Digital marketing is about selling stories that matter to people online. It could be brand stories, product stories, or other subtle engaging ways that brands use to slide into people’s lives. Digital marketing is pivotal in the future of big corporations and small startups alike. For the latter, no form of marketing has ever promised cost effectiveness and quick revenue flow than digital marketing.
The two primary forms of digital marketing are paid (SEM) and organic (SEO). Since its inception, digital marketing has undergone rigorous transformations. Search engine algorithm updates often shape digital marketing trends. Changes in social media and mobile tech penetration do too.
Businesses that implemented digital marketing strategies in the past few years can now brag about improved sales volumes. For others, it is brand awareness and customer engagement that they greatly benefited from digital marketing. Many other businesses have managed to amass dominance when it comes to search engine rankings. The benefits of digital marketing are endless.
In a nutshell, digital marketing involves:
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Search engine optimization capitalizes on organic traffic. Digital marketers design and implement strategies that increase traffic flow to their sites by improving the search engine rankings of the websites. This form of digital marketing often culminates in improved brand/ product awareness and amplified conversion rates.
The process of search engine optimization involves figuring out the right keywords that can improve a website’s search engine rankings. Digital marketers also have to consider many other factors that affect search rankings such as content relevance, inbound and outbound links, page load speed and mobile friendliness among others.
SEO is a multifaceted type of digital marketing. It is involving and sometimes needs experts to create short term and long term strategies and to edit the website and optimize its design and
scripts. SEO mostly relies on content and social media marketing. One important thing to remember about SEO is that it is an organic style of marketing- it requires little to no capital.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
Pay Per Click is a digital marketing where brands pay for every click they get on a link to their website. Search engines like Google and Bing are the vendors. They sell keywords for all the niches. Brands bid for the relevant keywords in their niches, and when someone searches using those keywords, your website will be ranked first on search engine results. You will then pay the search engines if the user goes on to click on your website from the search engine results.
Building a successful PPC campaign can be quite involving. The first step is to research the hot keywords in your niche. You will then go on to measure their value before organizing them into a meaningful campaign. The keywords should link back to a landing page that is attractive and intuitive. Search engines will offer you great discounts on keywords that are relevant and meaningful to users.
In addition to search engines, social media sites also offer PPC marketing opportunities. Your campaigns will appear top on the feed of targeted social media users.
Social Media Marketing
This marketing strategy targets brand awareness, new leads, improved traffic and sales on social media sites. It’s one of the cost-effective forms of digital marketing – it could be paid as in PPC or organic as in SEO. Marketers often create strategies for engagements, sharing and attracting followers to pages and accounts
Each social media site often comes with unique features. There is no one-fits-all approach when it comes to social media strategies. Marketers often have to find one site that resonates with their business. You don’t have to use all the social networks available out there. You can focus on one or two and utilize automation to make your work simpler.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is using stories to build relationships online. It entails creating valuable information that interests, inspires and adds value to the lives of your target audiences. With content marketing, you aim to become part of your audience’s lives. Instead of hardcore advertising, you focus on building lasting relationships with subtle brand messages. The content in this question could be blogs, wikis, how to tutorials, videos, and info-graphics among others.
The content needs to be consistent and updated regularly. This type of marketing can be used alongside SEO or to supplement paid advertisements. Content marketing can help you beat the competition in a niche where everyone focuses on hardcore marketing.
Google has made it clear that they will always prioritize organic content over sponsored ones. That is because the search engine aims to present people with information that can improve their lives. To have an impact on content marketing, the campaign has to be relevant; use the right keywords and align with the user needs.
Types of Content:
Video
About 80% of all consumers prefer to watch videos than reading the text. In the internet and social media marketing, video has proven to be an indispensable tool. Video is excellent for improving engagement levels and achieving high search engine ranking. This tool works best when accompanied with captions and subtitles.
Photos
For social media sites such as Instagram and Facebook, photography is a tool that you can employ in your digital marketing. Images are also suitable for SEO. People are drawn to high quality intriguing photos. You can find creative strategists to assist with photography branding online.
Articles
This type of content is great for all businesses due to it’s great impact on SEO and reshare ability of the content. When writing articles for they should include, images, videos and other media in order to enhance your article value and content.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is helpful when it comes to building trust. This direct marketing approach will help your brand to achieve a high top of mind awareness through newsletters, reminders, promotions, and offers among others.
For successful email marketing, you will need to work with a subscriber list that you have nurtured and earned over time. There is often zero to little chance of success with bought emails. There are also ethical considerations when aggressive email marketing is defined as spamming.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based form of digital marketing. Your brand will work with affiliate marketers – usually bloggers and other digital content creators to promote products. The content creators choose products from your website or e-commerce store and embed the link to these products in their content. They then engage in content promotion and earn a commission every time someone purchases the products through those links. Brands only pay for conversions and not traffic
SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
While SEO is growth with organic search, SEM is a form of digital marketing that relies on paid advertising to get search engine traffic. The most recognizable form of SEM is Google AdWords. SEM is like PPC except it is not performance-based marketing. You pay search engines for placing your marketing messages anywhere in their search results, regardless of whether users click on the links or not.
The main advantage of SEM is that it provides an opportunity for marketers to push their ads to responsive customers who have a buying intention at that particular moment. SEO is more about creating brand awareness and generating leads, but SEM is a surefire way to increase sales volume.
Mobile Phone Marketing
All the above forms of digital marketing can work for mobile phones and tablets. Apart from that, there are other types of advertisements that are only special to mobile phones. These include SMS advertisement, Whatsapp marketing, and app push notifications.
Revolutions in mobile technology are mind-bogglingly and rapidly changing the landscape of digital marketing. Data by Go-Gulf shows that close to 57% of all organic searches now comes from mobile. Today’s consumers are on the go. Their attention spans are also short-lived. They consume content and shop on mobile, and brands have to give them the needed gratification in a matter of seconds. It would take expert stratagem to make your brand the preferred choice for mobile users.
Influencer Marketing
Many people today rely on online reviews and opinions before making a purchase. A digital influencer can help to paint your brand in a favorable light. Digital influencers are people like bloggers, celebrities or socialites with a massive following online. A single tweet or retweet from such persons can drive humongous traffic to your site.
Voice Search Marketing
Voice search is fast on the rise as a digital marketing tool. Marketers are no longer just optimizing for text, image and video searches, but also for this new form of internet search as well. AIs like Siri and Ok Google are the main voice search tools. To feature in voice search, marketers will need organic content that matches specific user needs.
There is no business in the future and no future in business without digital marketing. To benefit from it, you will need to have an in-depth knowledge of all the digital marketing approaches and tools and stay on top of trends.