With the ever-increasing accessibility of the internet and other online services, it’s no wonder that digital marketing has become a must for all types of businesses. It doesn’t matter if you’re a product- or service-based provider — if you want to grow your business by expanding your reach and gaining more leads, you’ll need to consider hiring the best digital marketing agency for a basic understanding of what digital marketing is and why it’s important.
Here’s a beginner’s guide to digital marketing to help you get started.
What is digital marketing?
In a nutshell, digital marketing is basically the act of promoting and advocating a certain product or service by leveraging online marketing tactics to connect with customers and leads.
Traditionally, digital marketing referred to the marketing efforts a marketer performs using social media, websites, e-mails, and search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo). In today’s world, however, digital marketing can also refer to video content, online games, and even conversations between friends.
Digital marketing has replaced most traditional marketing strategies because it’s designed to accommodate the needs and preferences of today’s market and users.
Nowadays, most purchasing decisions begin online. Therefore, marketers and advertisers have had to reinvent their marketing techniques to draw more attention in the industry.
Effective digital marketing strategies put a brand or a company in all the places their customers or followers are hanging out. It allows you to connect directly with them, without actually needing to leave your office or building.
Why is digital marketing important?
Digital marketing is one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing available today. It gives companies the most amount of flexibility in their marketing efforts without requiring such a huge sacrifice of resources on the business owner’s end. Plus, it helps companies reach a wider and more varied audience as opposed to traditional tactics.
Besides that, there are a couple of other benefits to gain from digital marketing. Here are the three most common advantages of digital marketing:
Customized and Targeted Promotions
Traditional marketing offered marketers and advertisers very little control over who sees their ads and who doesn’t. And while the notion “the more the merrier” may sound appealing to most people, releasing ads and promotional material to an audience that wouldn’t respond to your prompts the way you’d expect them to can quickly become a money hole.
With digital marketing, you can skip the whole process of wasting precious resources on audiences that don’t care about what you’re selling. No more racking up fake emails made by email generators. Now, you can directly communicate to prospects who are interested in your products or services.
More Comprehensive Metrics and Analytics
Another great thing about digital marketing is that it can give you a comprehensive view of (almost) all the metrics that are essential to your business or company. A couple of examples are shares, customer impressions, views, clicks, as well as the amount of time a customer spends on a specific web page or social media feed.
Real-Time Results
Unlike traditional marketing (which typically took days or weeks to analyze interpret data), digital marketing allows businesses to gather accurate information and analytics in real-time. This makes it easier for marketers to improve or recalibrate their efforts to find the most optimal way they can use their resources and leverage their assets. Additionally, you can quickly measure marketing ROI to see which strategies are working and which are not.
Types of Digital Marketing
Types of Digital Marketing
As mentioned earlier, there are several types of digital marketing. Below are a couple of examples of digital marketing tactics and channels that are popular among businesses.
Search Engine Optimization
You’ve probably heard of search engine optimization (SEO) before, but just in case you haven’t — SEO is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher in search engines results pages (SERPs). Channels that benefit from SEO are blog posts, websites, and even social media posts.
Content Marketing
Creating and marketing high-quality content is a great way to capture and retain your customer’s attention and build brand awareness. It’s an effective way to keep your customers informed about new products and services. Additionally, it’s an easier way to answer common questions and concerns, so you can collectively solve issues that are being experienced by many.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing refers to any content shared on a business’s social media to promote its services, products, and other activities. It’s a way to gain more traffic, attract new customers, and retain loyal customers. It’s also a great way to strengthen brand awareness.
An estimated 17% of consumers actively use social media to look for information and data about a business. If you still haven’t built yourself a respectable online presence, now might be a good time to start.
Affiliate Marketing
The best example of a business that effectively uses this type of digital marketing technique is Amazon.com. The company makes millions upon millions of dollars through its affiliate marketing programs.
If you haven’t heard of affiliate marketing yet, it’s a performance-based technique where a marketer receives a commission from a company for promoting their services or products.
Sponsored Content
Influencer marketing is a type of sponsored content marketing wherein a brand pays an entity (a.k.a. The influencer) to promote their service or product to their viewers/followers. Said influencer is then compensated for the results that are gained from this digital marketing tactic. Sponsored content can come in a variety of forms, such as social media posts, blog posts, and even online videos.
Is Digital Marketing for Me?
Now that you’ve come to know a little more about digital marketing and its benefits, you might be asking yourself:
Is digital marketing for me/my business?
And the answer is: YES!
Digital marketing can work for absolutely any business in any industry. So long as you have the right digital marketing strategy in place.
Regardless of the services or products that your company sells; if your goal is to draw more attention to your brand and promote your products to a wider set of customers, you’ll definitely need digital marketing.
