The Era of Digital Marketing

Nowadays, many of us are active either on Facebook or on Instagram. While we are scrolling through our timeline, we come across many posts about food, clothing, home décor, gadgets, and other goods and services. The past five years have changed radically how we find the newest device or can't live without service. Depending on your demographic, it might have changed even earlier than that.

Some businesses have found themselves the beneficiaries of social media because they, by using these channels, are constantly keeping themselves connected with their customers. Those businesses that decided to embrace this colossal change have been made possible only because of Digital Marketing.

The power of Digital Marketing has only been amplified during the pandemic. During this crisis period, a large number of businesses shifted their focus from physical stores to online activities. It worked as a catalyst making people learn about Digital Marketing with a sense of urgency.

Now, let's learn about Digital Marketing and its benefits.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing means getting a chance to promote your products and services by using digital channels. A few years back, we used analog or traditional platforms like newspapers, magazines, and display banners to advertise our products.

But, thanks to digital marketing, we are now enjoying the real value of our work by putting up advertisements on our websites or on Facebook Page. This has yielded for us more benefits for minimal efforts.

World-class brands, such as American Express, Nike, Dove, Ford, Dominos, Lego, etc, have successfully used digital marketing for their businesses.

Digital Marketing makes it possible for you to reach your clients when they browse through the internet. It allows you to create customized content and messages to pursue your target audience so that they may purchase your product and service.

The most significant advantage that you enjoy while using Digital Marketing is the opportunity to establish direct communication with your clients inclined to buy your products. And again, this total process is cost-effective.

Rewards of using Digital Marketing Strategies

You can start your digital marketing campaigns with a website, video, images, blogs, articles, online tools, social media pages, etc. There are many options available for you.

As a beginner, it may seem overwhelming, but gradually you will become used to it. To have a digital marketing strategy is a plus. But first, you need to understand how digital marketing can assist you to earn maximum benefit.

Brand Exposure Brands get good exposure about their products through their digital channels. It can create awareness and become reliable. A user can share updates, offers, and details about their products.

Economical Digital Marketing is less expensive than traditional marketing channels. Moreover, in a short time, you can reach more customers.

Acquire Target Audience You can target your potential customers based on keyword research or demographic information found in social media.

Engagement You can see and analyze how the customers interact with each post.

Analytics More and more people are opting for digital marketing because you can easily measure the customers' actions. You can run campaigns and measure the results in real-time.

Types of Digital Marketing

There are four main kinds of Digital Marketing.

If you are willing to start your business, you need to learn about Digital Marketing. The knowledge about Digital Marketing will help you not only to get a wider audience but also to stand out from your competition.

In this post, I will discuss the four types of Digital Marketing. The discussion will include strategies and benefits for each type so that you can choose the best one according to your needs.

Content Marketing

Content can be developed in different forms. It can be a text or any interesting audio and video clip. Engaging and informative blogs are regularly read by millions of users. The new trend is adding infographics to blogs and articles. It enhances the quality of your content.

You can upload photos of the events or achievements of your company. If you are trying to reach consumers on social media, catchy Facebook posts are of utmost importance. You have to consider your target audience while coming up with different content.

Content Marketing Strategies

You have to decide early on what type of content you will develop and where you will distribute them. It means that in the field of content marketing, you need to have a clear goal before giving a start.
To attract the attention of the readers or viewers, you have to understand their needs and interests. You should give their feedback a priority rather than sticking to what you said. There is no other way than to research and develop an understanding of your audience.
The type of content should be such that it can solve a problem or bring benefit for the readers. One good example can be the 'How to' articles and the YouTube tutorials.

Benefits of Content Marketing

Content Marketing is inexpensive.
You get the opportunity to entertain, educate and motivate your clients by developing different types of content.
You can consistently address the needs of a specific target audience.
The audience will view, like, comment, and share the content on different digital channels. As a result, you will be able to make revenue out of their actions as well as successfully promote your products to a wider audience. It cannot be accomplished while running a physical store, for it gives you only a specific location.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Next is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Many do not have a clear idea about the search engine optimization process.

Search Engine Optimization will take your website on the first page of the search results of Google. Thus, when a user looks for a product or service on Google, they will very likely find you. Google ranks the pages based on SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Strategies for Search Engine Optimization

Usually, when you add alt text to your images and videos, Google can easily recognize it. Alt text means a short description of the images and videos.
Again, keywords should be naturally used in the content. People make the mistake of stuffing keywords in the content to rank a website. But Google can easily identify keyword stuffing and can penalize your site.
It is recommended to carry out Keyword research so that it can match with the phrases consumers often use while searching for a product. Besides, good use of keywords can make the content more relevant and easier to read.
You can also add appropriate links to support your content.

Benefits of Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is a great way to increase organic traffic.
Google ranks a website based on certain criteria. If you find your website on top, it will be able to gain the trust of the consumers.
It enhances user experience because you are making the working on the website to improve it to get a place at the top.
You can use Google Analytics to view and understand your website's performance.

PPC (Pay- Per- Click)

PPC is another category where you pay money to Google to get your website shown at the top. It is called paid search advertising. Its result is obvious – when you open a website, you can see the content.

There are advertisements for different products at the sides of the page or top. Again, when we watch a YouTube video, we can see advertisements popping up at the beginning or in the middle of the video. These adverts fall under the paid category.

Usually, when a viewer clicks on the advertisement, money is added to your account. Hence this type of optimization is called Pay-per-Click. There are various kinds of PPC ads, such as search ads, paid social media ads, display ads, remarketing ads, video ads, sponsored Gmail ads, etc. Publishing ads through Facebook is also a kind of PPC.

Strategies for Pay-per-click

Most people use Google Adwords Campaign. They can take the help of Google Analytics to measure and track PPC.
You can choose whether your ads are shown to the local customers or to the global audience.
Both Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-click can operate together.

Benefits of PPC

You gain more control over the search results.
PPC brings immediate traffic to the website.
You get the option of retargeting a user who did not buy a product after viewing an advertisement on one platform. You can show the same ad to him on a different platform.

Social Media Marketing

Different small and medium businesses are seen on different social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Many also use Pinterest. These platforms deal with texts, images, and videos. On the other hand, a good number of people like to open up their YouTube channels to upload videos about their products and services.

Besides Tumblr, Tik Tok is also becoming popular with the youth. Furthermore, you can use social media to publish advertisements. You can set the target audience according to the customers' behavior, interest, and demographics to achieve the maximum reach to view the content and advertisement of your business.

Social media Marketing is intricate. It is not like handling your personal profile. Rather social media marketing requires planning, creative thinking, and determination.

Strategies for Social Media Marketing

Creating contests is a fun way to engage followers.
Share links to your website and offers in the bio section and in posts.
People eager to buy your products will like your social media' Lives' too. In Live, you can make announcements, share product details like price, material, and size, or any exciting news about your company.
Platforms like Facebook and Instagram have in-built tools to view analytics. You can consistently measure and track your campaigns' data. You will be able to predict the return from each campaign easily.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

It helps to create brand awareness. The posts of these digital channels can direct the viewers to go to the website. Hence the channels contribute to increasing the website's traffic and eventually the sales. The process results in higher lead generation and boosts conversion.
The primary purpose of using social media is to generate engagement of the customers. There are options to create events groups and to communicate with your clients.
There are businesses that use social media to answer the queries of the clients or solve their problems. It means social media becomes the platform to provide customer support. Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat are the messaging tools frequently used by people.
Another advantage of using social media is maintaining a schedule for the posts you share with your customers. It means you can plan ahead and identify when your customers are more active online. Based on that, you can set a schedule for the posts to be published. As a result, you get the chance to publish content at the right time and with incorrect frequency.
In many businesses, it is a requirement to run multiple advertisements at the same time. By using social media, you will be able to make changes to the advertisement campaigns and optimize them fully.

Learn about your competitors. You can go for research about how your competitors are implementing any campaign, engaging with their clients, and strategies for promoting products and services.
Above all, social media helps you to understand your strengths and weaknesses. These ideas about your performance and the competitors' strategies allow you to modify your techniques of social media marketing is required.

Alternative ways of Marketing

There are other options, like email marketing, mobile applications, voice recognition, viral marketing, affiliate marketing, etc., that you can explore.

You have to switch to digital marketing from traditional ones to find many loyal customers. Digital marketing will make it possible for you to serve a customer anywhere. So, build a strong presence of your brand and business with Digital Marketing.