Mar 16, 2023 | 3 min read
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing refers to the dynamic range of marketing efforts that are executed on electronic devices, such as computers, smartphones, and tablets. Also recognized as online marketing, this approach is frequently utilized by marketing experts to convey promotional messages pertaining to a brand's products or services. In pursuit of enhancing their brand awareness and profitability, businesses harness diverse digital channels, including social media, search engines, email, text messages, and multimedia communication, to connect with their prospective customer base. This contemporary marketing approach is often juxtaposed against traditional marketing channels like billboards, direct mail, or magazine ads. Television, which was once considered a broadcast marketing channel, is now deemed a form of traditional marketing.
A recent survey revealed that approximately 89% of Americans access online content at least once a day, with 26% to 31% being almost perpetually online . These figures conclude that, with a significant number of Americans having access to online content, marketers are now placing paramount importance on creating their online advertising presence. This is achieved through website development, social media engagement, and communication through texts, emails, or multimedia messaging.
As the relevance of digital marketing has surged, marketers have devised several strategies and trends to lure in a larger customer base. These tactics encompass creating a distinct brand, offering exceptional customer service, fostering brand loyalty, and continually expanding their customer outreach.
Why is digital marketing important?
Any type of marketing, whether traditional or digital, is done with the intent to help your business thrive and grow. Marketing trends change as per the current scenarios, and at present, marketing is the need of the hour. Digital marketing channels are easily accessible and marketers are coming up with different tactics to communicate with their target audience.
In contrast to conventional marketing techniques, digital marketing necessitates nominal upfront costs, rendering it a financially prudent marketing approach for both startups and established businesses. In today's era, virtually every brand has established its online presence, through a website or social media handles, with the intention of amplifying its brand recognition. Furthermore, contemporary consumers are heavily reliant on digital content to educate themselves about brands or conduct online purchases. By opening up a plethora of opportunities, digital marketing has become an arena of endless possibilities, and marketers are constantly innovating and experimenting with different marketing tactics.
Benefits of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing has many other advantages in addition to expanding your customer outreach and boosting your brand value:
- Global Outreach
Brands benefit from a broader geographical reach by posting their ads online. This helps your business connect with a larger audience.
- Cost Efficiency
Digital marketing carries a nominal cost when compared to traditional marketing. The overhead costs for a magazine, television, or newspaper ad are much higher than posting an ad online. Plus, you also can also control the visibility.
- Faster Reach
Traditional marketing channels like a magazine or newspaper ad may reach your target audience only after a specific time, but an online ad can reach the target audience at lightning speed.
- Easier Personalization
Most brands incorporate AI to gather customer data and personalize online ads. Offline marketing techniques are incapable of doing so.
- One-on-One Communications
Digital marketing allows you to communicate with potential customers on a personalized level. Customers’ level of engagement in your brand increases as they feel important and valued, thereby boosting your brand loyalty.
Types of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing campaigns help to target customers and get the best sales figures. Here are the various channels that fall under this umbrella.
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short is the process of getting maximum user traffic from various search engines tools like Bing or Google. This can be done by incorporating some important keywords in your web content, articles, or blogs. Google or Bing read these keywords and places your website amongst the top searches in the search results. As your website ranks higher, there is more probability of potential customers clicking on your site first. Marketers use this tactic to make their content SEO optimized, thereby increasing their web traffic.
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Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC):
Pay-per-click (PPC) services are an exemplary method of digital marketing. It involves monetary compensation from marketers or advertisers each time a visitor clicks on their advertisement, making it a highly cost-effective marketing strategy. Advertisers are only charged if a user clicks on their ad, enabling them to optimize their marketing budget. PPC is extensively utilized in search engine advertising, wherein advertisers pay for their ad placement in the search engine's sponsored links. Thus, when a prospective customer searches for a relevant keyword, the advertisement is displayed in the sponsored links, providing advertisers with an opportunity to acquire leads. This innovative marketing approach essentially enables you to 'purchase' website visits, resulting in a potentially higher conversion rate.
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higher conversion rate.
Social media marketing is a cutting-edge technique that involves leveraging social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and others as powerful digital marketing channels. Advertising on these platforms provides an unparalleled opportunity to reach a broader audience and connect with potential customers. Numerous brands solely rely on social media platforms to establish their online presence and promote their products or services. However, different social media platforms have varying user demographics, and therefore, must be approached with specific targeting strategies. For instance, Instagram is ideal for reaching out to a younger demographic, while Facebook is often more effective for engaging with an older audience.
The efficacy of social media marketing can be attributed to its high conversion rates, as even simple actions like comments, shares, or likes can lead to a significant boost in lead generation. Additionally, social media provides an ideal platform to deliver personalized messages to specific target audiences, thereby allowing brands to restrict viewership to particular groups. By capitalizing on the potential of social media marketing, businesses can achieve unparalleled reach, engagement, and conversion rates.
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Video Marketing:
In the contemporary fast-paced world, concise and visually stimulating videos have emerged as a powerful means of attracting a broad audience. With people increasingly shying away from long-form articles or blogs, videos have emerged as a more effective and engaging medium to deliver information. Moreover, the visual nature of videos makes them more memorable than text or images alone. Brands have capitalized on this trend by creating engaging and informative short videos that convey their brand's message in a compelling manner. Educational and informative videos provide customers with insights into the benefits of using their products or services, while humor or emotionally evocative content can create a more engaging and immersive experience for viewers.
A staggering number of around 2 billion individuals watch short videos on YouTube each month, thereby providing brands with a vast audience to reach out to. Additionally, an overwhelming majority of customers, approximately 91%, prefer video demonstrations to learn about the features of a product or service. This has led to a sharp increase in brands' investments in video content, enabling them to enhance customer engagement and achieve higher search engine rankings.
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Content Marketing
Content marketing is the use of valuable and informational content like how-to-videos, blogs/articles, or instructional manuals to deliver useful information about products or services. This type of information is sought by customers who are intrigued by your brand and have some queries. Content marketing helps to generate leads and drive conversions. Most brands publish quality content regularly on their digital channels with the intention to educate and update their target audience. Content can be directly or indirectly related to their products or services. By adding quality content regularly, you become a trusted portal where audiences visit to get the latest updates and information on industry trends.
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Affiliate Marketing
An affiliate marketing model entails a company compensating third-party publishers to help generate traffic or leads to their products or services. The third-party publishers are affiliates who get a commission fee for any successful conversion because of their marketing tactics. Firms pay affiliates most commonly per sale and less frequently per click. Affiliate marketing is further categorized into unattached, involved, and related affiliate marketing . Affiliates promote your product or service on the digital medium for a commission pre-fixed by you. They represent your brand and convey your brand’s message loud and clear.
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Email Marketing
Many brands invite customers to join an email subscriber list where they send offers, new launches, clearance sale alerts, and more. Email marketing is a powerful and direct marketing channel that uses email to promote the brand’s services or emails. Apart from notifying the customers about the brand’s new product launches or sales, email marketing plays a significant role in lead generation, building brand awareness, and ensuring brand loyalty.
Marketers keep their customers engaged between purchases through different types of emails. Big companies send automated emails, while startups tend to send personalized emails.
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SMS Marketing
SMS and multimedia messaging are common types of text message marketing, out of which, SMS marketing is one of the earliest launched technologies in mobile. SMS marketing is still prevalent today as a more direct communication method between brands and customers. Brands also advertise their products and services via SMS or MMS (multimedia messages) marketing. Other forms of text messaging like WhatsApp messaging is a relatively newer mode of marketing as almost every customer is more responsive on WhatsApp than SMS currently.
On average, text message marketing ad has a 90% opening rate and a 45% conversion rate. It is read within 90 seconds after being received. SMS marketing does not require the internet and hence, brands send their promotional ads via SMS and multimedia channels to ensure that the customer gets their message regardless of their internet connectivity.
Digital marketing is vital for brand growth and should be a top priority for any marketing team. It allows businesses to stay connected with customers. It helps brands offer personalized services to boost loyalty. To stay ahead, it's important to keep up with the latest marketing trends in the dynamic online market.
So, if you are seeking the best digital marketing company to help you with your marketing needs, then Be Amazing Online should be your go-to option. Schedule a consultation to know more about our bespoke and cost-efficient services suitable for your target audiences.
Book an Appointment at http://www.beamazingonline.com/ to tie up with the best in the industry!