With the evolution of time and technologies, there has been a massive change in the ways businesses approach customers. There’s a drastic shift as businesses have reduced the incorporation of traditional marketing and are shifting more towards digital marketing.
Digital marketing has become the foundation of businesses, and businesses are heavily investing in devising effective digital marketing strategies to grow customers and boost revenues.
In fact, according to research conducted by Smartsight, initially more than 50% of businesses used to incorporate traditional marketing, but with the advent of time, the graph has shifted to less than 30%.
This implies that more businesses are now gravitating towards digital marketing and it has become a new norm in their overall marketing strategy.
This article will walk you through what digital marketing is, its importance, and some compelling reasons why you should incorporate it into your overall marketing strategy.
What’s Digital marketing?
Digital marketing is also referred to as online marketing and it involves promotion of brands and services through the medium of internet to reach out to more potential customers.
It can be accomplished through a variety of channels, including search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing.
You can reach out to potential customers online using digital marketing. You can raise brand awareness while also generating leads and sales.
Digital marketing is important because it enables you to communicate with your target audience through the internet.
If you want to know in detail what is digital marketing? Do click here
What are the forms of Digital Marketing?
Here are the types of digital marketing:
1. Search Engine Optimization
Search engines help to boost the ranking of your website higher in search engine results by optimizing it. It can be done either through on-page SEO techniques, which comprise meta descriptions and website title tags, or through off-page SEO techniques, which comprise building backlinks for websites.
However, there’s no rule of thumb when it comes to website ranking in search engine results as Google’s algorithms constantly change, making it difficult to predict or implement a specific rule.
You have to assess the performance of your website page when incorporating SEO.
2. Content Marketing
Content marketing is a part of SEO and it involves imparting valuable content to target audiences to grow.
The primary goal of content marketing is to attract more leads and then convert those leads into customers. Content marketing is quite different from traditional marketing, as in traditional marketing, instead of attracting customers with appealing prospects of products and services, it’s done in the form of valuable content, where valuable and insightful content is imparted to audiences.
Content marketing writers are well versed in the curation of SEO optimized content to rank higher in search engine results while also ensuring delivery of engaging content to audiences. The engaging and appealing content attracts more readers who will read and interact with the brand further.
If done optimally and consistently, it can even help to build strong relationships with the audience.
3. Social media marketing
Social media marketing plays a vital role in spreading brand awareness, increasing traffic and engaging more people in online discussion.
Some of the prominent social media platforms are Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
Social media marketing involves built-in engagement metrics that help you understand how optimally you’re reaching your audience.
Once you analyze your target audience, you can easily engage them.
4. Pay Per Click Marketing
Pay Per Click Marketing, or PPC, is the process of placing ads on platforms and if any user clicks on them, you get paid for them.
Each PPC campaign has one or more target actions that viewers should take after clicking an ad.
You can assess the analytics to know how many reaches you have received and how many views have clicked on your ad and have converted into leads.
Once you analyze the conversion rates, you can either keep it monetary or non-monetary.
5. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing involves the promotion of products and services of others to make money. You can either be the promoter or have a business with the promoter to earn money.
It works on a revenue model where you are the affiliate and will receive the stipulated commission whenever any customer purchases the product that you have promoted.
If you are the merchant, you pay the affiliate for each sale they assist you in making.
Some affiliate marketers consider reviewing only one company’s products on third-party websites or blogs, while other affiliate marketers prefer having multiple or several merchant relationships.
6. Marketing Automation
Marketing automation involves software that can facilitate digital marketing campaigns and advertisements.
The marketing automation tools involve prospect engagement to deliver a specific message and decide how to contact them. Also, you can easily devise personalized marketing strategies for each customer.
7. Email Marketing
Email marketing is where you send promotional emails in the hope that your prospective audience clicks on them. It might sound super easy, but when it comes to execution, you have to play smart by creating desirable and appealing emails.
What are the benefits of Digital Marketing ?
Digital marketing is growing exponentially as it has several benefits such as;
1. Cost Efficient
Digital marketing is quite cost-efficient than traditional marketing as you don’t have to get involved in any newspaper ads, commercials, or television commercials and wouldn’t have to bear any expenses on them.
Instead, you just have to create appealing content to attract visitors, or you can set up different email marketing campaigns to convey messages to target customers, and you can easily change the content and schedule at your own call.
Digital marketing not only reaches a larger audience than traditional marketing, but it also costs
2. Personalization
In digital marketing, you can easily collect the precise data of customers and store it.
Let’s say you offer financial services and want to convey messages regarding offers to the people who have shown keen interest in your services.
You will devise two effective campaigns based on certain parameters of people such as age, interest, and many more. Once you analyze your target audiences you can devise the first campaign to target young families who are looking for life insurance products and the other campaign for entrepreneurs who can buy expensive financial schemes and retirement plans.
3. Better communication with customers
With digital marketing, you can easily communicate with your customers in real time.
If we consider social media marketing, your target audiences can view your latest posts and can even comment and share them. It’s great if you get more comments and shares on your posts related to businesses, as it will create more buzz and will eventually increase your visibility.
Furthermore, if you go more live on social media and find active participants, the odds of increasing engagement are high, which can later build strong brand loyalty.
4. Easy and more conversions
If you run ads online, the chances of customers taking action instantly after viewing your ads are higher. In traditional marketing, you will have to take phone calls when someone views your ad. People aren’t free all the time, and how would they call the company at a time when they are busy running errands, doing dishes, or working?
However, instead of making the process more tedious like in traditional marketing, people can easily click on the link or save the blog. They don’t have to make an immediate purchase but can keep in touch until they get the opportunity for further interaction.
Reasons why should you incorporate digital marketing in your business?
1. Most customers are online
With the evolution of technology and change in time, people can easily find out about your brand or company. Every other company has its own website and with the help of the internet, people can easily reach the company by checking its information online for contact.
The frequency of building a digital presence has grown tremendously in recent years, and with the ease of access to the internet, it has become easier.
2. Cost effective
Digital marketing is less expensive than traditional marketing. Spending money on traditional advertising is insufficient if your company has limited resources.
However, with digital marketing, your small business can begin the process right away. You only need to conduct some research before going with any form of digital marketing.
3. Better Return On Investment
Most companies believe in paid and free advertisements for better ROI. Since most customers can be found online, the odds of getting higher conversion rates after viewing the advertisements increase. It helps to boost the revenue, as if you can get your target audience, you can easily devise effective strategies to convert those leads into customers.
4. More customer engagement
Another reason to incorporate digital marketing is to build strong and effective relationships with your customers.
Customer service is an important aspect of digital marketing and it involves the custibation of relationships between marketers and customers by resolving their queries in regards to products and services, eventually converting them into repeat customers. You can get a high rate of customer retention by building strong relationships with them.
5. Generates high revenue
It’s quite relevant to say that if you get more conversion rates, you eventually end up generating more revenue.
How can digital marketing help to achieve business goals?
Digital marketing is a constantly changing field; it becomes crucial to keep updated with the latest trends and changes in the market to hold on to your customers.
Also, having an extensive reach on campaigns and doing effective campaigns while keeping an eye on your competitors can help your business grow a lot.
Conclusion
Digital marketing is essential for a business’s survival. If you want your business to grow, you must expose your brand to a larger audience. Digital marketing may appear intimidating at first, but if you take the time to learn about it, you’ll see that it has a lot of potential to help your company grow.
Author Bio:
Sagar Garg, Marketing Head at Renaissance College, a top college based in Indore, India, offering 74+ undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral degrees, integrated programmes, PG diplomas, diplomas, and certificate courses under its 11 schools. The mode of application for all the courses is online/ offline. The university offers courses in various disciplines of Management, Science, Arts, Law, Design, Agriculture, Communication & Journalism, Commerce, and Library Science.
