Everything You Need to Know about Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is a popular catchword among marketers, enabling them to leverage digital channels to maximize leads and increase brand presence. We have backed this blog with relevance and explained everything about digital marketing you need to know!

Do you know that by 2021, marketing leaders will spend 75% of their total marketing budget on digital marketing only? Why so? Because with online marketing, they can reach a global audience easily and cost-efficiently.

Digital marketing, also known as internet marketing and online marketing is affordable, flexible, and engaging. With time, it has taken over traditional marketing with its popularity and proven success. Today, even leading, small and mid-sized businesses are finding better competition, improved brand awareness, and increased engagement via internet marketing only.

What Is Digital Marketing and How Does It Work?

Many expert marketers know what digital marketing is but get anxious when asked to explain to others. Digital marketing is all about online marketing using digital channels, such as social media, search engines, websites, apps, and other means. Simply put, digital marketing is about promoting products/services, harnessing internet marketing tactics.

Digital marketing can do wonders for any business and give it a flight if done rightly. An expert digital marketer leverages SEO, SEM, content marketing, social media, email marketing, and other channels to attract and win potential customers and encourages them to take your services in a short time.

How Digital Marketing Vertical Started?

While it’s easy to remember a time before online marketing, it’s hard to imagine a world without it now. Before we dive deeper into the evolution of digital marketing verticals, you first need to know how the internet started, especially when over 7.7 billion people are using the internet at the start of 2020.

It started back in the 1990s; digital marketing got pulled with the advent of the internet and the development of web 1.0. From that very day on, online marketing was invincible. In 1993, the first clickable banner was formed; in 1994, new technologies entered into the digital marketplace. Then in 1998, the birth of Google changed the face of internet marketing altogether.

The digital marketing world encountered its first extreme change in 2006 when search engine traffic confirmed growth of approximately 6.4 billion in one month only. Now, in 2020, online marketing has become a significant medium to drive audiences in the world of business, and we all know what power it holds.

Why Is Digital Marketing (Internet Marketing) Important in Today’s Time?

The web is loaded with articles and videos that talk about the importance and benefits of digital marketing when you look for ways to market your business. But why your business needs to tap into the power of online marketing? To answer your question, we have discussed some essential benefits of digital marketing to help you understand its importance and various chances to interact with customers.

• Connects You with Potential Customers – Online marketing helps marketers find and interact with potential customers and give insights into targeted audiences’ needs.
• Increases Brand Awareness – Digital marketing helps deliver what is promised to customers and builds brand reputation, thus boosting brand awareness.
• A Target Approach to Marketing – Internet marketing is one of the best-targeted approaches to marketing that gives marketers the liberty to create user-centric media content.
• Delivers Conversion – Digital marketing helps marketers in conversion optimizations and helps in providing a reliable conversion.
• Helps You Win People’s Trust – Online marketing leverages social media platforms, social proof, and testimonials to earn people’s trust.
• Provides Better ROI – Internet marketing creates a steady flow of aimed traffic and better ROI on marketing investments.
• Encourages People to Take Action – Online marketing enables marketers to use smart and innovative ways to help people to take favorable action.

Difference Between Inbound and Outbound Marketing

Inbound marketing creates and distributes relevant content that ideal users want; however, outbound marketing includes traditional approaches like TV ads, radio ads, personal emails, telemarketing, and others. According to Search Engine Journal, inbound leads cost 60% less than outbound leads.

Inbound marketing is a type of marketing strategy that employs various marketing forms, including content marketing, blog posts, SEO, social media, and more, to attract potential customers and is always customer-centric, in any case! Outbound marketing (interruption marketing) is the opposite of inbound marketing. It follows a conventional marketing approach that attempts to start a conversation about a product/service by spreading words only.

Major Digital Marketing Channels You Should Know

Every digital marketing channel plays a vital role in today’s business success. However, we did comprehensive research and outlined some major online marketing channels that are trending, universally adopted, and are proven to generate tangible results.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is arguably one of the most powerful digital marketing tactics. But what is Search Engine Optimization? SEO is a process of optimizing your online content to help rank higher on Google, Bing, and other search engines for targeted keywords or phrases.

Why should you care about SEO? Hundreds of million searches are made daily, resulting in a massive amount of high-intent traffic. 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results; thus, a power-packed SEO practice is essential to keep your content on the top.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

As per PPC Protect, 74% of brands say SEM or PPC is a huge driver for their business. Even, Statista revealed that in 2019, companies spent $106.5 billion on search advertising globally.

SEM, also known as paid search or Pay Per Click (PPC), is the process of gaining traffic and visibility by buying ads on search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, Duck Duck Go, etc.), thus contributing as a significant internet marketing channel.

Content Marketing

Over the years, growth in unique site traffic is 7.8 times higher for content marketing leaders. Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach centered on creating and delivering useful, informative, and engaging content to attract customers.

Why should you opt for content marketing? It costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about three times as many leads and also helps in bringing actual business results, thus boosting conversions.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

With nearly 50% of people using social media globally, your business must leverage social media’s power to stay ahead in the game. Social Media Marketing (SMM) is all about utilizing social media platforms and connecting with your audience to build brands, maximize sales, and drive traffic, thus increasing reach and brand presence.

Email Marketing

Email is one of the effective messaging channels as it generates $38 for every $1 spent. As per HubSpot, 93% of B2B marketers use email to distribute content and reach their clients. Email marketing is a form of online marketing that uses email to promote the business’s products or services and develop relationships with potential customers. m

Affiliate Marketing

Per Hosting Tribunal, Affiliate Marketing (AM) is flourishing online with a global industry worth over $12 billion and making the entire industry go crazy. Affiliate marketing is simply the process of earning commissions for marketing another person’s or company’s products/services. It is believed that a well-crafted affiliate marketing program can boost revenue by 30% and help you maximize your ROI.

Marketing Automation

Three-quarters of all companies use marketing automation; it’s high time you should start doing too. Marketing automation is utilizing software programs to automate marketing activities. With automated messages across email, website, social, text, and others, marketing automation lets marketers target customers and measure marketing tasks and workflows efficiently.

Video Marketing

Video is a highly engaging form of content, and its demand has increased with the rise of social media. Using videos, you can promote your brand, products, or services in your unique concepts. It can either be customer testimonials, how-to videos, explainer videos, or corporate training videos.

Why should you choose video marketing? 92% of marketers say it’s an integral part of their marketing strategy as it gives them a substantial ROI.

Also read: What Is Website Design? A Comprehensive Guide to Web Design

What Is the Importance of a Marketing Strategist in Digital Marketing?

A skilled marketing strategist analyzes your business objectives and develops an overall marketing strategy that drives profitability, brand consistency, and market growth. A marketing strategist helps businesses identify the target markets, thus setting measurable goals. A proficient marketing strategist employs the proven SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely) strategy and gives your business a flight it deserves.

How to Target Users in Three Stages?

Users are the life and limb of any business; it’s they who keep companies alive. So, let’s know how to target users in three phases to turn potential visitors into trusted buyers.

Awareness/Attract

It’s the first stage where your audience discovers about your company. So make your content more informative and less promotional by offering educational blogs, free e-books, white papers, and more, to make your potential customers aware of company, products, or services. Remember, the customers are not loyal to your brand yet; thus, promotional content might push them away.

Consideration/Engage

The users are well aware of the product and services you are offering. In this phase, they consider all the options available in the market. Since you made them aware of the products/services, there is a high possibility that they will choose your brand before others if your content showed up to them while researching.

Your goal is to entice them, show them your USP, how you are better than your competitors, and, most importantly, answer their WIFM (What’s in it for me?). You can do this by offering them expert guides, comparisons, videos, and more.

Conversion/Delight

It’s the last and most crucial stage where a potential customer makes a decision. The targeted customer has now built trust in you, helping him/her decide in your favor by offering free trials, offers, and discounts, case studies, reviews, etc., and making him/her your client because that’s where the conversion happens.

How Important Is User Intent in Digital Marketing?

Do you know that Google now processes over 40000 search queries every second, and behind every Google query, there is user intent? Yes, that’s right. In the early days of search engines, a search term like ‘digital marketing’ used to show a list of companies offering digital marketing services, but the results have changed pretty much now. With time search engines have learned, for almost every query, that if the user is looking for a service, willing to learn, compare something, etc.

User intent plays a crucial role in modern marketing. If you want more people to discover your business online, you need to put yourself in your potential customers’ shoes and understand their intention of doing searches on Google.

How to Develop a Winning Digital Marketing Strategy That Stands Out?

According to a Smart Insights study, 46% of brands don’t have title=”Digital marketing strategy – Smart Insight” a detailed marketing plan; however, 16% have a draft but haven’t incorporated it into their marketing strategy. Thus, we’ve outlined some ways to develop winning digital marketing strategies that will help your business achieve specific digital marketing goals.

Define Your Accomplishment

Determine what you want to accomplish through your digital marketing plan. Do you want to increase brand presence, generate leads, get more sales, or others? You need to identify what you want to achieve. Goals matter a lot, and you should take specific and significant steps to accomplish them.

Understand the Digital Sales Funnels

Being one of the crucial marketing concepts, digital sales funnel helps you sell products/services online and gain maximum potential users. Digital sales funnel mainly include discovery, research, purchase, and loyalty, and encourage people to buy things to get to the ultimate result.

Create a Buyers Persona

It’s essential to have specific buyer personas based on research because it speaks more about your audience. You should have a thorough understanding of your audience, what motivates them, their pain points, and what you can do for them, to create a convincing marketing strategy.

Create Specific Tactics to Achieve Goals

Once you’re done with creating a buyers persona, it’s time to implement specific guidelines. You can place lead generation widgets on blog posts with clear CTA in the end, sharing influencer’s content on social media, encouraging testimonials with email, and more to achieve desired marketing goals.

Incorporate Automation & Personalization

Automation and personalization make your DM campaigns effective. Where automation offers an exciting opportunity for efficiency, cost reduction, and improved customer experience, personalization allows you to reach customers on an individual level instead of pushing one message out to the masses.

Identify & Fix the Loopholes

You must’ve developed a killing digital marketing strategy, but it’s essential to evaluate your plan every so often. If you are not getting the desired outcomes, you need to change your marketing strategy. You can always identify loopholes and fix them for better results.

What’s the Importance of a 360-Degree Marketing Approach?

As the name suggests, a 360-degree marketing approach is a type of marketing strategy where a business uses all the digital marketing channels to reach potential customers at all possible points of contact. Having a 360-degree approach is vital for your business because it lets you maximize the chances of finding new customers and engaging them in several ways.

By harnessing various aspects like website, content, social media, paid promotion, blogging, apps, emails, videos, grassroots marketing, events and sales opportunities, co-branding, or brand-to-brand collaboration, public relations and more, you can drive a successful 360-degree marketing plan.

A 360-degree marketing approach is beneficial for your business but tricky to implement. Therefore, you need a digital growth agency like Grovention, who knows how to execute a 360-degree marketing strategy seamlessly for all business verticals.

Final Words

Digital marketing is a vast discipline and, undoubtedly, the future of marketing. We hope this blog helped you understand the ins and outs of digital marketing, why it is beneficial for your business, and, most importantly, how you can use its various aspects in the marketing plan. Now that you have understood internet marketing so well, it’s time to implement all the strategies discussed throughout this article in real to witness tangible results. So, are you ready to give your business a flight by leveraging online marketing?