Digital Marketing for Dummies

Digital Marketing or Online Marketing has become a revolutionary part of our daily lives. It is all around us and evolving day by day. It not only helps millions of businesses to flourish around the world, but it also makes the lives of customers hassle free. It has become so convenient for people to buy products and services in just one click without stepping out of the house. Digital Marketing aims at promoting things and providing customers through the platforms where maximum people these days spend their time- the Internet!

The formulation of strategies to build a lasting digital connection with consumers by knowing the various forms of Digital Marketing can be a huge benefit for small business owners or even customers to find what they are looking for. Let's talk about the different components of Online Marketing:

Blogging- This is the easiest and the best way to promote your business online. You can easily make a blog about your company and the products. You can target a particular set of audience and increase customers. You can quickly provide details about anything new or any offers directly to the customers and make new ones. Many free blogging platforms are available online. Some of them are Blogger, Medium, Wordpress and Wix.

Content/Affiliate Marketing- You can provide the information about your product, deals and offers in the form of content. The content can be attractive and impressive to influence customers and increase sales. You can provide product links in between your content to make the customers reach the product/services through that content, also enabling content managers to earn a profit. Many e-commerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart offer affiliate membership for people to be able to sell their products and earn a commission.

 

Search Engine Optimization-If you want a lot of traffic on your blog you can efficiently use search engines to help you. For example, if a customer is looking for something, he/she will probably search it on Google. With the help of proper keywords, you can reach the top of the Google search page and immediately attract the person to your website/blog. Hence, it is advisable and beneficial to build your website according to Google guidelines and attract maximum visitors. These keywords and guidelines are free and need not pay search engines for the same. These are also known as organic search.

 

Search Engine Marketing-Often associated with PPC (Pay Per Click), it is the paid services taken by several businesses to increase customer reach. Companies pay to buy keywords to appear at the top in search results on multiple platforms. Through a bidding process, various companies are given a chance to acquire specific keywords related to their products and appear at the top of the search to customers who are searching for those keywords during that period of time. It gives a fair chance to different companies with the same products to be able to compete and attract customers. Google AdWords and Bing searches are some of the examples of search engine marketing.

 

Social Media Marketing- It is a very vital part of online marketing as most people all around the world spend their maximum time on social media. Businesses here can promote themselves, build new customers, plan and monitor the ongoing company presence on social media and also find out what users think about their products/services. It can be very beneficial for business. You can place ads on various social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest.

 

Google AdWords- Whenever you read a blog or a website, you come across different ads. These are paid services offered by Google to various businesses. Any person interested in opting for this feature can use it to attract visitors to their websites/blogs. Many suitable websites offer ads and people pay Google to display the ad of their website/blog and target more and more audiences. You can advertise on these websites in various ways like Text Ads, Image Ads, GIF Ads, Web Banner Ads, Sponsored Search, Video ADS and Pop-up Ads, etc.

 

Apps Marketing- You can either develop apps for your products and services or advertise your products and services on various apps. Internet these days is full of small to large scale companies offering apps for people to access their products and services. Apps are a convenient and essential part of a person's life and the majority of people install apps for mostly all their needs. It again is an intelligent way of attracting more and more customers digitally.

 

YouTube Marketing- YouTube is the second largest search engine in present times because of which there is a lot of traffic on YouTube. Ads are placed in between the videos or at the beginning and end by various companies to promote themselves and attract customers. Not only the companies but also the video publishers who allow ads on their videos are monetarily benefitted by the same.

 

Email Marketing-Companies access a large number of customers through email in one click only. They can provide details about your products/services, highlight the discounts or sale and also inform them about various offers. They can place the link to their website/blog and attract more and more people to increase sales. Different email marketing tools like Sender and Mailchimp are used for the same.

 

Digital Marketing Analytics: Once you have employed the digital marketing strategies and practiced different platforms, you need to find out if the current online marketing strategies are profitable for your business; otherwise, you may enhance the marketing plan.  Measure the performance of digital marketing efforts using a variety of Web analytics tools (Google Analytics, WebTrends, etc.) Acquire insight into online marketing trends and keep strategies up-to-date. You can use them to see what customer base it accesses in which region.

 

Customer Experience Platforms: Customer experience management (CEM or CXM) is the collection of processes and tools a company uses to track, oversee and organize every interaction between a customer and the organization throughout the customer lifecycle. Some of the tools that enable enterprises to monitor and manage the interaction points are Sitecore and Adobe Experience Manager.

 

Digital Marketing opens a lot of earning opportunities for people working in this genre. Positions like Executives, Experts, Assistants and Digital Marketing Managers are in huge demand. Digital Marketing opens endless possibilities for budding businesses to flourish. Having expertise in the same can help many people earn high salaries. Overall, it's a knowledgeable and exciting concept and benefits the complete circle from entrepreneurs to digital marketers to customers in need.