allows businesses to start for free, unlike traditional marketing where large upfront payments are sometimes needed. Social media is one example. Anyone can set up an account and start promoting their brand and products with no cost. Display advertisements on the other hand, requires a charge, but it can easily be adjusted according to the marketing budget. 

Boost Conversion Rate

An increase in conversion rate simply indicates higher revenues. With digital marketing, internet users can purchase a product easily with just a few clicks. Contrary to traditional marketing, user experience is a seamless process. A strong marketing communication and effective digital marketing campaign are crucial to achieving this. Focusing on conversion rate optimization can further boost the exchange ratio. Conversion Rate Optimization involves various marketing tools that aim to generate leads and sales. By enhancing your website design, landing pages, and digital content, you will be able to focus on growing your conversion rate.

Additionally, marketing automation is also one of the advantages of digital marketing. It allows a digital marketing expert to identify its potential customers and automate certain activities. Aside from these, digital marketing conclusively has a lot of other benefits. Businesses can attest to the effectiveness of this marketing strategy.

Four Main Digital Channels You Need to Use

To have a successful market strategy, it is important to choose the right digital marketing channel that will work best for your business. The appropriate channel will help in achieving your marketing objectives while generating sales. Aside from this, it allows you to develop customer relationships and be hands on with the buyer journey. 

Some of the top digital channels you can use for your business include:

Search Engines

Search engines are the go-to channel of everyone who immediately needs information about anything, like a particular blog post, definition of a certain word, brands, products or even services. In fact, 93% of online activities start with search engines. Despite that, in order to be noticed, you need to be on the first page of the search engine results page (SERP). Being on the top page helps in driving traffic to your website, increase brand awareness and generate leads. Search engine optimization and search engine marketing can help with this.

Search engine optimization, abbreviated as SEO, is a search marketing plan that employs organic techniques in boosting the rankings of websites in search engine results pages. SEO is an organic search. It focuses on improving three components; the on-page, off-page and technical seo. When dealing with on-page SEO, working with a content marketer and having a solid content marketing strategy with a dash of seo tactic is the best way to go. Search engines crawl in every page to ensure the relevance, up-to-date and quality of the digital content. Meanwhile, off-page and technical seo involves activities that are beyond content such as website speed, broken links or leveraging social media.

On another note, search engine marketing or SEM style=”font-weight: 400;”>, is a paid search marketing strategy that involves setting up paid ads to gain visibility in search engine results pages. Essentially, the business in this case bids on keywords that are relevant for it and that the user might type in a search query. These paid ads are also referred to as payperclick or ppc advertising.

In a nutshell, depending on your digital marketing strategy, search engine optimization and search engine marketing can work independently or simultaneously. In both cases, the goal is to boost a company’s visibility in search engines.

Social Media

Leveraging social media gives you the opportunity to grow your business. According to a study, 86% of people use social media at least once a day, and many of these internet users can actually be your potential customers. Clearly, establishing your online presence through social media enables you to easily reach your target audience regardless of time and location. Additionally, with strong marketing communication, deeper customer relationships can be built. Social media marketers are the experts in this marketing channel. They know the right marketing tactic and everything there is about social media, such as optimizing your digital profiles,  social networking and display advertisements. Investing in a good social media strategy will be more efficient and cost-effective in the long run.

Online Advertisements

Similar to traditional marketing where ads are seen on paper, billboards and  broadcast on TV, online advertisements are available in any electronic devices that are connected to the internet. Online advertisements can be categorized as paid search and paid social.

Paid search, also known as ppc campaigns, is a paid ad that displays on the search engine results page based on terms entered by internet users. Search marketers must ensure that the keywords and search campaigns are relevant to the business in order to be shown to the right people. Paid social on the other hand, is a digital ad created and published on social media such as Facebook advertising. Nowadays, since everyone does social networking, this type of display ad is a popular choice for social marketers. 

Online advertisements can come in a variety of formats such as an effective website design where landing pages are optimized by featuring products or having a sponsored content (also called native advertising) as an element in marketing campaigns. An advantage of online advertising is that metrics are readily available. The key performance indicators allow marketers to make necessary changes on their ads based on consumers behavior. It helps improve the reach and engagements of their campaigns.

Video Marketing

Online video is on the rise. In fact, 86% of businesses today use video as a marketing tool and 93% of marketers say that it is essential in their marketing strategy. Video marketing is the use of videos to promote a brand, product or service. It aims to raise customer participation, brand awareness and sales. Businesses can utilize informative yet entertaining videos to engage with its target audiences, just as they do with a content marketing strategy. In order to know which kind of videos you should put out there, it is important to analyze your market. That’s why just like other digital channels, creating a buyer persona can help the marketing team refine the target group and understand the audience.

Depending on your digital strategies and marketing efforts, deciding what digital channel to utilize is an experiment. Although it can be a trial and error process, good digital marketing planning enables you to find out which strategies are best suited to your company and which do not.

Digital Marketing and Inbound Marketing in Brief

Some people use digital marketing and inbound marketing interchangeably, which can be confusing. As mentioned above, digital marketing refers to the promotion of brands, products, and services online through marketing tactics implemented in different digital media. A digital marketing expert creates effective plans and digital strategies that increases brand awareness, customer engagement while keeping up with digital marketing trends. On the other hand, inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on attracting customers by providing valuable content and quality experience. An inbound marketer focuses on building customer relationships and empowering them with tactics that eventually lead to sales. Inbound marketing strategy can also be used in different forms of marketing.

In short, digital marketing and inbound marketing describe two distinct marketing approaches aiming to reach out to customers and boost sales. In any business, these two also go hand in hand to achieve objectives and goals.