What is Digital Marketing
It probably should not be surprising by now that the number of people using the internet is still rising everyday.
Of the 7.83 billion people in the world, 4.66 billion of them are active internet users and among them, the average person spends 6 hours and 43 minutes online every day.
The prime rule of marketing for any business is to be where the audience is. And today, that place is the internet. And that’s all digital marketing is about. Marketing to an online audience through online channels.
This article is a detailed dive-in into all things digital marketing and why you should be interested in it. By the end of it, you’ll have a pretty good idea about this phenomenon called online marketing. So, read on to know the details!
Table Of Contents
What is Digital Marketing?
Marketing which uses electronic devices and online channels to convey promotional brand messages to audiences is called Digital Marketing or online marketing. In practice, it commonly refers to marketing campaigns which appear on a phone, computer or other devices. It can have several forms like online videos, search engine marketing, display ads, social media posts and paid social ads. Digital marketing is often compared against “traditional marketing” such as magazine ads, billboards, television ads, etc.
Why is digital marketing important?
Being able to target only those people who actually want your service/product is one of the main reasons why digital marketing is so important. With traditional forms of marketing, you promote your brand before a wide audience, without any sort of segregation. It’s more like a hit or miss type of marketing.
But with digital marketing you can use the latest technology and tools to identify and create customized ads for your target audience. Which will lead to a much better conversion rate for your business.
More and more people are using mobile phones everyday, so much so that Mobile Marketing has developed into a separate category in itself, with its acute focus on mobile users. From websites to display ads, everything is being optimised for mobile screens today.
With digital marketing, you can create marketing campaigns directly focused on your mobile-using audience, which will result in better lead conversions for your business.
Digital Marketing, unlike traditional means of marketing, is practised by using tangible and accurate data. All digital marketing campaigns are extremely measurable with precise numbers representing various aspects of the campaign.
You can measure the success or failure of your marketing ads, and make necessary changes needed, all with perfect logical data to back you up. This is one of the reasons why digital marketing is important for businesses today.
AI is becoming progressively more useful in digital marketing. From personalizing customer experience through profile-analysis to aiding in production of mass-content, AI has made marketing tasks easier, leaving more time to focus on improving the brand/services and customer satisfaction.
With further integration of AI, digital marketing is sure to transform into a time-saving and highly productive activity for businesses. This alone makes it worth it to invest in digital marketing for your brand.
This is perhaps the simplest, but plainly significant reason of all.
Even today, the number of new internet users is rising everyday. With more and more people being online, that is exactly where a business has to be to be successful today.
Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic has clearly taught us that the key to survival is shifting the focus to everything digital. This is going to be a dominant theme in the near and far future. So, missing out on this opportunity could cost you time and some valuable bucks.
Now that you’ve gained some insight into ‘what is digital marketing’ and its significance, let us jump into some of the most popular types of digital marketing!
Types of digital marketing
There are several types of digital marketing. Here are a bunch of them which are most prevalent right now.
- Search Engine Optimization
Search Engines are where people go with most of their queries. As a business, it can be extremely beneficial to show up when someone searches for something related to your service/product. Being seen can make all the difference, as it will further lead to engagement and finally, conversions.
There are two methods of using search engines for digital marketing, namely, SEO and SEM.
SEO in digital marketing, is the term for all the techniques, from creating content with appropriate keywords to using meta tags and creating backlinks, used to rank on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) organically. This means you don’t pay to be seen on the SERPs. SEO is one of the most important aspects of digital marketing for a brand.
SEM on the other hand, is paid advertising to rank on top of the first page of SERPs. The first few results you see on the first page with the word ‘Ad’ in bold are the products of SEM. The advertiser is charged an amount for each click by users. To buy advertising space on search engines, platforms like Google Ads are used.
- Social Media
Social Media Marketing refers to all activities which a business performs on social platforms to engage with its customer base and promote its products/services. Different social media platforms offer different features, with some of the most popular ones being Instagram, YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc. Businesses can use the various features of different social media to get creative and improve user engagement.
- PPC
PPC in digital marketing is a technique to drive traffic to your website by paying a fee every time your ad is clicked. One of the most popular types of PPC advertising is Google Ads, which lets you pay to get top slots on Google’s SERPs at a price “per click” for the links that are clicked. There are various other channels where you can use PPC marketing, like paid ads on FaceBook, sponsored messages on LinkedIn, Twitter Ads Campaigns, etc.
- Display Advertising
You’ve already seen display advertising, even if you haven’t realised it yet. Display Ads appear on third-party websites and they use content like text, images, videos, etc. to promote products/services.
From banner ads to desktop and mobile leaderboard ads, there are several types of display ads. Most of them are shaped in a square or rectangular format, and comprise of content which is commonly aligned with the content of the host website and preferences of the target audience. Display advertising campaigns are run through advertising networks such as Google Ads or FaceBook advertising.
- Email Marketing
Email marketing is an influential form of digital marketing which uses email to market a business’s products and services. Email marketing helps keep your clients up-to-date with your latest products/services or offers by using marketing automation techniques.
It can play a pivotal role in your marketing strategy by helping in lead generation, increasing brand awareness, and keeping customers engaged in between the ‘customer journey’.
- Content Marketing
Content marketing is the creation and distribution of relevant content like social media posts, email, blog posts, white papers, videos, etc., to current and potential customers. When done right, i.e., when the content provided adds value to the customers, it can lead to increased engagement and sales for a business.
The key is to make your audience think of you as a partner interested in their welfare rather than an entity trying to get them to buy from it. This can result in thriving relationships between you and your clients.
- Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing which uses endorsement from ‘influencers’, i.e., individuals who have a loyal social following and are regarded as experts in their niches, to sell a product/service. Influencer marketing is successful because of the high level of trust that the followers have in a particular influencer, causing their recommendation to be a sort of a social proof for your potential-consumers.
- Video Marketing
It’s said that an image can convey a thousand words. Multiply that by another one thousand, and you have a video. That is the core of video marketing; a powerful form of marketing which engages your consumers effectively as a part of your marketing strategy.
Video marketing uses videos for advertising and informing audiences about your product/service and helps increase engagement on your online channels, allowing you to reach people through a modern medium.
What is a digital marketing strategy and why do you need to have one?
A digital marketing strategy is a plan which helps you achieve your business’s marketing goals through careful usage of specific marketing channels like earned, paid and owned media. Running a digital marketing campaign without a strategy as a base is like trying to cook a new dish without a recipe: you are likely to end up wasting time and resources getting to the end result through several trial-and-error attempts.
When you plan to cook something you haven’t tried before, you’re likely to jot down and try to familiarise yourself with the ingredient list and cooking process, right? Digital marketing is the same. You need to have a planned strategy in place to get the most out of your marketing efforts.
Why do you need a digital marketing strategy?
- Get Direction
Without a strategy, important aspects of executing a marketing strategy will be incomplete and inefficient. Where to start, what campaigns to choose, how much budget to allocate to a campaign, how to measure your goals and results, how to make relevant changes based on current requirements, etc., there are such questions like this which will pop up. And if you have no plan, you’ll be like a stick in a mud and end up wasting efforts and resources in trying to get yourself out of the mess.
Having a strategy gives you a blueprint to work with. So that even if you get lost, or have to change tactics midway, you have the exact details to make relevant decisions.
- Better understanding of market and consumers
Before you run a marketing campaign, it is essential to research your market and your target audience.
What is the current situation in your niche, what new trends are popular, what is the condition of the industry you’re a part of, how much demand is there for your product/service, are some questions to think about.
Along with customer-research points like customer preferences, customer behaviour, etc. If you haven’t done your research and formed a strategy which is in alignment with the said research then, then you’ll be going in blind. Which is highly not recommended.
- Avoidance of time and resource wastage
By having a digital marketing strategy in place for your marketing plans you can eliminate the chances of making unnecessary expenses and can only focus on doing only those activities which will give you definite results.
This will save a ton of your resources and time, which you would otherwise have spent on navigating your way without a strategy. You can instead use these in improving your products/services and serving your customers better.
- Comparison with competitors
Having a well-planned digital marketing strategy can let you compare yourself with your competitors accurately, with the right factors.
Be it the keywords you plan to use or the ads you’ll display, you can compare your strategy with your competitors’ on a point to point basis. And competitor comparison can help you stay updated and at par with industry standards.
Digital Marketing Examples
- Houseparty App’s Fortnite Trivia Challenge
Houseparty is an app which got popular during the initial stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s an app where you can video call your friends and play games together.
In April 2020, they launched a Fortnite trivia game (in collaboration with the said app) which let users who got 20 million right answers unlock a new reward on Fortnite.
This challenge attracted Fortnite players to play the game on Houseparty and Fortnite in turn got access to Houseparty’s audience. The gamers get to play an engaging game and get rewards. It was a win-win situation for everyone involved!
This is a digital marketing tactic, executed through collaborating with a complementary brand and using social media channels to promote and increase awareness of a brand.
- Tesla’s social media presence
Tesla’s Twitter handle boasts a following of 12.5 Million people, making it one of the most followed brands on Twitter, despite being considerably younger in the market compared to competitors like Chevrolet, Audi, BMW, etc.
There are two main reasons for Tesla’s popularity online. First is, Tesla’s CEO, i.e., Elon Musk. His ability to build a personality and seem more human rather than just a businessman, has what made him popular online. He can be called an influencer with how many people look up to and follow him online.
Second reason is Tesla’s live stream events. These events create a ton of hype and attention, with millions of people live-tweeting and sharing the link on social networks.
This is one of the many digital marketing tactics brands can use in today’s time.
- Amul’s animated girl
If you’re an Indian resident, you’re most probably not a stranger to Amul’s iconic animated girl seen on the covers of most of its dairy products. However, unbeknownst to you, she is also a popular figure on social media.
Amul often posts eccentric, meme-styled content reflecting current affairs, made of animated characters, to stay relatable and keep audiences engaged. It’s an ideal example of content marketing.
Amul posts content on Instagram, Twitter and FaceBook, wherein it has a high number of followers. They produce customer-focused content to showcase their awareness of and care for, the environment and country.
- Not just a Cadbury Ad
The pandemic had a destructible effect on the world economy and like every other country, India could not escape the situation either. However, while the big brands were back on track, thanks to their vast marketing budget, the same could not be said for the neighbourhood stores who lacked similar resources.
Wavemaker India, which is a media agency, created a personalised hyper-local campaign on the back of invoking generosity, which is the core manifesto of Cadbury Celebrations, releasing an ad featuring these businesses.
Wavemaker reminded us that these stores were the backbone for our essentials before and during the pandemic. A little recognition can go a long way to help revive their businesses and Wavemaker displayed more than 7000 stores to 34 million consumers in two weeks, making it quite a liberal ad.
How to do digital marketing?
Now that you have a fair idea about the what’s and why’s of digital marketing, let us dive into the core steps which form a part of any digital marketing strategy. With the help of these steps, you can create a marketing strategy for yourself/your business from scratch.
This is the first step not only for digital marketing but also for creating any kind of plan. The main motive for creating a plan is to achieve some kind of goal.
So, firstly, you need to define your marketing goals. It can be generating a certain amount of leads, increasing brand awareness, increasing sales for a certain product, etc. once you have clear goals you can start with brainstorming on how to achieve them.
The next step in developing a digital marketing strategy is defining your target audience. You know what your business goal is. But whom will you achieve it through? Who are the people who will engage with and buy from you? This is what you need to figure out now.
Look at your niche and research on who is looking for the products/services you are offering. Brainstorm on how and where would be the best way to reach them.
The next step in ‘how to do digital marketing’ is defining your goals and your target audience is to establish a budget for your marketing strategy.
Before you start with preparing a strategy, you need to know how much you are willing to spend on it. But don’t fret too much. Digital marketing is much cheaper compared to traditional marketing!
Your budget can be defined with the help of various constituents. The ideal amount, if you want a steady growth in your market position, is around 10-14% of your revenue. If you want to take a more aggressive approach, you may choose to spend more than that. Planning out the kind of marketing you’ll be doing and how much each channel and technique will charge will help in determining your budget.
The next step is to create the core digital marketing strategy. This comprises forming the actual strategy by merging your goals, target audience stats and the budget.
What channels will you use? For example: Google Ads, content marketing, SEO to rank on SERPs, social media marketing campaigns, email marketing, etc. How much will each of these charge? How will you divide the priority given to each campaign? How will you put these campaigns into an order they’ll be executed by? These are the questions you’ve to work with here.
Once you have your core strategy in place, the next step would be to plan, create and allocate the content required for each campaign or marketing drive.
Written articles for SEO, graphics for social media, Content for web pages and emails, Sales Copies, etc. The type and amount of content will depend on your strategy. Before you execute it, you’ll need the content ready and good to go. Half your work ends here.
After you have your strategy and content in place, you’ll execute your plan. This is the most important part of a digital marketing strategy. It answers the question of ‘when and how to reach your target audience’.
You’ll have to execute your strategy in a timely and careful manner, making sure you make the most of your efforts and resources. Reaching your audience, being seen by them and converting them to clients, everything depends on how you execute your digital marketing strategy.
Once you’ve executed your digital marketing strategy, what follows is monitoring it. You can set up KPIs for all your strategies and track them to check on their performance and whether they are delivering on those KPIs.
There are several tools and techniques available for this purpose and each one differs based on what campaign you’re running.
A digital marketing strategy is hardly static or a one-time work. You have to keep monitoring it, keep changing it to fit your goals and align with current changes in your niche and audience’s tastes.
This is more of an extension of the prior point. Digital marketing is a dynamic practice and you have to keep yourself up-to-date with the market all the time.
The changes in trends will affect your digital marketing strategy and much depends on how you use the current situation to mold things in your favour and achieve your goals. Hence, your strategies always need to be dynamic.
Benefits of Digital Marketing
At this point we’ve already covered the most important elements of digital marketing. Finally, we’ll see what are the benefits of digital marketing in today’s time for businesses, individuals and students. Here are 5 of them:
Wavemaker India, which is a media agency, created a personalised hyper-local campaign on the back of invoking generosity, which is the core manifesto of Cadbury Celebrations, releasing an ad featuring these businesses.
Wavemaker reminded us that these stores were the backbone for our essentials before and during the pandemic. A little recognition can go a long way to help revive their businesses and Wavemaker displayed more than 7000 stores to 34 million consumers in two weeks, making it quite a liberal ad.
The various channels of digital marketing allows you to engage consumers at every point of sale, which lets you engage them consistently and keep providing them value.
When you do that, you imprint your brand in the forefront of your consumers’ mind and keep reminding them of how you help to provide a service/product, to solve a certain problem for them. This can lead to increased brand awareness and conversions for your business.
From looking at your display ad on the internet to buying from you and becoming a loyal customer, there is something to provide at every stage of the consumer journey. The only thing you have to do is make use of the opportunity. This is one of the best benefits of digital marketing.
As enunciated in the above point, digital marketing offers a lot you can make use of. Multiple channels and techniques to be present in your consumer’s mind and provide them solutions to their problems, or just providing content which keeps them engaged.
It is a chance for a business to be consistently present in a consumer’s life and keep adding value to them. If you master this optimally, without annoying your consumers or boring them, then it is the greatest tactic to induce loyalty in them, which can be the only marketing tactic you’ll ever need to retain and grow your client base.
With digital marketing, you can create marketing campaigns directly focused on your mobile-using audience, which will result in better lead conversions for your business.
Whatever digital marketing channel you use, there will always be tools through which you can measure your campaign statistics and see what’s working for you and what’s not.
Having accurate numbers lets you make astute decisions and you can rest assured that you won’t make uninformed choices or use hit-or-miss tactics. This is one of the best benefits digital marketing can give you.
In this time and age, almost every business is online and is using digital marketing to promote and grow their business. You would be really losing out if you aren’t doing the same.
It would put your competitors at an advantage if you have no digital marketing strategy and are purely dependent on offline sales. You’ll miss out on the entire untapped online market.
Doing digital marketing will not only let you keep up with your competitors, in fact, it can even help you overtake them. It all depends on how you plan and execute your digital marketing strategy.
Apart from being awesome for businesses, digital marketing is an amazing career choice for students.
The digital marketing industry is growing at lightning speed and will keep doing so in the near and far future. Digital marketing is also one of the few fields which does not require you to have professional education on digital marketing.
You can learn it at any age and through whatever means is most convenient for you. You can be a freelancer or work at a multinational company, the choice is yours! Being a scalable, creative and unrestrained career choice, digital marketing is pretty important for students!
I’m interested in learning Digital Marketing. Where should I start?
We’re sure after reading all the stuff above, you’re at least a little curious if not fully onboard with wanting to explore digital marketing! So, what do you do now?
Well, there are several ways to learn digital marketing, but doing a course which suits your learning needs the best, from a certified institute, is your best bet! And we provide the perfect digital marketing courses for all needs. Especially if you want to create a career in digital marketing.
Our courses are industry-standard and creative, taught by professionals and 100% practical, giving you the best exposure and education on digital marketing. We offer various courses for students and professionals alike and offer the best placement and career support. Do check out our course pages and contact us to know more!
Let us know your thoughts on digital marketing in the comments below.