Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing Made Easy: The Simplest Guide to Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing has become an indispensable tool in the hands of marketers all across the business spectrum. Be it a traditional brick and mortar business or a tech startup dealing in an AI product, any marketing strategy nowadays involves a balanced combination of traditional and digital marketing techniques.
But there is a lot of mist around the definition and application of digital marketing, making it a ‘mysterious thing’ for those who are not tech-savvy. In this post, we will understand digital marketing in a simple manner so that the reader does not get overwhelmed by the jargons thrown by digital marketing gurus and they themselves can decide which digital marketing is best applicable for their business scenario. If you have recently started a business, you can also go through this valuable digital marketing resource for small businesses.
What is Digital Marketing?
Simply put, Digital Marketing is a marketing strategy that involves the use of digital platforms including social media platforms, blogs, and websites to promote a brand.
Many experts believe that marketing using any electronic medium can be termed as digital marketing. However, others believe that marketing using a traditional electronic medium such as a Television or a radio should be regarded as a traditional marketing strategy. For simplicity, we will stick to the former definition.
Different types of Digital Marketing
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- Email marketing
- Content marketing
- Affiliate marketing
These are some of the online digital marketing techniques in use today. Let’s go through each one of them to understand them in detail.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
With the rapid increase in the usage of smartphones, finding an answer to your query has become super easy. Whether you are looking for a cake supplier nearby or you want to know the best hotel in your vicinity, chances are that you will invariably lookout for this information on the internet.
Pay-per-click Marketing(PPC)
PPC or pay-per-click marketing is a type of digital marketing in which advertisers pay an amount every time one of their ads is clicked i.e. they pay for every click on their promoted links. You must have seen that when you search any product on Google, on top of the search result, there are links with the ‘Ad’ prefix. When you click on these links, the advertisers have to pay for those clicks.
The cost per click depends on the nature of the keyword, how hard it is to rank for that keyword etc. Essentially, it’s a way of paying search engines to send prospective clients to your site. Many experts don’t consider PPC marketing as a sustainable way of bringing clients on board. For them, organic traffic to your site is a better and sustainable marketing strategy.
However, some of the major established brands are known to have used this strategy given the massive competition in the online sphere. PPC marketing can be broadly put in the category of Search engine marketing (SEM) which is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages primarily through paid advertising.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Before we understand what is social media marketing, check out this post –What is Social Media to understand what exactly social media mean and what different forms it has taken over the years.
Now that you clearly understand what social media is, let us try to understand what social media marketing is. SMM is the use of social media platforms and websites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. to promote a good or service. According to datareportal, there are around 4.14 billion social media users. Even if this number is contentious, this gives an indication that if you are not spending on social media marketing, you are losing a lot of eyeballs.
Email marketing
Email marketing involves sending emails to a group of people in order to promote a product or service. Over the years, email marketing has evolved dramatically. Email marketers have also adapted to the way how users view emails and the privacy associated thereof. Nowadays, when you visit a website, you see access to a lot of free offerings, including free ebooks, newsletters etc. In order to make use of these free materials, you just have to provide your email address.
Marketers typically send free stuff initially building a funnel and present their products or services at a later stage of email transactions.
Broadly speaking, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing.
Content Marketing
Content Marketing is a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of digital content such as blog posts, videos, podcasts, etc. that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to arouse interest in its products or services.
Affiliate Marketing
In simple words, Affiliate marketing allows you to earn a commission while promoting products or services. If you have a website, you can promote a service or product using affiliate links. When a user clicks on that affiliate link and makes a purchase, you earn a commission.
With several blogs and websites doing well, advertisers are using this marketing technique more and more.
Way forward
Digital marketing is here to stay. Companies all over the world are spending millions of dollars on digital marketing campaigns. Also, with the increasing penetration of the internet and widespread usage of smartphones, digital marketing is bound to be a major marketing tool for marketers world over and it would not be wrong to say that one who has won the digital marketing war has won the marketing war.