Digital Marketing Institute in Palakkad

 What Is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is the act of promoting products and services through digital channels, such as social media, SEO, email, and mobile apps. Any form of marketing that involves electronic devices is considered digital marketing. 

It can be done online and offline; in fact, both kinds are important for a well-rounded digital marketing strategy.

Do you want to learn more about digital marketing? This guide will cover everything you need to know to get familiar with digital marketing.

Types of digital marketing

Digital marketing spans a massive network of digital touchpoints that customers interact with many times a day. To properly utilize each of these channels, you need to understand each one.

Paid search. 

Paid search — also known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising — typically refers to the sponsored result on the top or side of a search engine results page (SERP). These ads charge you for every click and can be tailored to appear when certain search terms are entered.

Advantages. Essentially, your ads are targeted to audiences seeking a particular product or item. As such, these ads can be extremely effective, as they rely on data gleaned from individuals’ online behavior and are used to boost website traffic by delivering relevant ads to the right people at the right time. These ads also involve retargeting, meaning that marketing automation tools can craft unique, personal cross-platform ads based on the customers’ actions.

Disadvantages. The cons of PPC include cost and labor. Though you can choose to spend what you like, costs can add up quickly. Campaigns can be heavy on time investment, too, and often need to be monitored and optimized.

Search engine optimization (SEO). 

SEO is the process of optimizing the content, technical setup, and reach of your website, so your pages appear at the top of a search engine result page for a specific set of keyword terms.

Advantages. Organic online traffic earned through SEO has enormous influence on search rankings and, by extension, organic site traffic. By using keywords and phrases, you can use SEO to massively increase visibility and begin a lasting customer relationship. SEO is defined as increasing a website’s ranking in online search results, and therefore its organic site traffic, by using popular keywords and phrases. Strong SEO strategies are hugely influential in digital marketing campaigns since visibility is the first step to a lasting customer relationship. 

Disadvantages. You can deploy an SEO strategy on your website and not see much change immediately, so patience is required. Google algorithm updates can also affect your rankings — which could mean having to change your strategy.

Content marketing. 

Effective content marketing is not outwardly promotional in nature, but rather serves to educate and inspire consumers who are looking for information. When you offer content that’s relevant to your audience, it can establish you as a thought leader and a trustworthy source of information.

Advantages. Content marketing gets three times more leads than paid search advertising, so it’s well worth the additional effort — whether that’s creating blog posts, informational guides, whitepapers, or any other type of content.

Disadvantages. The challenges for many businesses are multiple — finding the resource, creating something that stands out from competitors, and maintaining momentum.

Social media marketing. 

Social media is everywhere, so your business must be active on several different platforms. However, the key to effective social media marketing goes far beyond simply having a few social media accounts.

Advantages. You must use your social channels properly and effectively — the more your audience is inspired to engage with your content, the more likely they are to share it, potentially inspiring their peers to become customers as well.

Disadvantages. It’s worth varying your content on different platforms — what works well on Twitter might not be as effective on Instagram, which is more visual. A common mistake for a business using social media is to fail to post frequently or get the tone of posts completely wrong. Again, know your audience, and what they want.

Email marketing

After more than two decades, email is still the quickest and most direct way to reach customers with critical information. Today, successful email campaigns must be incredibly engaging, relevant, informative, and entertaining to not get buried in your customer’s inbox.

To succeed, your marketing emails should satisfy five core attributes. They must be: 

• Trustworthy
• Relevant
• Conversational
• Coordinated across channels
• Strategic

Timing and scheduling are important — don’t bombard customers’ inboxes with repetitive or irrelevant messaging, or they could hit the unsubscribe button.

Mobile marketing

Mobile devices are kept in our pockets, sit next to our beds, and are checked constantly throughout the day. This makes marketing on mobile incredibly important — two-thirds of consumers can recall a specific brand they have seen advertised on mobile in the last week — but mobile is also very nuanced considering its intimate nature.

Advantages. SMS, MMS, and in-app marketing are all options to reach your customers on their devices, but beyond that, you must consider the coordination of your marketing efforts across your other digital marketing channels.

Disadvantages. Privacy remains an issue — be careful with how you treat customer data.

Marketing automation

Marketing automation is an integral platform that ties all of your digital marketing together. In fact, companies that automate lead management see a 10% or more bump in revenue in six to nine months’ time. Without it, your campaigns will look like an unfinished puzzle with a crucial missing piece.

• Marketing automation software:
• Streamlines marketing tasks and workflow
• Measures results
• Calculates the ROI of your digital campaigns

Marketing automation can help you gain valuable insight into which programs are working and which aren’t. And it will provide metrics to allow you to show digital marketing’s efforts on your company’s bottom line.