The world has progressed considerably over years. The human desire to advance has led to great innovations. In a relatively short time, humans went from building fire to creating smartphones, apps, and robots. media. One cannot deny the fact that we all live in a digital world. In this twenty-first century, social media and electronic channels play a central role in our lives. This has brought in trends and led to the emergence of digital marketing.
Digital marketing can be referred to as a way of marketing that utilizes online and internet-based technologies to promote products and services. In order words, it is the use of digital channels to reach customers. It is a broad field that includes various platforms, such as social media, search engines among others. While traditional marketing exists in print ads, physical marketing, phone communications digital marketing occurs electronically and online. In a way, it helps in reaching a wider customer base. Nowadays digital marketing is used by almost all companies and brands. Digital marketing also provides various options and strategies as one can get creative and experimental.
Digital marketing is being adopted by the majority because it is faster, adaptable, result-driven, and quantifiable.
Some of the best ways of digital marketing are mentioned below:
Search engine optimization (SEO)
In simple words, SEO is tweaking one’s website in a way that it pops up naturally for search results on Google, Yahoo, or any other search engine. Search engines regularly update their algorithms so that only relevant results come up. Because of this many experts say that the effort put in SEO is futile. But search engines do this to prevent algorithm manipulation and filter sites that don’t deserve to be on the top of result pages.
Web analytics
This is the most important way of digital marketing. Web analysis includes collecting, measuring, understanding, and analyzing data. Based on the results effective plans and reports are made regarding the web activities for the business. This helps in understanding the trend and target audience. A few Web Analysis tools are Google Analytics, Spring Metrics, and Chartbeat.
Search engine marketing (SEM)
Also called Paid search marketing it is a strategy to drive traffic towards your business mainly through paid efforts. SEM is complicated as well as diverse. There are various models such as PPC ( pay-per-click), CPC ( cost per click), CPM ( cost per thousand impressions). Among the various platforms for SEM GoogleAds and BingAds are the most popular.
Content creation
Content as we all know is the basic and the most important component of marketing whether it be digital or traditional. Good and authentic content always attracts an audience. It can be presented in the form of blogs, case studies, articles, images, banners, podcasts, videos, and social media sites. Content can either be created or curated on any topic and then linked to the business. One needs to keep in mind to customize content for different platforms. For instance, the content for mobile phones should be short and crisp as it becomes difficult to read long and heavy content on mobile phones.
An effective strategy helps in engaging the audiences and keeps them interested in your business.
Social media marketing (SMM)
It is an offshoot of SEM efforts. It involves diverting traffic to your sites or business through social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and other such sites. As mentioned above good content is always liked and shared. Hence one must create content keeping in mind various social media platforms. We all are active on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, share content, and repost. Putting satisfactory content on such platforms helps in great marketing.
Digital display advertising
This is again a subset of SEM. It includes marketing with the help of display advertising by using formats like texts, images, banners, video ads. The message can be customized based on topics and interests.
Affiliate marketing
This is a performance-based marketing strategy wherein one pays publishers to bring in customers. The performance can be based on promotions, sales, etc. Publishers give space in their pages to advertise your business and you will pay them. This is especially useful for startups to bring in more traffic. Websites like Amazon, eBay, Flipkart run Affiliated programs as it is beneficial for both the merchants and publishers.
Mobile marketing
Nowadays everyone is hooked to their mobile phones more than any other device. Hence mobile marketing is one of the most effective ways of marketing. Businesses all around the world have started giving attention to mobile marketing. But due to the screen space, the content needs to be precise.
Remarketing and retargeting
It is a marketing strategy through which the customers who have already visited the website are targeted. Everyone has at one time or another has got notifications or popular ads of the websites that were once visited. This is an effective strategy to bring back customers who once showed interest.
Email marketing
It is a simple strategy wherein commercial messages are sent through emails. It is a form of direct marketing as the information, offers, etc. are sent directly to you. A person gets hundreds of emails and if your email isn’t eye-catching it will get lost. Emails also help in building good relationships with customers.
But one needs to be careful and keep in mind that email marketing can also be considered as spamming and hence use it carefully.
Digital marketing is quite complex. Various trends come and go as the preference of customers changes. One while making use of it needs to be careful and experimental at the same time. It is important to make use of various ways of marketing and combine them to increase productivity.