What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing refers to using digital channels, devices and platforms to build, and promote your marketing message. Channels such as social media, mobile applications, email, websites, web applications, and search engines. Online marketing has seen significant periods of growth in the last couple of years. According to Forbes, U.S. digital marketing spend will be $120 billion by 2021. There are two main pillars of digital marketing i.e. online marketing and offline marketing.
Online marketing has several categories such as content marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, social media marketing, affiliate marketing and email marketing. Here is a step by step guide to understand digital marketing.
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Content Marketing
There is a famous saying that “Content is King”. It is an online marketing strategy to create and distribute valuable content to focused audiences. 70% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing according to HubSpot. Marketing is impossible without great content and storytelling. It includes photos, videos, whitepapers, website content, blogs, infographics, vlogs, webinars, guides, and much more. Having a superb content marketing strategy on your website and blogs will help you organically rank higher on search engines. It will help to increase your customer loyalty and sales.
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Search Engine Marketing(SEM)
It is a process of online marketing in which businesses use both paid and unpaid efforts to show their ads on SERP(search engine result pages). It is also known as PPC (pay per click). In search engine marketing, advertisers bid on keywords that users are searching on Google, Bing, and Yahoo to find their desired product or services. Google Ads is by far the most popular paid search ad platform but advertisers use Bing and Yahoo search ads as well to gain visibility on search engines. The foundation of search engine marketing is Keywords. You will have to do comprehensive research on targeted keywords. There are free and paid keyword research tools you can use to find focused keywords for bidding. According to internet live stats, more than 4 billion searches are happening in a day. Search engine marketing will help you to get more visibility and will increase your chances of being in front of your customers. Hence it will increase your sales and revenue in the end.
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Search Engine Optimization(SEO)
In 2020, the number of bloggers is expected to reach 31.7 million. A new blog post is being published every 0.5 seconds. SEO is an art of ranking higher on search engine result pages organically. It is a process of optimizing content through focused keywords so that search engines would like to show it on the top of the page. There are three types of SEO i.e Onpage, Technical SEO, and OFF Page. Onpage SEO factors include domain, URL, title tag, meta description, meta keywords, alt tag, keyword density, and a functional website. You can read more about SEO here. Off-Page SEO includes internal and external linking. High-quality backlinks provide authority to your website. Internal links keep visitors on the website for a longer time. Technical SEO helps with crawling, indexing, and rendering phase of your website. In the end, SEO will increase your chances of ranking higher on search results.
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Social Media Marketing(SMM)
This category of online marketing is used to gain customers and promote your products and services on social media platforms. SMM includes all social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, WhatsApp, Yelp, TikTok, and Snapchat. Facebook has 2.37 billion active users. Instagram , owned by Facebook has 1 billion active users. Social media platforms allow users to interact with each other and build communities online. The world of social media is incredibly changing. Paid ads on all social media platforms help you to be in front of your prospects. Your content must be engaging so that people want to share it. Unique content can be anything from tweets on Twitter, Facebook posts, Instagram photos, and so on. The more users are engaging with your content and sharing it on social media platforms will help you increase your brand awareness and boost conversions.
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Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a process of earning money through a commission by selling products online. It is one of the most used categories of digital marketing to attract and gain more customers. Today, 15% of digital advertising revenue is coming from affiliate marketing. It is performance-based marketing either by acquiring more customers or getting a sale of your product. Affiliate marketing spend will reach 8.2 billion in 2022. There are three parties in this process. A person/business is willing to sell their product/services, advertisers/affiliates(people who are going to generate leads), and consumers. Affiliates will get leads for your business through SEO, Pay per click, and Facebook ads. It is up to you to decide how much commission your affiliates will be getting in return for leads. There are companies like Amazon affiliate program, ClickBank, ShareASale, and so on to look for credible affiliates. It will help you build your business and earn leads in the long run.
- Email Marketing
It is a practice of sending content to a list of subscribers with the intent of informing, educating, increasing website traffic, and selling your products/services. The number of active email users is expected to reach 4.3 billion in 2023. Participants must subscribe to your email list before you target them. Your newsletter should offer something valuable to customers before they even open it and take any action on it. Effective newsletters with personalized images, responsive design, and an appropriate call to action attract prospects to take action on your email in their busy inboxes.
Digital marketing is all about connecting with your audience in the right place at the right time. Businesses leverage online marketing to attract customers through the above-mentioned categories. The best digital marketer will have a clear picture of how to use the platforms to attract and convert prospects online.
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