There are two types of people, or two types of business I would say:
- One who absolutely love digital marketing.
- Other who doesn’t know the real meaning and the power of digital marketing.
Yes, there is no business I have met who knows what digital marketing is and still hates it.
If you are of type 2 or someone who has little knowledge about digital marketing, in next 10-15 minutes you will know everything that is digital marketing.
In a study by Oberlo, it was found that 68% of marketers choose digital marketing as their first alternatives.
Now before anything, I would like to clear something which I tell to people who have ungodly expectations from online marketing.
It will be as good as your marketing team and marketing efforts.
Now coming to the topic,
What is Digital Marketing
For many people digital marketing is all about running ads online.
I beg to differ.
You will be surprised to know, that there is a whole lot more to digital marketing. Just for your reference, here is a famous skill chart by Buffer:
This, in the online community is referred to as the “T shaped Marketer”.
Basically it is a learning proforma which leads to success for a digital marketing professional.
But here it is to show you that marketing on online platforms requires knowledge of these many things.
And yes, going by the technicality that buffer chart is everything that is digital marketing.
But in simple language,
Digital Marketing is taking your complete business on online platforms and finding qualified leads for your business on the web using mediums such as a website, social media or running ads.
Yes. This is as simple as it can get.
Now finding lead and nurturing them can have a lot of implications. However now at least, you know what is digital marketing…
Components of Digital Marketing
As I have told earlier, Digital has a lot of components.
But for the sake of simplicity let us divide it in 6 parts.
These 6 parts are the core components of Digital Marketing.
- Web Development & Design
- Content Marketing
- SEO
- PPC
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
Web Development and Design
It takes about 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) for the user to decide whether they want to stay on the website based on its design and layout.
Website is the first point of contact between you and your target audience in the virtual world and they expect you to be professional.
Web design and web development are often used interchangeably but web design is just a subset of web development.
At GetDigitalOffice, we consider the following aspects while designing a web page.
- User Experience: less interstitial intrusions. Google hates it.
- SEO: recommended site structure to make it easy for google to crawl your website.
- CRO: layouts and pages based on data and research to provide you with most conversions.
- Mobile responsiveness: to make sure that your website works smoothly on mobile.
All these above mentioned factors are seen by Google as ranking factor.
If you have all these, your website is ready to get ranked on Google.
You are on next level now.
Content Marketing
Tell me what happens in a brick and mortar store?
You place the posters and banner of your product here and there and wait for your customer to come into the shop.
Online world is different.
And content marketing is where you enter the world of online marketing.
This is the dictionary meaning of Content Marketing, “a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.”
The definition is long but to the point.
Content Marketing is all about story telling along with solving your users problem.
You don’t go in front of your customer and pitch them your product or service, instead you put relevant content on your customer to help them.
Online world is all about creating goodwill. The more goodwill you have more leads you get and more successful you become.
If you have time, I seriously implore you to watch this documentary on Content Marketing…
SEO
SEO is the short form of Search Engine Optimization.
If you go on google and search ‘What is Digital Marketing’.
You get this,
About 2,76,00,00,000 results.
But on the front page only 10 results can appear.
How did Google decide that it will show these particular websites on top?
The answer is simple.
The site with a good SEO will rank on the top.
SEO is a process, owing to which you get targeted organic traffic on your website.
This traffic costs you nothing but has the highest ROI.
But the reason people do not go for SEO is that it takes time and still there is no guarantee that you will rank on top.
SEO is basically made up of three things:
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
- Technical SEO
On Page SEO is where you write awesome articles and optimize your webpage or blog to make it more readable for the user as well as the Googlebot.
Off Page SEO is where you take care of link building process and the website structure.
[The more links you get from authority and relevant website, more are your chances of ranking.]
Technical SEO is where you take care of your website speed, image optimization cutting excessive Java and CSS codes.
SEO is a vast topic, even if we talk basics.
PPC
Also known as Search Engine Marketing, PPC is the equivalent of putting banner ads on streets.
Only you are not putting the ads on street and you pay only when a user clicks on your ads.
Do you get this flexibility with traditional banner ads?
There are many types of PPC ads.
The most common type of ad is Search Advertising.
It is a fast forward way to appear on the top result for a user’s search query.
See an example:
I search for “Create a website” and these ads appear.
Have a look.
Email Marketing
For every dollar you spend on Emails, on average you get back $40.
This is not me making up random stats.
These are industry standards.
For me personally, Email Marketing stands second to SEO in terms of providing great ROI.
But according to research done in 2018, email marketing was ranked as the most effective channel for marketing.
Here are some interesting stats on email marketing (only if you are interested).
Here are the 3 broad steps of the entire email marketing process.
- Get permission
- Follow up with relevant and useful content.
- Analysis and Segmentation
Getting Permission
You can’t start sending emails to anyone you feel like.
If you do this, you will end up in spam, and ending up in spam means zero open rate, which converts to zero revenue.
You have to build your own email list if you want to succeed at email marketing.
To make people give you their emails, you have to provide them a lead magnet.
Lead magnet can be anything. Some common lead magnets are:
- Free Ebook
- Downloadable checklist
- Access to premium video
Follow up with relevant content
Now that you have got their email, you should never ever start pitching your product.
Just an analogy; you invited a guest into your house and as soon as he enters he starts selling.
How would you feel?
Just like anybody else….super irritated.
Rather you should use emails to provide relevant news, updates and information to your audience, and once in a while pitch your product.
Analysis
Analysis of the data collected during the email campaign is important. It will give us insights and patterns of customer behavior.
Social Media Marketing
Another part that comes under components of digital marketing is social media marketing. It basically implies the use of social media platforms to advertise your product and services in front of your audience.
Here are the major social platforms, in order of importance:
- YouTube
- Snapchat
Usually brands build social media not to sell their products but to form a personal connection with its target audience.
They use social media to find out what their customers are talking about the brand and what do they expect from them.
Conclusion
I hope that this article helped you in clearing the basics of digital marketing.
Just to refresh your mind, here are the main components you read about in this post.
- Web Design
- Content Marketing
- SEO
- PPC
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
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