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The act of promoting goods and services has been age-long. Until the advent of digital marketing, traditional marketing, which uses print, phone, and mostly physical marketing to connect with prospective customers dominated the space. According to Wikipedia, businesses started using technology for marketing due to the development of digital marketing in the 1990s and 2000s. In our time, the need to be acquainted with digital marketing ideas will make entrepreneurs appreciate what is in it for their businesses.
Digital marketing is rapidly growing. However, many people are yet to understand the digital marketing ideas that will move their business forward. Having a grasp of these ideas, companies and brands can begin to explore the potential for business growth.
Basic Meaning of Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing denotes all marketing activities and assets that use the internet or electronic device. In other words, digital marketing involves using online platforms and internet services to connect with potential customers and drive traffic to your business. There are “spectrum of tactics” that a company uses to communicate with potential customers who spend most of their time online.
A basic understanding of digital marketing entails that businesses know what they require to carry out digital marketing. Depending on the type of business, you deploy certain online assets to promote goods and services.
Reasons to embrace Digital Marketing
Digital marketing has limitless potential to reach numerous customers. A lot of brands are therefore embracing it. This is because most consumers now go online to find out about business and take decision based on available information.
Unlike traditional marketing, you can explore many options and strategies to market your business. You can run a digital marketing campaign and measure performance with a smaller budget. For example, if you opt for search engine marketing or have a website, you tend to have more traffic than a visit to a physical shop.
How Do You Undertake Digital Marketing?
Understanding digital marketing entails having the prerequisite knowledge of digital marketing ideas. This means knowing the digital marketing tools or assets. It also means knowing how to deploy them to reach more customers and generate growth. There are many digital marketing assets that you can use to promote your business, drive traffic, and make more sales online. Whether it is a business-to-customer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B) concern, you will be able to create enough online awareness when these assets are appropriately deployed. Therefore, if you have to undertake digital marketing, you need to deploy tools or assets that can promote or advertise your business online. Let’s look at some of them.
- Website: A website is the company or store pages on the web or the internet. It allows you to send the business information to numerous customers who constantly seek knowledge and need to learn about your products and services. Website plays an essential role in online promotion and branding. It also gives you a lot of freedom to control your content. There are many reasons why a website is critical to your business. The link herein will provide more insight.
- Social Media Pages: Another asset that you can deploy online for your business is to have social media pages. Here you can display products and provide information to your followers. Almost all social media platforms give you room to optimize your page, provide good content and organically market your products and services.
- Weblog: It is an online journal and is usually shortened to a blog. It is a tool that digital marketers or businesses use to drive traffic to the website or social media pages. The blog allows you to create relevant content and information to make readers click through to specified pages. A blog can also make your website rank higher on the search engine. Search Engines like Google can make your business visible by placing it on top of the search engine report page (SERP) based on the quality of blog posts.
- E-book: Like the blog, eBook is another content-based digital asset. Sometimes, you may want to exchange eBooks for readers’ information and make them sign-up for your email list. An ebook is a tool you can use to generate marketing leads while keeping your readers informed.
- Videos: Creating a video for an online marketing platform has increased. Experts have posited that video has become essential to the future of digital marketing. According to HubSpot, based on a research report, video is “central to your outreach and campaign efforts … especially your social strategy”.
Types of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing provides brands and businesses with a lot of options. You can adopt any particular marketing strategy to reach your customers or prospects. Although there are many types of digital marketing, I will attempt to group them under two broad forms or headings, namely organic digital marketing and paid digital marketing. A business owner needs to have organic and paid marketing digital marketing ideas. This will be relevant to drawing up your digital marketing plan and allocating resources. Under each form, the article will explain some popular types of digital marketing.
Organic Digital Marketing
Characteristically, organic marketing is free. You will only need to produce and post quality contents that will make viewers want to click through to your website or page free of charge. However, some expenses may still be involved, especially where you need to hire an expert or buy the software. For example, you will use software to create video content. Some of the types of digital marketing below are organic.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves optimizing a website or blog post to get a higher ranking in the search engine. The process will include on-page, off-page, and technical SEOs. SEO usually needs a lot of effort, and it takes time to begin to see the ranking result.
- Content Marketing: Another organic strategy businesses can adopt is to create content to promote and generate brand awareness. Quality content can drive traffic into the sales funnel and growth the company. Content can be in the form of digital assets like blogs, eBooks, or infographics.
- Social media Marketing: Most people have a lot of social media accounts. Businesses have also been signing up on social media platforms. However, the primary objective of having a social media page should be to create awareness and generate business traffic. Many people on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest can follow your business page based on quality informative or educational content. Social media channels also allow you to engage with your followers or customers directly, thereby creating value.
- Email Marketing: Businesses can use different email marketing strategies to reach their audience. The email marketing campaign may aim to promote discounts, introduce new product, explain product features and so on. This may be in the form of a welcome email, information tips, a subscription to a newsletter, etc. In certain instances, email marketing may be automated.
Advertising
Paid marketing is not free. A business can pay for advertising on the networks of digital channels. Consequently, the digital advertising platforms will boost the campaign, promote the brand and provide a wider audience. Organic digital marketing may take time and effort to make your business visible online. But paid advertising brings quicker results. Your advert is not limited to only your followers’ feeds but also to the feeds of others who are not following you on the digital or online platforms. Some of the paid adverting strategies include the following.
- Pay-per-Click (PPC): This advertising strategy enables businesses to pay for each click that viewers make on an advert. Various digital channels have different platforms to run such ads. Google AdWords is the platform by Google for search engine marketing (SEM), while Facebook Ad Manager takes care of Facebook paid Social Media Advertising. Many brands are also reaching customers through PPC on other social media channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
- Paid Social Media Marketing: Apart from paying for each click, Paid Social Media ads can combine a lot of other possibilities. A brand may pay for other ad objectives such as impression, video viewing, and others. Those short ad videos on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are good examples of paid social media marketing.
- Sponsor content: In some instances, brands may pay individuals or companies to produce contents that highlight the benefits of their products and services. Some of these individuals are influencers who can use videos and blog posts to promote a company.
- Affiliate Marketing: In affiliate marketing, companies pay commission to individuals or other companies who use their websites or other channels to display the company products and services that to lead to sales. The commission is a compensation and a way to cover the cost of advertising by the affiliate.
Conclusion
The discussion on digital marketing ideas is not exhaustive. This article is meant to provide fundamental insight into Digital Marketing especially for non-digital marketing specialists and small businesses. Understanding the digital marketing ideas will let them know what is on the table. Each of the headings is a topic that can be expanded, and links are provided for some terms and phrases for more understanding.
In most cases, businesses will need digital marketing experts. Expert may be employed in-house or contracted. He is to deploy the digital marketing assets and implement the strategies discussed. In a large organization, there may be different specialists handling different areas. For example, an SEO specialist may be hired differently from a Content Marketing specialist or a Social Media Manager.
