With every other person having access to mobile phones and social media, the buzzword digital marketing is no longer an unknown term for the audience. Digital marketing is a process where the products/services are digitally marketed to reach viewers, make them aware, convert them, and finally retain them. In layman's terms, digital marketing includes marketing campaigns that will reach the target audience through digital mediums like computers, phones, laptops, tabs, etc.
Why choose Digital Marketing?
If you're someone who is wondering why you chose this field as a career or are interested in knowing all the elements of digital marketing, let's start by seeing a positive take on this domain.
Nowadays, where everything is getting done on the internet, from shopping to entertainment, don't you think the sales number of a company will drastically improve or decrease based on digital marketing of the products? Due to this reason, organizations are and will be in constant search for skilled digital marketers who'll help the brand market their products and services.
One of the many reasons to select digital marketing as your career is high demand and good pay range. Apart from this, digital marketing is divided into multiple elements, and you can select one channel from these and build your career around it. Let's see the different channels of digital marketing.
Digital Marketing Channels
As mentioned earlier, there are multiple different digital marketing channels; let's see a few of them.
- SEO: Here, the role of a professional is to optimize the website and make it rank higher on SERP.
- Email marketing: As suggested by the name, a professional is required to create and manage the email funnel for increased awareness and conversions.
- Social media marketing: The work here involves promoting the products and services on social media apps like Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Influencer marketing: Find and collaborate with influencers and creators for the promotion of your brands and services.
- Video marketing: This channel involves creating and uploading video content to educate the target audience.
- Content marketing: Creating different types of content, like blogs, graphical, etc., to upload on different digital mediums.
These are only some of the digital marketing channels; there are multiple other channels like affiliate marketing, PPC, mobile marketing, etc. Now, it's time to see some of these channels in detail.
Digital Marketing Tutorial: Content Marketing
The meaning of content marketing is very simple: it's the process of creating and publishing written and visual forms of content to educate the target audience and make them convert. Now, according to the survey, more than 70% of organization opts for content marketing as one of their core digital marketing channels. The reason is pretty straightforward, which is the audience is obsessed with consuming online content/information in their daily lives.
There are various types of content like social media, blogs, videos, emails, podcasts, ebooks, etc. Professionals working in this field must know about these content forms and TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU terms. If you're someone who is creative and loves working on format, this field can be the right choice for you.
Digital Marketing Tutorial: Social Media Marketing
The term social media is no longer an unknown word for the audience. Individuals like you and me use multiple social media apps hundreds of times a day. So, SMM is using these social media apps for marketing the product/service or a brand.
These apps help the brand to increase awareness and generate interest in the audience's minds. If you love spending time on these apps, why not learn the skill and make it your profession? With the right skills and practice, you can easily climb the ladder and become a social media marketing manager.
Digital Marketing Tutorial: Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a digital marketing channel where the brand pays compensation to individuals for promoting their products and services. These individuals are termed as affiliater. Let's understand this with an example. Suppose Amazon partnered with bloggers and vloggers to use and promote multiple items from Amazon with links. Now, every time the audience purchases through the link, the blogger/vlogger will get a pre-decided commission on the product.
If you're interested in trying out new things and recommending the same to the general public, why not consider entering this field?
Digital Marketing Tutorial: Video Marketing
When given an option, I bet you and I will select to watch a video on a topic rather than read about it, right? The reason is very simple videos are fun and engaging to watch. This tactic is now included in digital marketing.
Brands are reaching consumers via video in the form of ads that you can see while browsing the internet. These video ads are engaging and are capable of capturing the audience's attention.
Digital Marketing Tutorial: Email Marketing
You might wonder how emails are still relevant in the year 2023 when social media apps have taken all the attention. Well, let us tell you, it's not true. Email marketing is still a relevant source of digital marketing and is showing results when done with the right strategy.
Email marketing is conveying and sending the right messages to the audience to get them interested and later convert them into hot leads. However, email marketing does wonders for existing consumers.
Well, these are some of the digital marketing channels that we saw in the guide. Now, it's time to look into the details of a digital marketing campaign.
What is a Digital Marketing campaign?
A digital marketing campaign is a well-planned series of content and online efforts all framed to achieve one single goal. The whole process of a digital marketing campaign involves promoting the goal on various digital channels.
There's a whole planning and process involved in a successful digital marketing campaign. The process starts with setting up an objective, identifying a goal, marking the target audience, developing the right strategy, and finally using channels like SMM, SEO, emails, etc. to promote the same.
The important element of these digital marketing campaigns is KPI, that short for key performance indicators. These KPIs are measured from time to time to make timely changes whenever required.
Steps to Build a Digital Marketing Strategy
We talked about how building a digital marketing strategy is essential for a successful digital marketing campaign. Now, it's time to see step by step guide on building this strategy.
Step 1: The first step of the whole process is to set clear objectives and identify the right target audience. Set SMART goals and create a proper buyer persona to help create the perfect campaign.
Step 2: The next step is to perform deep competitor research and analysis and finalize the digital marketing channels you'll be leveraging.
Step 3: The third step begins with developing the whole plan on a content basis, along with finalizing the approximate or maximum budget of the strategy.
Step 4: Here comes the stage where planning is completed and implementation kicks in. Execution of strategy starts along with content creation, uploading, and publishing.
Step 5: The next step is all about evaluation and making the necessary changes. Here, testing and optimizing take place to make sure that the plan created is on track.
A well-planned yet flexible strategy with room for change is necessary to achieve the desired results. In all this process, digital marketer plays an important role in the organization. So, let's see what the roles and responsibilities of digital marketers are in general.
Digital Marketer: Roles and Responsibilities
Since the field of digital marketing is very wide, the roles and responsibilities widely differ from organization to organization. But, let's see general and common responsibilities.
- The basic responsibility of a digital marketer is to understand the organization's vast goal. Along with that, get a clear understanding of short-term goals and frame the strategies that align with these companies' goals.
- Frame and manage campaigns across different channels through emails, social media, search engines, etc.
- Conduct research and analysis of the market at regular intervals to stay updated with the ongoing trends.
- Timely measure the performance of all the digital marketing channels of the organization.
- Lastly, make sure to collaborate with different teams of the organization, like developers, content and creative departments, and designers, to get the desired output.
After becoming aware of the roles and responsibilities of a digital marketing manager, let's compare digital marketing and traditional marketing.
Why is Digital Marketing better than traditional marketing?
The key reason behind the success of any marketing campaign is the wise choice and balance between traditional and digital marketing. Let's see how digital marketing can give better results in certain situations when compared to traditional marketing.
- One core advantage of digital marketing is that it allows you to select the precise target audience for your business. Even when you're running ads on Google or any of the social media platform, you can select the ideal audience, which is comparatively not easily possible in traditional marketing.
- When it comes to cost, digital marketing is highly cost-effective. Advertising on TV or banners is highly pricey in nature, whereas budgets on digital ads can be easily selected.
- The marketing efforts done on digital mediums aren't affected by geographical boundaries. Any business, especially the e-commerce sector, can easily promote their products beyond the boundary line.
- One essential feature or benefit of digital marketing is that it provides real-time insights into the ad that is running for the brand. This information helps in making data-driven decisions whenever required to get maximum ROI on the marketing budget. With this, let's see which businesses can leverage digital marketing easily.
Which businesses can leverage Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is a very versatile concept, and it can be used by every brand from every sector. Let's see some of the businesses that are already leveraging the benefits of digital marketing.
- E-commerce sectors are gaining new consumers every passing minute by using digital media to get their target audience aware of their products.
- Small businesses that at the moment can't afford the high cost of traditional marketing are using digital marketing to increase their online visibility.
- Multiple service providers like doctors, lawyers, and freelancers use social media platforms to convert new clients for their business.
- Education institutes use digital marketing to make the target audience aware of their services and courses.
In this way, the list of these brands or sectors can go on and on. At the moment, if any brand is considering going digital, we would recommend not to think twice and just go all in.
How does Digital Marketing benefit a company?
In today's digital environment, digital marketing offers many advantages to businesses.
First off, it offers an economical way to contact a carefully focused audience. Companies may make sure their marketing initiatives are focused on those most likely to convert into consumers by using tools like social media advertising and search engine optimization (SEO), which will maximize their return on investment.
Digital marketing encourages customer connection and interaction. Companies can develop and foster relationships with their audience through social media, email marketing, and other channels, which will enhance brand loyalty and customer retention.
Digital marketing also enables businesses to have a global presence. It eliminates geographical limitations, allowing companies to access global markets even on a tight budget.
Finally, it is adaptable and scalable, making it appropriate for companies of all sizes. Digital marketing may be customized to meet your needs and objectives, whether you run a tiny local business or a large global enterprise.
Types of Digital Marketing Content
As mentioned earlier, there are numerous different variations of content in the world of digital marketing. Digital marketing is an evolving field, and there always will be multiple digital marketing trends coming and going, and depending on this, different forms of content will be beneficial for your business. Let's see some of them:
- Blogs: These are forms of written content that generally involve solutions to a generic problem or the latest industry insights.
- Social media content: As depicted by the name, this is the form of content that goes on various social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Videos: Based on storytelling format, this is a comparatively visually appealing format for conveying the information.
- Podcasts: This is audio content that provides insights on essential topics.
Apart from these, other important forms of content are webinars, infographics, Ebooks, and many more.
Digital Marketing Budget
In today's cutthroat marketplace, an effective digital marketing budget is crucial for obtaining results. Based on company objectives, industry standards, and the resources at hand. A digital marketing budget typically includes costs for a variety of channels, including content creation, email marketing, pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, and social media advertising. It's critical to strategically allocate expenditures, concentrating on the channels that produce the highest ROI.
Budgeting should also take into account ongoing evaluation, analytical tools, and campaign optimization modifications. To ensure long-term marketing success, it's critical to be adaptable and adjust the budget as necessary in response to market developments and changing consumer behavior.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Conversion rate is the percentage of the audience that visits your website and takes decreased action on the same. Now, CRO conversion rate optimization is the process of improving the conversion rate of the website.
The formula for calculating the conversion rate is:
Number of conversions/number of website visitors *100
Calculating the conversion rate is important to get adequate insights and optimize this rate in the long term.
How to get started with Digital Marketing?
Now that you know so much about digital marketing, it's time to answer the most important question: how to enter this field. Let's see how we can make this easier for you.
Establish your digital marketing goals first. Clear objectives will direct your plan, whether your goal is to improve website traffic, generate more leads, increase sales, or increase brand awareness. Recognize the characteristics, interests, and online habits of your target market. To effectively adapt your content and marketing, create buyer personas.
Your online shopfront is a user-friendly, mobile-responsive website. Make sure it is search engine optimized (SEO) to increase visibility. Create informative and timely information. Your audience's requirements and interests should be reflected in your blog articles, videos, infographics, and other content.
Based on your objectives and the tastes of your audience, intelligently distribute your budget among several channels. Assess and modify your spending regularly. The concept of digital marketing is changing quickly. To adapt and remain competitive, keep up with market trends, algorithm updates, and emerging technologies. To improve your campaigns, continuously test various techniques, creatives, and strategies. The process of optimization is ongoing.
Now, if you're an aspirant in this field and are interested in knowing how to become a digital marketer, let us assure you that this is a growing field, and you'll be able to build a rewarding career by entering this industry.
