The term Digital Marketing was first coined in the 1990s. The decade when today’s most popular search engine “Google” came into existence and people started putting up information online.
The focus was shifted to investing in Customer Relationship Management tools to captivate potential customers in the market.
Today, we have tons of mediums, both online and offline, to reach our customer base and tell them about our product and services.
When it comes to Digital Marketing, people still have a lot of questions. In this digital marketing blog, we have tried to answer most of these questions and give you a fresh and better outlook on Digital Marketing.
But, before that, it is important to have the essence of Consumer Buying Behavior.
Consumer buying behaviour comprises of all the actions(both online and offline) that a consumer takes before buying any product or service. These may include researching on social media platforms, search engines, mobile applications, etc.
Social media is a major influencer when it comes to the purchasing decisions of millennials. That’s one of the prime reasons why brands spend a lot of time and effort wooing millennials on social media platforms. You will be surprised that 71% of them report buying fashion and lifestyle products based on Instagram and Facebook posts, and 72% of people seek validation by peers before buying any product through an online platform.
Now, when you have a chunk of consumer buying behaviour, let’s have a better understanding of digital marketing.
Table of Contents
- What is Digital Marketing?
- What are the Major Components of Digital Marketing?
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- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Pay Per Click (PPC)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Native Advertising
- Mobile marketing
- Marketing Automation
- Email Marketing
- Online PR
- Inbound Marketing
- Viral Marketing
1. What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing is all about connecting with your target audience through a medium where they spend most of their daily time i.e. Internet. In other words, digital marketing is a technique by which companies intrigue their customers into buying their products and services through digital channels such as social media, websites, mobile applications, etc.
As things stand, digital marketing is one of the best sources on which consumers rely to get knowledge about their favorite brands. Today, nearly every business owner, regardless of the scale of business, has a website or at least a social media presence to reach their prospective customers.
In a nutshell, digital marketing can be considered as a pivotal ingredient when it comes to withstanding the current market trends.
2. What are the Major Components of Digital Marketing?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO refers to improving the rank of your website pages in the search engine results organically. This is done by optimizing the content, technical setup and reach of your website.
According to a study, 90% of people who search for a product online haven’t made up their minds yet. SEO can help you to reach these people by using relevant keywords and phrases that they generally use when looking for products on popular search engines like Google.
It is crucial to understand that Google is constantly updating its algorithms to understand user intent when they search for a particular phrase and deliver search results that meet their expectations. A strong SEO strategy can help you reach your target audience and build a long-lasting customer relationship with them.
There are numerous ways to approach SEO. These include: on-page SEO, off-page SEO and technical SEO.
If you’re a newbie and don’t want to invest much money, in the beginning, to rank higher in search engine result pages it is important to have a path-breaking SEO strategy.
Content Marketing
In this era of self-directed consumers, content plays a very significant role. It is an outstanding medium to generate brand awareness, traffic growth, and acquiring potential leads.
When it comes to content marketing, there are multiple channels involved such as blog posts, e-books, infographics, etc. Providing relevant content to your target audience helps in establishing a trustworthy as well as a long-term relationship with your customers.
You will be astonished to know that a distinctive and well-planned content strategy can get you three times more leads than any paid search advertising.
Social Media Marketing
As it is quite evident from the name itself, social media marketing refers to the use of social media platforms(Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest) and websites to promote your products or services.
Like SEO, social media marketing is an organic medium to reach your target audience. This can be done through written posts, blogs, e-books, images, videos, live sessions, etc.
The more you’re able to engage your target audience through your content, the more are the chances of converting them into your loyal customers.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
Pay per click(PPC) advertising typically refers to the sponsored result which generally appears on the top or side of search engine results pages.
In simpler words, it is one of the prime paid mediums to drive traffic to your website where you pay the publisher every time someone clicks on your ad. These ads can be tailored in a way that they only appear when certain search terms are entered by the consumer.
Google Ads is the most common and reliable type of PPC that allows you to pay for the top slots on Search engine result pages (SERPs).
Other widely used channels comprise – Twitter ads campaigns, paid ads on Facebook and sponsored messages on LinkedIn.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is a popular tactic or framework that makes it possible for brands to partner with individuals(or companies) in order to promote their own products and services.
In return, these affiliates(individuals or companies) earn a piece of profit as a commission on the products and services sold through their affiliate links.
In recent times, affiliate marketing has been proven to be a scalable, efficient and cost-effective way to drive sales and generate significant online revenue for both brands and affiliate marketers(or publishers).
Native Advertising
Native advertising is a paid content that appears alongside the other non-paid content in a format that matches the form and function of the platform upon which it appears.
Unlike display ads or banner ads, native ads appear to be organic content. However, it is obligatory to indicate them as a sponsored ad.
The major forms in which you might have countered Native ads are Content recommendation ads(at the end of the article that you just read), In-Feed ads(on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, etc.) and Branded/ Native content.
Mobile Marketing
On average a millennial checks his or her phone 150 times a day, which is 5 times the older users. Hence, it would be plausible to say that purchasing decisions of millennials are highly Influenced by a brand’s social media presence, mobile applications, short message service(SMS) and email, which they receive via smartphones, tablets and other digital devices.
In recent times, mobile marketing has become that important piece in the puzzle that will help you leverage your long term marketing efforts.
Marketing Automation
There are various marketing departments with daily tasks that are repetitive in nature and can be executed more efficiently if automated. Marketing automation refers to using software or tools to automate marketing efforts such as social media postings, email marketing and ad campaigns to provide a finer and much-personalised experience to potential customers.
Marketing automation not only helps you reach and acquire your potential customers but also helps you establish a long-term and profitable relationship with them.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is all about sending commercial emails to existing or potential customers with the objective of promoting the latest products and services, turning potential leads into loyal, lifetime customers.
When it comes to creating an impact, email marketing is a wonderful opportunity to remind clients about your brand.
To attain this your email campaign must have a few core attributes such as personalization, producing content that is relevant to your target audience, contains engaging subject lines, and is optimised for all devices.
Along with all these best practices, it is quite important to have a path-breaking overall execution strategy.
Online PR
Online PR(online public relations) or Digital PR refers to increasing your brand awareness via online presence by networking with bloggers, influencers, journalists(to get featured in print publications) or organising online reviews and interviews.
This helps in getting high-quality backlinks from relevant websites, social media channels and blogs which ultimately improves the website’s search engine rankings and visibility.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound Marketing is a term coined in the year 2006. In simple words, it is a business methodology that helps you attract potential customers, or leads to your organization via branding, social media marketing, content marketing and search engine optimisation(SEO).
Unlike outbound marketing(that interrupts your audience with content they don’t always want to see), inbound marketing focuses on providing your potential customers with reasons to come to you for their needs and form connections for their existing problems.
Viral Marketing
Viral Marketing refers to a marketing technique that involves organic or word-of-mouth information about a product or service, presented in such a way that it’s being shared on the internet or social media channels, not only by the target audience but also by the public in general.
It is fascinating how the internet and social media(Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc) have abundantly increased the number of messages going viral in the form of shares, likes, memes etc.
In a nutshell, we may conclude that viral marketing is a cost-effective sales technique in which the information is spread at an ever-increasing rate if the content engages the user to an extent that they want to share it with their friends and family through the Internet or social media channels.
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