Since the advent of the internet, a lot of different methods of promoting a business, its products or services have been introduced through the use of online marketing. And that is the reason that we witness more ads on the internet than in real life. Marketers are diverting their focus on digital marketing and are working on creating a foolproof digital marketing strategy for their business. So in this race of who gets more leads and customers through the internet, no business should be left behind. Therefore, if you want to know everything about digital marketing, then refer to the guide below:
Intro to Digital Marketing
The primary purpose of marketing is to connect with your audience at the right time and in a right place. And in the modern era of today, it means that you need to connect with people where they spend most of their time; the internet. Simply put, digital marketing is any form of marketing that is done online.
Defining Digital Marketing
Digital marketing can be defined as the use of various digital tactics and channels for the purpose of connecting with customers and potential customers as virtually everybody spends their time online. From the business’s website to all the way to different online branding assets like digital advertising, online brochures, email marketing and beyond there is a broad spectrum of tactics that are included under digital marketing.
Tactics and Examples of Digital Marketing
Digital marketers who are best in marketing know how each digital marketing campaign will support their goals. And they make a larger campaign through both paid and free channels depending on their digital marketing strategy’s goals.
For instance, a content marketer can write a series of blog posts that will serve the purpose of generating leads through a new eBook that the business has recently launched. Then the social media marketer of the company can help to promote these blog posts with the help of organic and paid posts on the social media account of the business. Also, the email marketer can create an email campaign to send more information on the company to those who download the eBook.
Role of a Digital Marketer?
Digital marketers are in charge of increasing brand awareness and generating leads through every digital channel including both paid and free that are at the disposal of the company. These channels may include the website of the company, social media, search engine ranking, display advertising, company’s blog and email etc.
Digital marketing is carried out through several roles today. In a small company, one generalist might use many digital marketing tactics that are described above. In larger companies, these tactics might be used by several marketing specialists where each specialist focuses on one or two of the channels of the brand.
Can Digital Marketing Work for any Business?
Yes! It can work for virtually any business in any industry. Regardless of what a company sells, digital marketing involves building out the personas of the buyer to identify the need of the audience and thus creating valuable online content on its basis. However, that is not to say that this digital marketing strategy should be implemented by all businesses.
Business to Business (B2B) Digital Marketing
If your company operates business to business (B2B), then your online marketing efforts might be centered on the online lead generation with the end goal of getting the audience to speak to a sales person. For that reason, the main goal of your digital marketing strategy should be to attract and then convert the finest quality of leads for the salespeople through your company’s website and other supporting online marketing channels.
And beyond your website, you may probably choose to divert your attention to the online marketing channels focusing on businesses like LinkedIn where your audience spends most of its time.
Business to Consumer (B2C) Digital Marketing
If your company is based on Business to Consumer model then depending on the price of your products, it is more likely that the primary goal of your online marketing efforts might be to attract people to your business’s website and making them your customers without even getting them to talk to a salesperson.
So for that reason, you are probably less likely to focus on generating leads and more likely to pay attention to building a great buying experience from the moment they come to your website to the moment they make a purchase. This will mean that your product should be featured higher up in the marketing funnel than it might be in the B2B business, and you may need to use a very strong call to actions.
For Business to Consumer companies, different channels like Pinterest and Instagram can often be of more value than the business-focused platforms like LinkedIn.
Benefits of Digital Marketing
Unlike most of the offline marketing efforts, online marketing enables the marketers to get accurate results in real time. If you have ever put an advertisement in the newspaper, you will know how hard it is to know how many people went to the page where your ad is displayed and paid attention to it. So there is no surefire way to determine if the newspaper ad was responsible for any sales or not.
On the other hand, with the digital marketing, you can calculate the ROI of pretty much every aspect of your digital marketing efforts. Here are some examples:
Website Traffic
With digital marketing, you can easily see the exact amount of people who viewed the homepage of your website in real time through the digital analytics software that is available in marketing platforms including Google Analytics.
You can even see how many pages they visited and what type of device they were using, you can also see where they came from and many other things.
Content Performance & Lead Generation
Suppose you have created a brochure of a product and posted it in the letterboxes of people. That brochure, however offline, is a form of content. But the problem is that you have no idea how many people will open your brochure and how many will throw it in the trash.
Now suppose if you have that brochure on the website of your business instead. You can measure exactly how many people came to that page and viewed your brochure. You can then collect the contact details of those people who downloaded it by using the forms. So this way, not only you are measuring the engagement of people but you are also generating high-quality leads when people download it.
Attribution Modeling
An effective digital marketing strategy that is combined with the right marketing technologies and tools will enable you to trace all of your sales back to the customer’s first digital interaction with your business.
This is called as attribution modeling and it enables businesses to identify trends in the way people do research and then buy a business’s product. This helps businesses make more informed and calculated decisions about the parts of their digital marketing strategy that deserve more attention and the parts of digital marketing strategy that need refining.
How Long will it Take to See Results From a Content?
With a proper digital marketing strategy, it often feels like you will be able to see the results much faster than the offline marketing due to the fact that it is easier to measure the ROI with online marketing. However, it ultimately comes down to the scale and effectiveness of the digital marketing strategy.
If you spend some time in building comprehensive buyer personas to identify the needs of the audience and then focus on creating a quality online content to get the potential customers to come to your website and make a purchase, then you are likely to witness some strong results within the first six months.
If the paid advertising is a part of your digital marketing strategy, then the results will come even quicker. But it is recommended to build an organic reach using valuable content, social media and SEO for long-term success.
Does Digital Marketing Require Big Budget?
Just like any other thing, it all really comes down to what elements of the digital marketing you are looking to add in your digital marketing strategy.
If you are focusing on the inbound techniques like social media, SEO and content creation for an existing website then the good news is that you will not need a big budget at all. With the inbound marketing, your core focus will be on creating high quality and valuable content that will appeal to your audience, and if you are planning to outsource the content creation work, then the only investment that you will be needing is of your time.
With the outbound techniques like purchasing email list or online advertising, there are going to be some expenses for sure. And the cost will come down to the kind of visibility that you want to achieve through the advertising.
For instance, to implement the PPC (Pay-Per-Click) using the Google Adwords, you will have to bid against other companies that are in your industry to come to the top of the search results of Google for the keywords that are related to your business. And depending on the competitiveness of the keyword, this can be affordable or too expensive and that is the reason that you should be focusing on building the organic reach as well.
Final Words
Now that you know virtually everything about why digital marketing should be done, why it is a more viable approach than offline marketing and how a digital marketing strategy works, you should start thinking about promoting your products or services through online marketing.