What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing includes all marketing efforts that make use of the internet and electronic devices to connect with audiences and customers wherever they may be online. If you want to succeed with your digital marketing efforts, it is essential to study and understand all the channels and tactics that are available to you. Professionals can gain expertise in using their marketing efforts effectively by opting a digital marketing course.
A few of the critical parts of digital marketing are as
follows.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Channels that benefit from SEO include: websites, blogs, infographics
- Content Marketing. Channels that benefit from content marketing include: Blog posts, eBooks and whitepapers, Infographics, Online brochures
- Email Marketing. Including emails that contain follow-up, customer welcome, promotions, tips for customer nurturing, blog subscription newsletters, etc.
- Social Media Marketing. Including marketing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC). For example, paid ads on Facebook, promoted Tweets, sponsored LinkedIn messages, etc.
- Affiliate Marketing. For example, affiliate links on social media accounts and video ads on the YouTube Partner Program
- Native Advertising such as Instagram advertising and Facebook advertising
- Marketing Automation. For example, the automation of lead-nurturing workflows, email newsletters, contact list updating, social media post scheduling, campaign tracking, and reporting
- Online PR. Channels that benefit from PR efforts include: reporter outreach via social media, engagement through blogs or websites, and engagement through online reviews
- Inbound Marketing. Includes a full-funnel approach to attract, engage and delight customers using online content through any or all of the methods mentioned above
Why do businesses adopt digital marketing?
Digital marketing benefits the marketer and the customer in
several ways. However, businesses adopt digital marketing strategies and
tactics mostly because it’s quantifiable, results-driven, adaptable and faster
than any other form of marketing available to any company no matter its size.
That said, there are several specific reasons why businesses
adopt digital marketing. These reasons include:
- It provides an equal
opportunity (competitiveness) for all business regardless of size and available
resources - It is more
cost-effective than traditional marketing - It allows targeted
conversion of audiences and prospects to leads, subscribers, supporters, and
customers - It enhances revenue
growth by reaching larger and niche markets (global and local), in a more
efficient way - It facilitates
interaction with targeted audiences, wherever they may be online, including on
mobile devices - It helps build brand
reputation - It allows businesses
to earn their audience’s trust - It influences
prospects to take favorable action through Call-To-Action - It quickly provides
analytics that enables businesses to grow
Recent trends in digital marketing
Digital marketing trends are constantly evolving as marketers
find better ways to reach their audiences and as audiences demand better ways
to interact with a business. In 2019, several trends have carried over from
previous years, and several others will continue to appear. That said, the most
popular digital marketing trends today are as follows:
- Artificial
Intelligence. AI can be used in an
unlimited number of ways to power customer segmentation, push notifications,
retargeting, click tracking, etc. depending on your chosen goals and channels.
- Chatbots. Companies
can have basic conversations with customers through chatbots at any time and
get referred to a customer care representative when necessary - User-Generated
Content like customer reviews are not only
convincing to other users, but they also cost the business almost nothing.
- AdWords spending has
been on the rise since 2016 and continues to grow today. With the right
strategy, businesses have managed to optimize and increase their ROI on paid
advertising. - Omnichannel Marketing. It
provides a consistent and seamless communication process for customers across
all channels. It is an upgrade from multichannel marketing. - Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and Progressive Web Apps
(PWA). These technologies provide faster
loading time, better web experiences, and lower app development costs. - Email and Marketing Automation eliminates time-wastage, minimizes error, its
cost-efficient and increases collaboration between sales and marketing. - Voice Search is increasingly being used as the technology improves and
becomes more available to consumers through several gadgets including mobile
devices. - Video Audiences are
spending more time watching videos. Advertisers and marketers have noticed this
and are building marketing campaigns to reach these audiences.
- Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are both used by marketers in different ways to give
audiences immersive experiences that will help them connect and engage with
products and services.
10 ways businesses can achieve success in their digital marketing efforts
By combining the channels and tactics mentioned above, while
keeping in mind recent trends and technologies that make it easier to connect,
businesses can achieve success in their digital marketing in the following
ways.
1.
Be flexible and open to change
Embracing the fast-paced changes in the digital marketing world
and tweaking the new tools, strategies, and tactics accordingly, is a must for
businesses to succeed and thrive in today’s world.
2.
Set SMART objectives
Setting Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and
Time-bound objectives, that are consistent with your digital marketing plan is
critically important. For example, a conversion objective can be to increase
the average value of orders in online sales from $30 to $40
3.
Execute perfectly
Once you create an objective plan for achieving your SMART
objectives, you need to execute the plan on schedule. Executing perfectly will
allow you to collect data and make changes to your plan to fit customer
feedback. These changes also need to be executed quickly.
4.
Exercise creativity throughout the process
Right from the planning stage, be innovative and creative in
using the content as well as different integrated channels (omnichannel
marketing) to reach your audience and target customers. Content can include
images, infographics, video, modernized websites, elegant designs, etc.
Integrated channels can consist of mobile, social, web, phone and physical
stores.
5. Target audience with market segmentation
Understanding your target audience and reaching out to them
wherever they may be is crucial for digital marketing success. Marketing
segmentation is useful in helping marketers do this by studying audience
behavior/characteristics and grouping similar traits so that audience needs can
be prioritized accordingly. Using AI and automation can help marketers achieve
even higher levels of granularity and accuracy in an efficient way.
6. Diversify your channels, tactics, and strategies
By understanding that no single digital marketing strategy is
perfect, you become open to the idea that experimenting with different
channels, tactics, and strategies is a critical part of achieving success. One
benefit of this mentality is that you will come across different audiences and
customers that you did not know existed. These new audiences and customers can
help you find new revenue streams.
7.
Integrate your sales and marketing
Integrating sales and marketing allows businesses to maximize
every aspect of digital marketing because these teams will be working with a
focused purpose as opposed to working against each other (knowingly or
unknowingly). Areas of maximization include the use of data, tools, seamless
customer hand-over to different teams, etc.
8. Collect, measure, track, and analyze data
Today, data is crucial not just to provide your customers with
a level of service that they expect but also to keep up with the competition.
As such, collecting, measuring, tracking and analyzing data in real-time to get
insights is simply a must for businesses to succeed in their digital marketing
efforts.
9. Always stay connected to your audience
Customers today want to communicate and know what’s happening
with their chosen vendors at all times. Businesses must, therefore, create an
always-connected environment to nourish this need to be connected by not only
providing up-to-date content but also by availing tools (e.g., chatbots) that
make it easier to receive and send the content.
10. Collect feedback and respond to it accordingly
Use surveys, polls and comment forms to collect feedback from
audiences and customers. Once you get customer input, use it to inform which
strategies are working and which ones are not, and then adjust accordingly. The
constant improvement will lead you to digital marketing success.
Conclusion
There is no one-size fits all solution for success in digital
marketing. However, by incorporating different facets of digital marketing as
mentioned above, and by using them as ingredients that suit your specific business,
and customer profiles, you can achieve success in digital marketing. One of the
smart decision towards a successful digital marketing career is to pursue a
digital marketing course and gain the required skills.
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