Definition of Digital Marketing

In simple terms, digital marketing is a simple way to promote any service or product online via the internet. We can use social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, twitter etc. for online promotions.

For example, we can put our product on Instagram or Facebook etc. for online promotion. Besides this, we can advertise our product through another medium like websites, mobile phones, TVs, emails etc.

            Marketing experts approach digital marketing to the customers to understand how client behave as compared to traditional marketing.

Digital marketing can be performed in two ways: Online Marketing and Offline Marketing.

Online Marketing

As the name suggests, it will include online promotions of a product or service. Online marketing can be categorized in different ways:

• Search Engine Optimization(SEO)
• Search Engine Marketing(SEM)
• Content Marketing
• Social Media Marketing(SMM)
• Pay-per-click advertising(PPC)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Email Marketing

# Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Companies use SEO to get higher rank for their websites, that is why we use search engine optimization technique.

In SEO technique, we use some keywords so that the user can get a quick result if he/she finds something on the internet.

SEO helps to optimize online content. For example, you have an article named ‘Digital World’ and you want your article at the top while searching on the internet.

If a user searches your article by typing digital world then it should be on the top of the list if it is efficiently optimized.

SEO is the way to get higher priority or rank on the internet. Your website or article or anything can be top of the list if it is effectively optimized.

If you want your website or article or anything on first in search engine result then you should know how search works.

How SEO Works

To know about the website, first search engine crawl or scan the website. This method will make it easy to search for anything with particular keywords to show relevant results.

The search engine will scan the whole website to check whether that website is easy to navigate and read, rewarding user-friendly websites which have higher ranking on the search page result.

Nowadays, every organization use SEO technique to make their website with a higher rank in search engines with some keywords or phrases.

To get the first rank of your service it is necessary to optimize your website or any service.

# Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM is used to gain traffic and visibility from search engines via paid and unpaid searches. Search marketing includes:

• SEO: Earn traffic via unpaid searches
• SEM: Buy traffic using paid searches

SEM act as an umbrella term over SEO and SEM. “Search engine marketing ” basically used to describe paid activities. Some terms are written below which refer SEM:

– Paid search ads
– Paid search advertising
– Pay-per-click(PPC)
– CPC(cost-per-click)
– CPM(cost-per-thousand impressions)

# Content Marketing

As the name suggests, content marketing means giving content to a customer which should be relevant to them and content should be of high quality.

Content marketing is used as storytelling. Here we are giving an example of content marketing, see the below image:

Above image describes the content marketing method. As you can see content in the given image. It is another way to promote your product or service.

# Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social media marketing is the process of engaging the customer with the help of content you have tailored to the context of each social media platform.

If you want that your content gets spread all over then your content should be engaging or interesting that can engage people. If your content is engaging then people will share with their friends without any force.

This strategy is definitely going to increase the number of customers. If your content is not justified to its customers then your strategy will not work.

Some terms are associated with social media marketing:

– Content: Content can be anything you post like WhatsApp status, Instagram or Facebook post, any tweet etc.

– Context: Context is more important than content. ‘If the content is king, then context is GOD.’ said Gary Vaynerchuk.

For example, suppose you have something to post if you post content inside multiple blog post, maybe it will not get a higher response. If you post the same thing on twitter may get a higher response.

– Hashtags: The main purpose of using a hashtag is to give importance to something or highlight the current trends. It is used to describe the topic using a hashtag. It helps people to find your content easily.

– Shares: It acts as a currency for the social media world. BuzzSumo is used to measure shares and overall impact. If your content is sharing by people that means people love your content.

– Engagement:  If people interact with your content that means people are engaging. Engagement of people can be done via comment, share or recommend.

# Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Whenever an advertiser’s ad is clicked by a user then advertiser has to pay a fee each time, this is called pay-per-click. Most popular PPC form is search engine advertising. 

For example, if we bid on a keyword or phrase like ”digital marketing”, then our ad will be shown on the Google result page. Whenever a user clicked on this ad, we have to pay to a search engine.

# Affiliate Marketing

We can earn money by promoting other company’s product, this is called affiliate marketing.

In other words, affiliate marketing is a technique through which we can earn money or can get commission by promoting someone’s product or service.

Now we will discuss the 4 parties that are involved in the affiliate marketing:

1. The Merchant 

The merchant is also known as the seller, creator, the retailer or the vendor. A product is created by this party. This party can be any big company.

 

2. The Affiliate

This party is also known as a publisher. Affiliates can be a single or entire company. A few hundred dollars in a month or tens of millions of dollars can be produced by an affiliate marketing business as a commission.

An affiliate can promote more than one affiliate product and he will try to attract consumer towards the merchant’s product.

 

3. The Consumer

The consumer will buy a product. The consumer doesn’t need to pay a higher cost to the affiliate marketer because affiliate network cost already added to the retail price.

 

4. The Network

The network act as an intermediate between the affiliate and the merchant. The affiliate network plays a vital role and serves as a database that includes different products and from that database affiliate marketer can select any product for promotion.

# Email Marketing

In email marketing, you just need to send content to various subscribers through email. It is used to gain website traffic. Email marketing is the medium through which your user can get attached to your company who are interested in your product.

Offline Marketing

Offline marketing is used to promote our services offline that means without internet.

For example,  most of the time you see the TV which promotes some product of a company by using some ads, that is known as offline marketing.

Offline marketing can be categorized into 3 different marketing types that are given below:

# Radio Marketing

Marketing is done via radio. Some interesting facts about radio marketing are: listeners listen to radio 2 hours per day, on an average, the US spends 40% of advertising expense etc.

# TV Marketing

TV marketing is also known as an advert, commercial or simply ad. It is used to promote any product or service. Organizations pay for this.

# Phone Marketing

The amount spent on mobile ads in 2016 will exceed the amount spent on desktop ads.

We can promote or sell our product using cold calling, in the cold calling we call a person to sell our product. And message whether online or offline they almost received by a user.

Using messages we can take advantages like offering coupons, special deals, sales or discounts etc. so that user can get attracted to your product.

Why Digital Marketing is Important for Small Businesses?

Most of the organizations think that they do not need any type of online marketing, but still, some of them try to involve in digital marketing.

Some organizations only concern with few customers and they think that if they do online or digital marketing they may face many problems but it is not true.

Through digital marketing, they can grow their business as well as customers.

Through digital marketing, businesses can grow faster as compared to traditional marketing strategy.

# Maximize the number of customers

If you are thinking that you are not ready for online marketing or digital marketing yet then it is not your good strategy to promote your product or service using traditional methods.

Maybe your customer is searching your website or maybe he/she tries to check reviews on your product or service.

If you do not have any existence in social media they may think your services are not appearing in front of clients or your product is not good. This thing may cause a problem and can affect your business.

# Growth in Business

When you observe your competitors activity you can get an idea to grow your business.

For example,  you can notice or observe that what kind of brand they are using, what type of content they are using to promote their services, what kind of graphics they are using etc. through this type of observation you can get an idea that now what you need to do.

If your customers are not able to find you on the internet and they find a similar business on another website or any other competitors website that means your business is not appearing in front of your customers.

# Availability to Your Clients

If you are not discovered by your clients and your clients find similar services on others website that means your business is not running at all.

So you need to be available to your customer for any kind of information. If your customer likes your product or service and you have highly rated websites with positive reviews that means your business is growing, and you are in the right direction.

And you should also aware from your competitor’s activity so that you can do better from them because your clients will always compare your services with other websites if they find a better option in another website they will go for another service.

You should know the strategy of search engine optimization so that your website appears first while searching. Using SEO, you may get more attention as compare to your competitor’s.

#Permit Your Clients to Come to You

You can create your web presence so that your customers can come to you. For example, if a customer can’t come to you physically they can contact you through your email.

Suppose a customer wants to ask any question regarding your product or service then he can ask on your email. Any customer can buy or search your product online.

# Know About Your Target Audience

Through digital marketing you can touch with your audience, you can come to know what actually your audience looking for.

With the help of digital marketing, you can know your target audience that what they need or what type of solutions we can provide to them if they are facing any problem, but this is not possible with any guess. We need to connect with our audience digitally.

If you are able to solve your customer’s problem if they are facing and able to make your customer happy with your services which you provide online then nothing can stop you.

If you deliver the requested product to your customer on time, it may cause a good impact on your business. If you are making everything easy like buying the product or returning a product online and your customer is giving good reviews, I think it’s enough for any business.

If we compare online digital marketing with TV marketing or radio marketing, I think digital marketing is cheaper than TV or radio marketing. And digital marketing is spreading faster all over as compared to TV and radio marketing.

Steps to Make a career in Digital Marketing

There are some steps you need to follow to make a career in digital marketing. The following are the steps:

• Connect yourself with social media

First, you should know how any brand interacts with people through social media.

You can use those channels to make a relation with clients and make sales. You can create and share images using some social media tools:

Canva

You can use Canva tool for social media graphics, design presentations, layouts with filters, free icons and shapes. Canva also provides an option to select premium graphics about $1 each.

PicMonkey

PicMonkey is a social media tool used for editing photos with various filters, borders and text. We can use it through our browser.

Befunky

Befunky is another editing tool which is used to make a collage, create graphics, edit photos. You can create your own graphics without the use of Photoshop. It is easy to use.

Aviary

It is a mobile app and can be used on both IOS as well as Android. It not only contains filters and effects but it also contains stickers, frames, offers, rotate, crop tool etc.

Subtle patterns

Subtle Patterns provides free background pattern, you can use it to enhance your content with a background. You can also screenshot the background and can use with your image using an image editor.

Pictaculous

If you have some images that you want to upload but you have confusion about colors, i.e. you don’t know what color will be a good match. For this, Pictaculous provide this facility, it can recommend you a color according to your image.

TypeGenius

TypeGenius is used to create a different font style. You can choose any font.

In the given screenshot, you can select any font from the dropdown. And it will show you the font chosen by you.

Wordswag

Wordswag provides text, quotes and words with custom text layouts. You can create images with quotes.

Creative Market-Scene Creator

Creative Market provides a way to create graphics with a scene creator without props and camera. You will be able to create a design in a realistic environment.

• Create a LinkedIn profile

You can create a LinkedIn profile to stay connected with experts and learn new things. It may also help you stay up to date with the latest news.

• Join Networking Group

You can join a networking group, you should join first locally for in-person networking events. You can learn new things from those experts.

• Find Adviser

You should have an adviser who can help you out if you need any help regarding digital marketing. There are many people who are ready to advise others, so you don’t need to hesitate to ask any question.

• Know the latest trends

New things are increasing day by day in digital marketing, so you need to stay up to date with the latest trends.

It is necessary to know about new trends because anyone can ask you new trend during an interview. So make sure that you have enough knowledge about the latest trend.

•  Start blogging

A good blogger can attract the audience towards him, so you can start writing blogs to get the attention of the user.

• Know the working of analytics

Here you need to evaluate the performance and reports on key facts to make sure that you have an idea that what this means and you have enough knowledge from where you can get information.

Google’s partner program is providing you with a free of cost program that will help you to know more about analytics and it will be beneficial for you to build blogs.

• Join online course

There are so many online courses available at a lower cost and you can easily get the knowledge about digital marketing and social media courses.

• Learn to code

If you have little knowledge about HTML and WordPress then it is enough. You do not need to become a web developer if you have knowledge about admin panel or can do minor updates that’s enough.

• Prepare yourself for entry-level jobs

It is not necessary to get a job what we want, but we can get it if we work hard. You can start your career with a junior digital marketer until you deserve to be on the top.