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 ever-changing online industry to drive brand success in a virtual world, albeit with real pro?ts.
We are in a time of 24/7 connectivity, on an average Indian user 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 the utmost. It is your best and most vital marketing asset! It's not dif?cult to believe that a company’s credibility is always judged by the way the website and interactions on it are built. However, it's not just enough to have a website – it needs to be fast to hold customer attention, it needs to be secure (especially if you have forms to ?ll with contact information), it needs to be responsive as over 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 optimized for search engine optimization.
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 traf?c 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 website traf?c comes from search engines like Google? That is why SEM is very important to every business that has an 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 every day. It ensures that you stay on top of their mind. You can
retarget your customers on many platforms but Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linked In 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. 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 ?rst thing in the morning and by being consistent 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 with you online. For example, you ask your website visitor to ?ll 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 (Arti?cial 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.