Digital marketing is a term that refers to the marketing of product and services through all kinds of digital channels available such as social media, search engine, email, etc.
Digital marketing is getting your business in front of target audience using one or more digital technologies, advertising via online and offline digital media.
It is also called as Internet marketing, e-marketing and web marketing.
Traditional channels like TV, radio, and phone are losing their importance while online media are taking the marketing by storm.
Many companies and brands exclusively have online marketing strategies for their products and services.
Digital marketing incorporates various strategies and tactics for marketing, among which the following are the major ones:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)
- Email Marketing
- Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing your web pages or the content in order to make them rank high on the search engine result pages for the targeted keyword.
SEO increases the amount of organic traffic to your website thus making your brand visible to larger crowd.
SEO practices can be categorized into On-page SEO and Off-page SEO.
On-page SEO comprises everything that you can do to your website such as quality content, meta tags, internal linking, easy user interface, etc.
Off-page SEO is optimizing website by social signals and creating backlinks, which can be achieved by links from web 2.0s, Private Blog Networks (PBNs), etc.
2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is one of the essential digital marketing strategies that will help you increase the visibility of your brand or business in a competitive marketplace.
Search Engine Marketing is a practice of promoting business/product/service via paid advertisements, which appear on the search engine result pages.
When a potential customer enter the keyword in the search engines, your advertisements will appear on the result pages along with other results.
SEM allows you to take your product/service in front of potential customers who are more likely to buy from you with the help of targeted ad campaigns.
The common practices of Search Engine Marketing are paid search, display advertising, shopping ads and the like.
3. Content Marketing
Content marketing is the practice of creating and distributing the relevant content to target audience to generate more traffic, increased brand awareness, lead generation and ROI.
Content marketing is creating and promoting attractive contents that will turn your audience into your customers.
Contents can be created in any formats, such as blog posts, videos, visual guides, slides, ebooks, infographics, podcasts, interview, case studies, webinars, email newsletter, and the like.
Quality content is always the key of the content marketing but it uses various digital channels to acquire traffic, convert them into subscribe and retain them.
4. Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is the practice of promoting brand or business and acquiring visibility and website traffic via different social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, twitter, and many others.
As the popularity of social media is growing, social media marketing has become one of the powerful digital marketing tactics to reach potential customers for your business.
Along with promoting your brand, you can manage the online presence and performance of your business with the help of social media marketing.
You can interact with your customers on an unparalleled level by building an interactive social community around your brand.
5. Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)
Paid Advertising is a digital marketing practice where a business pays directly for its incoming traffic.
Pay Per Click (PPC), also known as Cost Per Click (CPC) is one of the most common pricing models for paid advertising.
PPC is a method where advertisers pay every time a viewer clicks their ad. This method allows for direct ROI tracking.
Most common type of PPC is Google Adwords. It is often used in juxtaposition with a search engine so that ads are displayed to searchers looking for specific keywords.
Advertisers can bid for a combination of bidding price and page relevance since the PPC platforms usually runs on a bidding systems.
6. Email Marketing
Email marketing is the practice of sending emails to people to promote your products/services, contents, and such.
Any brand and business can build an email list of subscribers so that they can keep their audience in contact and let them know about their latest products, offers, discounts, etc.
Though email might sound like ‘old school’, conversion rate via email is impressive along with retention of your customer.
7. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Conversion Rate Optimization is a digital marketing process of increasing the percentage of visitors who complete a website’s goal.
It is about convincing your website visitors to take the desired action on your business website that you want them to take.
CRO process involves evaluation and research of your website to collect data, competitive analysis, detecting and prioritizing of problems in your website, testing hypothesis, AB testing and analyzing the test results.
It is the way of discovering more about your visitor and customers’ behaviors and strategizing your website accordingly to improve user’s experience and conversion process.
The main elements of CRO process are copywriting, design, navigation, and call to action (CTA).
Importance of Digital Marketing
- Build brand awareness
- Increase credibility of your brand/business
- Increase website traffic
- Understand your website visitors and traffic
- Understand the marketplace and the competition
- Marketing to target audience
- Generate leads and sales
- Increase ROI
- Customer retention
Conclusion
Digital Marketing refers to marketing of products/services via digital technologies and media.
Brands and businesses aim to grow their traffic, enhance their visibility, generate lead and more ROI, and retain their customers via digital marketing.
People, these days, have become so apt to digital media. It has become a source of entertainment, news, information, interaction, and more.
This is the reason why brand and business are spending so much on digital marketing of their products and services.
If you haven’t yet run any digital marketing campaign for your brand/product/service, we recommend you to start one right away.
After all, who doesn’t want increased traffic and ROI?