Digital marketing is all the efforts made by a company in the digital and online space to promote and boost conversion. This is to make you aware, engage and lead to sales in the long run.
What is Digital Marketing?
This term was in the past used to describe the art of digital marketing. With the increase in social platforms and digital presence, the term has evolved to encompass any form of reach through the digital arena.
Digital marketing serves as an umbrella term for any means by which leads are created and pursued. In contrast, inbound marketing focuses on the art of attraction, engagement, and customer satisfaction at every step of the consumer process.
Why Is There an Emphasis on Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing allows small and medium-sized companies to have an equal fighting chance. Regardless of your size, the digital space is open for access, depending on your efforts toward achieving that goal.
There are about 5.1 billion unique mobile phone users linked with digital marketing. 57% of phone users have access to at least 7 different social media platforms and since 49% of shopping is done on smartphones is crucial to optimize for mobile.
The average adult spends at least 4 hours on social channels a day, with teenagers averaging about 8- 9 hours.
Digital presence is so much that an average individual’s life is fully incorporated into social media. This ranges from their choice of what to wear to their choice of schools.
This serves to point out that any forward-oriented business will go where the business is, and in this case, the place is online.
Greater Reach
Any marketer with experience in the art of print marketing will tell you that the reach of print is narrowed first by who accesses print media and second by who will stop at the specific page, read it, and be driven to purchase.
Digital marketing 101 bypasses these limitations by ensuring that the reach is very wide. Two that the advert engages, and three, that the ad is relevant. With these limitations thrown out the window, ads are more targeted, and the return on investment (ROI) is easier to gauge and analyze.
The Art of Hyper-Personalization
Do you know what appeals to prospective clients? Relevant ads, more than that, however, digital marketing ads that are personalized to a consumer’s specific needs and tailor-made to meet them make digital marketing a rare invention of our time.
Targeted ads, which are built to appeal to a person’s needs, are the reason for the rise in buying habits worldwide.
A company seeking to boost sales should get in on the hype while it lasts.
People Want a Choice in the Decision Making
More and more people are downloading ad-blockers, while the remainder can hardly wait before skipping ads that seem to take the time or force themselves on the consumers.
This means that content marketing, a subset of digital marketing, is gaining relevance as consumers prefer learning and making the decisions by themselves.
This, therefore, means that the older form of marketing where ads bombarded clients is no longer relevant in the market today.
There are various forms of digital marketing available for business today:
Search Engine Optimization
This is the art of making websites and their contents more accessible for search engines. Search engine optimization involves optimizing websites to make them more suitable for higher ranks in search engines’ organic search.
SEO is important because case studies have shown that many people trust the first few results on their search engines. It goes on to suggest that of the
Few impressions, the top three are more likely to get clicks which might
Eventually, it translates into sales. There are various ways of optimizing your website for the search engines, So much so that there are white hat and black hat methods of achieving this end.
There are many kinds of SEO, but we shall focus on three:
On-page SEO
This is the manipulation of individual web pages for higher rankings in organic search results. Some ways to achieve this include specific keywords, keyword stuffing, and other detailed encryptions of relevant words in your web pages.
The benefit of this particular form of search engine optimization SEO is that it allows websites to speak for them frankly.
This means that relevance and actual content will prioritize engaging and maintaining leads using on-page SEO.
Off-page SEO
This, on the other hand, refers to all activities you and others do, away from your website that.
Raise your ranking. While this has been referred to as link-building in the past, in modern times, however, off-page SEO is more than that.
It comprises guest blogs, back-links, networking and authority website referencing, and online marketing.
Technical SEO
This is the technical end that focuses on the website backend for web crawlers and the indexing phase.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is as old as time itself. For generations, man has enjoyed the theory of a good story.
The mind likes to be stimulated every so often, to be drawn into imagination. This is exactly the
The premise behind content marketing. The idea that awareness of brands and businesses can be made through content creation. Not only so, but traffic growth and generation of leads, all with the rightly created content.
Blogs
Blog posts have been the oldest known form of content creation. Purposely created blog posts with the right wording, flow, and ideas can create not only traffic but leads.
The great thing about blogs is that they tend to build loyalty. Consistently posted blogs can build loyalty which is what ultimately creates a brand.
Guest posts on a company’s website are also great ways to offer ideas and suggestions to prospective consumers. They can also be a point of engagement and review sourcing.
E-books
The great thing about E-Books is that they allow the consumer to exchange their personal information allowing you to market to them personally.
Additionally, eBooks can be shared on numerous platforms and are a great way to raise awareness of your company. What it stands for and your products.
This creates a ripple effect, which is a good thing in digital marketing 101.
InfoGraphics
An image is truly worth a thousand words, in saying and in marketing. Websites that cater to food and
Dining and hotels, and tourism really greatly on what the images on their websites say about them.
The same thing applies to all websites. Visual appeal converts to website traffic, and the rest are history.
Social Media and Channel Marketing
As was noted earlier, more than 50% of adults are on more than 7 social media platforms.
With Facebook having more than 70% of the world’s population in terms of users, what this means for the marketing strategist is that there are masses to be reached on their social network.
It also means that there is an equal playing field for all marketing companies in the digital media space.
How To Approach Social Media and Mobile Marketing?
YouTube Ads
Catchy paid ads before trending videos in a region will go a long way in outreach. Even with a large
The Proportion of people skipping after the ad, a significant portion will have been reached.
Instagram Sponsored Ads
The most hyped-up place to be, consider sponsoring your content on Instagram. This will increase your reach and likes, making your business noteworthy in no time.
Trendy videos are also one way to ensure that your content is disseminated fast and for free. The advent of Whatsapp has made sharing not only faster but global, meaning that a
Trending videos can go viral at the same time the world over.
The newer form of social network marketing is influencer marketing. Great examples of this form of marketing in action would be the Kardashian Family, using their social media platforms to market their business.
Companies would benefit from using influencers in a particular region to market their products.
Pay Per Click
In PPC, anytime your ad is clicked on a publisher’s site, you pay the publisher a certain commission. The best and widely used form of this is Google Ads.
Google Ads allows you to rank higher on Google’s search engine results. This allows you greater visibility to potential clients.
You are required to pay anytime you get a click. While this gives you leverage, you still have to engage and delight the customer to convert that lead into a sale.
On Facebook, videos, images, and clips are customized to your target audience, ensuring that your newsfeed reach is even greater.
The same principle applies on Twitter with the badge; your posts are customized to your specific region, allowing that a specific goal to reach for your business is achieved.
Instagram and LinkedIn have also implemented similar programs to ensure more followers, more page growth, and greater lead generation.
Affiliate Marketing
This is where a website or a person receives a commission for promoting someone else’s products or services on their website.
Some channels that can be used for this are the Amazon affiliate marketing program, YouTube partner program, and affiliations through social media accounts.
The commission is earned once there is a successful purchase from clicking on a link. This would be a great way to use websites that have high traffic and are specific to a certain niche related to your business.
Native Advertising
Despite the name, native ads do not necessarily look like traditional marketing ads. On the other hand, they are ads that resemble the look, feel, and content of a website’s normal publication.
The great thing about native advertising is that it blends right in with the social media feed since it does not take up the banner. As a result, it is more appealing and engaging to clients who, in essence, can smoke an ad a mile away.
Marketing Automation
This IS whereby a company automates all its digital marketing services that a marketing department member would redundantly do.
This includes email list customization, scheduling social media posting consistently, and tracking and reporting of campaigns. Any digital marketing agency can provide these services.
Email Marketing
This is where companies use Emails to reach, inform and educate the market on their products. Emails are generally submitted while on the website for free marketing newsletters or e-book downloads. This then creates an email list which is essentially a lead.
You can then use the email list to promote your company blog, welcome customers to your company, provide guidelines to royalty, or notify clients of new deals.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing focuses on engagement time, conversion to clicks as well as the overall customer journey.
Some of the digital marketing skills above that align with inbound marketing are blog posts, infographics, and social media content creation.
The point of inbound marketing is to do the final conversion, in essence, to seal the deal.
Application to Your Business?
A B2B (BUSINESS to business) company will require a digital marketing strategy that focuses on ensuring leads are generated that eventually lead to a salesperson.
As such, social media marketing should be centered on sites like LinkedIn, which are more formal.
On the other hand, B2C businesses (business to consumer) should have a digital marketing plan that ensures that the websites manage to speak and engage clients without the need for a salesperson.
How long it will take for results to reflect is one that no one can answer with absolute certainty. With good SEO, perfect and consistent content marketing, however, you.
They are likely to see changes and improvements within 4 to 6 months. In addition, using analysis tools like Google Analytics, you will see conversion rates, the levels of engagements and analyze what you will need to improve on lead generation.
How To Budget Your Digital Marketing Campaign
As with any other form of marketing, a clear-cut budget must be set aside for digital marketing. However, the good news is that digital marketing can be achieved without selling an arm and a leg.
It will, however, require plenty of time and patience. Paid ads, clicks, As well as influencers will cost money.
The actual cost will be dependent on the website, the competition for rank, and the influencer level. However, ROIs are likely to be much higher with higher investments.
It is important to note that Google regularly reviews its policies on ranking, and as such, “black-hatted” SEO pages are likely to be flagged out.
