what-is-digital-marketing? Online marketing success stories can sometimes leave a small business owner wondering if it would really work for them. What if you don’t have a website — can you still reach customers online? What about online-only companies? Fear not. With all the online marketing options available, one (or more) is likely to help almost any business Marketing has always focused on reaching and connecting with the right audience at the right time with the right message. In this digital era, you need to connect with them where they are already spending most of their time, which is the Internet.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing involves enabling sales of products or services through online channels such as Search Engines, Social Networks, Emails, Websites, Mobile Applications, or any other online channel.
In simple terms, digital marketing uses the Internet as a primary channel to promote or sell products or services.
You may also encounter various similar terms such as Internet Marketing, Online Marketing, Web Marketing, etc.; these are all synonyms of Digital Marketing.
Let’s dive deeper into the meaning of Digital Marketing. To understand this, you need to break down both terms separately – Digital and Marketing.
The term “Digital” hails from Science & Engineering. Anyone with a background in Science education knows that there are two types of signals – Digital and Analog. Most electronic integrated circuits communicate using digital signals only, employing finite binary values such as 0 and 1.
On the other hand, “Marketing” belongs to Commerce & Management studies. It consists of a business activity performed to increase sales or to promote any product or service. Different authors have various definitions of marketing, but all agree that marketing enables sales.
Combining both terms, we can state that – “Digital Marketing is a method of selling and promoting products or services using digital devices.”
Why is Digital Marketing Important?
Digital Marketing can solve many challenges associated with traditional marketing. Some core features and benefits of digital marketing include:
Thanks to affordable Internet and Mobile technology, digital marketing has a wider reach compared to other traditional marketing channels like Print Media, Radio, or Television. People are spending more time on Social Networking sites than ever before, consuming a majority of video content on YouTube and Facebook. Internet content has become people’s first choice.
You can conduct exact targeting ad campaigns aimed only at the audience most likely to purchase your product or service. Digital marketing is more cost-effective than traditional marketing due to better targeting. Now, you can target based on demographics, gender, interests, behavior, etc.
Digital marketing campaigns are editable in nature, unlike traditional marketing campaigns. With digital marketing, you can easily edit any content of your Ad or modify your targeting at any point in time. This adaptability saves a lot of money as you can change the campaign in real-time if it’s not performing as expected.
Analytics enables you to measure the performance of your campaigns. With digital marketing, you can see the exact number of people who visited your website along with many other metrics such as traffic source, bounce rate, sessions, and time spent on the website. You can even analyze the ROI (return on investment) easily.
Types of Digital Marketing
1.Search Engine Optimization (SEO): This is a type of inbound marketing where you optimize your website to rank higher on Search Engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. By achieving a better rank on search engine results pages, you can increase organic website traffic, which can further lead to increased business sales. There are various approaches to SEO such as – Onpage SEO, Offpage SEO, Technical SEO, Local SEO, Voice SEO, etc.
2.Social Media Marketing (SMM): This involves promoting your brand on various social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. The ultimate goal is to spread brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, and generate leads for your business. Important metrics related to social media marketing include Reach, Engagement, Impressions, and Applause rate.
3.Online Advertising: This is a paid medium of marketing where advertisers pay a platform to promote or sell a product or service. Various digital platforms offer Online Advertising, with the most popular being Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Online Advertising is a type of outbound marketing where an advertiser tries to reach the audience to fulfill a particular goal. The goals are majorly divided into three segments – Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion.
4.Email Marketing: Emails are a traditional way of communicating with the audience. You can use them to share newsletters, promote content, events, discount offers, and even to increase website traffic. Email marketing is one of the best marketing forms to engage your audience and even delight them. Common email campaign examples include blog newsletter subscriptions, customer signup/welcome emails, follow-up emails, holiday wishes emails, promotional discount emails, and customer nurturing emails.
By understanding and leveraging these digital marketing channels, businesses can effectively reach their target audience, increase engagement, and achieve their marketing goals.
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