Digital marketing, the promotion of products
or brands via one or more forms of electronic media, differs from traditional
marketing in that it uses channels and methods that enable an organization to analyze
marketing campaigns and understand what is working and what isn’t – typically
in real time.
Digital marketers
monitor things like what is being viewed, how often and for how long, sales
conversions, what content works and doesn’t work, etc. While the Internet is,
perhaps, the channel most closely associated with digital marketing, others
include wireless text messaging, mobile instant messaging, mobile apps,
podcasts, electronic billboards, digital television and radio channels, etc.
Why digital marketing is important
Digital media is
so pervasive that consumers have access to information any time and any place
they want it. Gone are the days when the messages people got about your
products or services came from you and consisted of only what you wanted them
to know. Digital media is an ever-growing source of entertainment, news,
shopping and social interaction, and consumers are now exposed not just to what
your company says about your brand, but what the media, friends, relatives,
peers, etc., are saying as well. And they are more likely to believe them than
you. People want brands they can trust, companies that know them,
communications that are personalized and relevant, and offers tailored to their
needs and preferences.
Tactics
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The process of optimizing your website to ‘rank’ higher in search engine results pages, therefore increasing the amount of organic (or free) traffic that your website receives.Content Marketing
The creation and promotion of content assets for the purpose of generating brand awareness, traffic growth, lead generation, or customers.Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing refers to the ‘full-funnel’ approach to attracting, converting, closing, and delighting customers using online content.Social Media Marketing
The practice of promoting your brand and your content on social media channels to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, and generate leads for your business.Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
A method of driving traffic to your website by paying a publisher every time your ad is clicked. One of the most common types of PPC (pay-per-click) is Google AdWords.Affiliate Marketing
A type of performance-based advertising where you receive commission for promoting someone else’s products or services on your website.Native Advertising
Native advertising refers to advertisements that are primarily content-led and featured on a platform alongside other, non-paid content. BuzzFeed sponsored posts are a good example, but many people also consider social media advertising to be ‘native’ -- for example, Facebook advertising and Instagram advertising.Marketing Automation
Marketing automation refers to the software that exists with the goal of automating marketing actions. Many marketing departments have to automate repetitive tasks such as emails, social media, and other website actions.Email Marketing
Companies use email marketing as a way of communicating with their audiences. Email is often used to promote content, discounts and events, as well as to direct people towards the business’ website.Online PR
Online PR is the practice of securing earned online coverage with digital publications, blogs, and other content-based websites. It’s much like traditional PR, but in the online space.What’s the Difference Between Digital Marketing and Inbound Marketing?
On the surface, the two seem similar: Both occur primarily online, and both focus on creating digital content for people to consume. So what’s the difference?The term ‘digital marketing’ doesn’t differentiate between push and pull marketing tactics (or what we might now refer to as ‘inbound’ and ‘outbound’ methods). Both can still fall under the umbrella of digital marketing.
Digital outbound tactics aim to put a marketing message directly in front of as many people as possible in the online space -- regardless of whether it’s relevant or welcomed. For example, the garish banner ads you see at the top of many websites try to push a product or promotion onto people who aren’t necessarily ready to receive it.
On the other hand, marketers who employ digital inbound tactics use online content to attract their target customers onto their websites by providing assets that are helpful to them. One of the simplest yet most powerful inbound digital marketing assets is a blog, which allows your website to capitalize on the terms which your ideal customers are searching for.
Ultimately, inbound marketing is a methodology that uses digital marketing assets to attract, convert, close, and delight customers online. Digital marketing, on the other hand, is simply an umbrella term to describe online marketing tactics of any kind, regardless of whether they’re considered inbound or outbound.
What Are the Main Benefits of Digital Marketing?
Unlike most offline marketing efforts, digital marketing allows marketers to see accurate results in real time. If you’ve ever put an advert in a newspaper, you’ll know how difficult it is to estimate how many people actually flipped to that page and paid attention to your ad. There’s no surefire way to know if that ad was responsible for any sales at all.On the other hand, with digital marketing, you can measure the ROI (Return on Investment) of pretty much any aspect of your marketing efforts.
Here are some examples:Website Traffic
With digital marketing, you can see the exact number of people who have viewed your website’s homepage in real time by using digital analytics software . You can also see how many pages they visited, what device they were using, and where they came from, amongst other digital analytics data.This intelligence helps you to prioritize which marketing channels to spend more or less time on, based on the number of people those channels are driving to your website. For example, if only 10% of your traffic is coming from organic search, you know that you probably need to spend some time on SEO to increase that percentage.
With offline marketing, it’s very difficult to tell how people are interacting with your brand before they have an interaction with a salesperson or make a purchase. With digital marketing, you can identify trends and patterns in people’s behavior before they’ve reached the final stage in their buyer’s journey, meaning you can make more informed decisions about how to attract them to your website right at the top of the marketing funnel.
Content Performance and Lead Generation
Imagine you’ve created a product brochure and posted it through people’s letterboxes -- that brochure is a form of content, albeit offline. The problem is that you have no idea how many people opened your brochure or how many people threw it straight into the trash.Now imagine you had that brochure on your website instead. You can measure exactly how many people viewed the page where it’s hosted, and you can collect the contact details of those who download it by using forms. Not only can you measure how many people are engaging with your content, but you’re also generating qualified leads when people download it.
Attribution Modeling
An effective digital marketing strategy combined with the right tools and technologies allows you to trace all of your sales back to a customer’s first digital touchpoint with your business. We call this attribution modeling, and it allows you to identify trends in the way people research and buy your product, helping you to make more informed decisions about what parts of your marketing strategy deserve more attention, and what parts of your sales cycle need refining.What Kind of Content Should I Be Creating?
The kind of content you create depends on your audience’s needs at different stages in the buyer’s journey. You should start by creating buyer personas to identify what your audience’s goals and challenges are in relation to your business. On a basic level, your online content should aim to help them meet these goals, and overcome their challenges.Then, you’ll need to think about when they’re most likely to be ready to consume this content in relation to what stage they’re at in their buyer’s journey. We call this content mapping.
With content mapping, the goal is to target content according to:
1.
The characteristics of the person who
will be consuming it (that’s where buyer personas come in).
2.
How
close that person is to making a purchase (i.e., their lifecycle stage).
In
terms of the format of your content, there are a lot of different things to
try. Here are some options we’d recommend using at each stage of the buyer’s journey:Awareness Stage
- Blog posts. Great for increasing your organic traffic when paired with a strong SEO and keyword strategy.
- Infographics. Very shareable, meaning they increase your chances of being found via social media when others share your content.
- Short videos. Again, these are very shareable and can help your brand get found by new audiences by hosting them on platforms like YouTube.
How
Long Will It Take to See Results?
With
digital marketing, it can often feel like you’re able to see results much
faster than you might with offline marketing due to the fact it’s easier to measure ROI (Return on Investment. However,
it ultimately depends entirely on the scale and effectiveness of your digital
marketing strategy.If you spend time building comprehensive buyer personas to identify the needs of your audience, and you focus on creating quality online content to attract and convert them, then you’re likely to see strong results within the first six months.
If paid advertising is part of your digital strategy, then the results come even quicker -- but it’s recommended to focus on building your organic (or ‘free’) reach using content, SEO, and social media for long-term, sustainable success.
Do I Need a Big Budget for Digital Marketing?
As with anything, it really depends on what elements of digital marketing you’re looking to add to your strategy.Presuming you already have a website, if you’re focusing on inbound techniques like SEO, social media, and content creation then the good news is you don’t need very much budget at all. With inbound marketing, the main focus is on creating high quality content that your audience will want to consume, which unless you’re planning to outsource the work, the only investment you’ll need is your time.
Daniel Friday (Danzor)
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