An Overview of Digital Marketing

Marketing has changed more in the past 10 years than it had for the whole of the 20th century. First it was enough to give an advertisement in a national newspaper, then as media expanded we had the combination of newspaper and television. About 10 years back it was enough to have a basic website with some keywords, some good graphics and relevant product content. Today the entire paradigm has changed!

TV spots, print ads and basic websites of yesterday have made way to social media marketing,  consumer driven content, virtual reality, mobile applications and search engines. The marketing experts today are youngsters who know how to predict and ride the trends of the every changing online industry to drive brand success in a virtual world, albeit with real profits.

We are in a time of 24/7 connectivity, on an average Indian users spend 2.4 hours daily on social media and amidst the lockdown due to novel coronavirus covid-19, the time went up to 4 hours daily! This is exactly why it is a must-have for any company to have a digital marketing strategy – it ensures that you are relevant to your audience on a platform that they prefer.

So what exactly is Digital Marketing?
To put it very simply, Digital Marketing consists of all the marketing effort done by companies and professionals through online media channels. The objective of any good digital media marketing strategy is to build the brand presence, make it sought by its audience, generate relevant leads and convert them into sales.

What are the Various Types of Digital Channels?

      

1. Your Website

The importance that your website plays in your online marketing strategy is utmost. It is your best and most vital marketing asset! Its not difficult to believe that a company’s credibility is always judged by the way the website and interactions on it are built. However, its not just enough to have a website – it needs to be fast to hold customer attention, it needs to be secure (specially if you have forms to fill with contact information), it needs to be responsive as over 60{667cc9bc6ea5284aad36e6860a433819c329043ce54d02905014c7c909ebbd74} people browse websites on mobiles and tablets, it needs to have a neat and easy-on-the-eyes design that is simple and sophisticated and lastly, it needs to be optimised for search engine optimisation.

2. SEM

You made a swanky website and shared your cards with almost everyone you ever met, but your website is not yet seeing the traffic that it ideally should. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) consists of all the marketing techniques and tools that are implemented to make your website dominate the search engine results page for a particular set of keywords, phrases or questions. Did you know that 93{667cc9bc6ea5284aad36e6860a433819c329043ce54d02905014c7c909ebbd74} of website traffic comes from search engines like Google? That is why SEM is very important to every business that has online presence today.

3. Remarketing

You must have noticed that websites that you visit many-a-times follow you with their ads. If you open a competitor or similar website they suddenly shoot up with their products and try to convince you to compare or switch to their website. This is remarketing. It is possible because of ‘cookies’ that work by giving non sensitive information to products like Google Ads. Remarketing is also very successful as it aids brand recall for a customer who sees a phenomenal amount of ads everyday. It ensures that you stay on the top of their mind. You can
retarget your customers on many platforms but facebook, instagram, twitter and linked are amongst the highest ranking for B-C businesses.

4. E-mail Marketing

If you are a business that is ROI sensitive then you will be delighted to know that e-mail marketing has an average ROI of 4400{667cc9bc6ea5284aad36e6860a433819c329043ce54d02905014c7c909ebbd74}. This is primarily because the cost of creating a good emailer is very low as compared to the reach and the kind of results it can generate. E-mailers are a good way to keep in touch with your customers. Most business leaders see their emails the first thing in the morning and by being their consistently with
relevant solutions and news you can become their go-to brand for information and solutions.

5. Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is the use of tools and systems to build simple conversations with people interacting to you online. For example, you ask your website visitor to fill a simple form with contact information for some query. This contact information goes to an automated system that automatically sends pre-designed content that is relevant to that query. With the onset of AI (Artificial Intelligence), marketing automation will develop more and more in the next 5-6 years. It is important to have some amount of marketing automation in your digital marketing strategy.

6. Social Media Marketing 

SMM consists of the umbrella of marketing activities done on social media platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Pinterest & Instagram. It is important to understand which platform is ideal for your business and create the correct mix of platforms so that you are there at the relevant touchpoint for you your customers. Your social media marketing strategy should have a combination of organic posting as well as paid advertisements so as to gain prominence on the platform.

7. Video Marketing

The new age online customer really doesn’t want to read much. They want easy information via graphics and are even more happy with dynamic information via videos. Videos are also search friendly and it is said that a video is 50 times more likely to get organic page ranks in Google than plain text. Online videos could be about your corporate, about your product, its specifications, how to use it and its benefits. Research has also proven that websites that have videos have higher average time on site than those that have only text and image.

The entire gamut of digital marketing is a world in itself. The deeper you delve, the more you will understand. However, while your involvement is vital for success, it is best to leave the process of digital marketing to a qualified agency and focus on what you do best – your business.