What is Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is a broad term for marketing that utilizes digital technology to advertise products and services online. In this type of marketing, digital channels such as websites, mobile apps, social media, and search engines are widely used to promote products. Digital marketing mainly uses the Internet as the primary promotional medium along with television, radio, and mobile.

Digital marketing, which became a buzzword in the 1990s, has evolved into a more sophisticated arena since 2000. The capability of devices to access digital media at any time has been a shot in the arm for digital marketing. The majority of today's consumers are multi-channel and multi-device driven, acquiring information about the product online before entering a store to buy it. Buyers are more empowered than ever before. Google Think Insight has revealed that 48 percent of the consumers do their enquiry on the search engines, 33 percent on the direct brand website and 26 percent search on mobile applications. Today, it is inevitable for a business to do marketing without technology.

Digital marketing is popularly known as Internet marketing but they slightly differ from each other. Digital marketing is considered more measurable, interactive, and targeted compared to Internet marketing. The techniques of Internet marketing such as search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), and link building are used by digital marketing.

The primary objective of digital marketing is to connect and allow customers to interact with brand through services delivered via digital media. The digital media is designed in such a way that the actions of the end user are necessary to let the media communicate with the user. In simpler words, to receive a free e-book, the user is required to fill out forms, which include their e-mail ID and other details, favoring the advertiser with the details of a valuable prospective customer.

Despite the numerous benefits, digital marketing has its own challenges. For instance, one of the key areas of concern is that digital marketing is highly dependent on the Internet. When the Internet is inaccessible, marketing is on the back foot; or if the connection is slow, the customers may not find it fruitful and it becomes time-inefficient process.

Digital Marketing Tactics

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the process of improving a website's visibility in the results of any search engine by improving the web traffic. SEO engages in creating fresh, user-friendly, and relevant information that search engines index provide when customers enter a search term that is relevant to the product or service sold. Companies cannot simply purchase better ranking in the web search engines as SEO is not a paid service; it requires the website to have frequently updated and quality content. This is one of the most effective ways for digital marketing.

The other forms of digital marketing include:

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Pay per click is a model of Internet advertising which charges advertisers when a user clicks on the advertisement or a specific link, which leads to the seller or the product. Google runs on of the most popular pay per click programs termed as ‘AdWords’. The advertisers pay a specific amount of money for each click received on their ad with the anticipation of having attracted a buyer. Pay per click is also known as cost per click (CPC).

Influencer Marketing

In this type of marketing, only specific types of individuals are targeted rather than targeting the market as a whole. The potential buyers are identified by the online market and the marketing is oriented around these individuals to influence them to buy the product or service.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing targets the use of social media websites and platforms to promote and support products and services. The majority of the social media platforms own built-in data analytics tools, which allows companies to track the progress, engagement, and success of ad campaigns.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is the act of sending emails to potential buyers informing them about the product and services. It is a commercial message sent to an individual or a group of people in bulk with the aim of influencing them. It is usually sent to a current customer or a purchase lead list. The email also aims to improve the seller’s relationship with the current or previous customer.

Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Message Service (MMS)

SMS and MMS are considered as a direct marketing technique in the digital marketing field. This type of marketing promotes information to the customers with location and time sensitive way. The information can be personalized and can reach the targeted individual in real time. SMS consists of text messages while MMS can consist of both text and multimedia. 

Digital marketing covers every mode of marketing activities delivered through digital channels such as search engines, websites, social media, email, mobile apps and many more.

Advent

Today, people spend twice as much time online as they used to a decade ago. This change in the behaviour pattern of people across the globe has gradually lowered the dependence on offline marketing media and turned businesses towards various online platforms to increase visibility. Since, marketing is mostly about connecting with the audience at the right place and in the right time, currently, there seems to be no better medium that the internet.

Constituents

• Website

• Blog

• Ebooks and whitepapers

• Infographics

• Interactive tools

• Social media channels (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc.)

• Paid or earned online coverage (PR, social media, and reviews)

• Online brochures and look-books

• Branding assets (logos, fonts, etc.)

Tactics

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• Content Marketing

• Social Media Marketing

• Pay-per-Click (PPC)

• Native Advertising

• Marketing Automation

• Online PR

• Email Marketing

The growing popularity of social media platforms has urged businesses around the world to devise strategies to grab attention among the users and thus, pave the way for brand recognition.

In addition, an optimal SEO strategy plays a key role in the enhancement of a brand’s recognition. Many brands have structured the content on their website by the incorporation of keywords that increase the probability of their website to become a top result in the event of a search on an engine.

With the exponential rise in digital platforms, digital marketing campaigns are becoming more prevalent and efficient. And digital marketers are bound to have a clear picture of how each asset or tactic should be exploited to support their overarching goals.