Technically, digital marketing is promoting and marketing products, services or brands through one or more forms of digital media. Today every individual and companies are involved with any kind of a digital marketing activity. Through this, companies try to attract, engage and convert consumers into an online marketplace.
This covers a huge area than traditional marketing. Most digital marketing processes, software tasks and strategies are automated. This online market is much bigger and complicated than the traditional market. Because when you enter the online market you connect with the whole world. Not just the local consumers or audience. On the other hand this marketing trend concerns more on customers and build relationships.
When it comes to digital marketing, sky is the limit. Because you can have thousands of different customers and different target markets to cater. Marketing is the communication tool of a business. And digital marketing has provided a perfect platform for marketing communication. This digital marketing concept is more or less the same to internet marketing. Today with the rapid development of the technology, both consumers as well as businesses uses online platform. Especially due to the usage of social media and availability of internet resources.
And day by day everything is becoming virtual with this effect. This conversion of the society has resulted in creating and developing digital marketing concepts. Digital marketing can be done through internet or any digital media. Even mobile apps and text messages falls under this. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), email marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), affiliate marketing, content marketing social media marketing and online advertisements are some main methods of digital marketing.
Generally all online businesses do online marketing irrespective of their size, field or financial strength. Here are some pros and cons of digital marketing.
|
Pros |
Cons |
|
·
Massive and growing target market ·
Huge variety of customers ·
Saves time ·
Effective and mass communication ·
Customer relationship marketing ·
Foreign products and services ·
Foreign technology ·
Improve brand recognition ·
Cost reduction by being virtual ·
Automated services ·
Analytical tools ·
Lot of data and information |
·
Not materialistic ·
Security issues ·
Technical errors ·
High competition ·
Lack of knowledge · More complicated than traditional
marketing |
Types of Digital Marketing?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is one of the strong widely
spread type of Digital Marketing. Search
engine optimization is optimizing or ranking a website in search engines such
as Google, Yahoo and Bing. This process should be carefully planned and
executed. The intention of SEO is to increase the visitors to your website. And
that will expose your company to a large group of people.
Search engine are
responsible for ranking your website. They to it based on the keywords, quality
and the suitability of the content to the keyword and topic. You should create
your website with quality content and with selected specific keywords.
In doing this Google AdWords tool is a must. AdWords will provide an analyzed details about the related keyword for your business and search volume of those keywords. Then you can create your website and blogs based on the keywords. Other than that you need to do some technical tactics such as backlinks. Most importantly this is the most cost effective method to do market your products.
Social Media Marketing
Social media is one of
the biggest trends in the present world. And it is affecting everyone’s life in
every angle. Even this is a great platform for online marketers. So what do we
mean by social media marketing? Simply social media is a pool of different
target consumers. And using that social media platforms, apps and websites to
do marketing campaigns, and to promote products and services is known as social
media marketing. For an example Facebook and Instagram,
Companies take details about the social media uses from particular social media websites or companies. Then the companies develop strategies and campaigns to reach their target market through social media. This is an effective and an easy way to reach the target customers. Because you can easily identify the target groups, their behavior, requirements, thinking pattern and many more insights. Through social media marketing, marketers reach both existing and potential customers.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is
not done by the company itself but by a third party. Usually large companies
practice affiliate marketing. And company can have any number of affiliates.
The intention of affiliate marketing is to promote their bran or products and
attract more customers. Here the company do not have to do the hard working as
it is outsourced to affiliate third parties.
Firstly companies recruit affiliates according to company policies. Then the affiliates work on marketing and promoting companies’ brands, products and services through their websites and other digital marketing methods. Then the affiliates are paid commissions if a sale happened through their affiliate links. Individuals can be affiliates with any number of companies. And this is a performance based marketing method.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
In SEM companies pay a
certain amount to search engines such as google and yahoo for doing companies
marketing. One thing is companies can rank their official websites and other
related website and pages in search engine results. So that the company website
is the first result a person gets for his search.
People search using keywords. Therefore search engines show results based on keywords and content. In ranking business websites in search engine marketing these keywords are very important to identify the correct target market. And also direct advertisements also can be taken as SEM
Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)
This is a common internet
marketing method. When you got a website sometimes you can see advertisements
displayed on pages and posts. Simply they are pay per click advertisements. Companies
display ads on selected third party websites. This is done through search
engines or sometimes directly with third parties. And companies pay these
parties for advertising. Mostly with social media websites you can see these
kinds of ads and promotions. Those ands and promotions are displayed for target
groups of those particular products and services.
What search engines do is, they post those advertisements on selected websites. And pay the website owners when those advertisements are clicked. Website owners should apply with their website to get advertisements. For an example Google AdSense. Here google post advertisements on third party website based on keywords and related blogs.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a
sustainable way to do marketing communication. This is done by providing
quality information to the target groups. Information and contents can be
published via YouTube, social media and mainly by blog post. Companies make
awareness and willingness about their products and services through content
marketing. And also attract potential customs and expand the target group.
When true and quality information is provided freely potential and existing customer automatically get attracted. On the other hand content marketing is a good way to develop and maintain customer relationships. Because customer relationship is one of the key area in sales and marketing.
Email Marketing
Sending commercial emails
to existing and potential customers is known as email marketing. Through emails
advertisements, new product information, promotional information and other
marketing information is sent to customers individually.
This is a good way to interact with the customers and to build up customer relationships. In the form of after sales services you ac do email marketing. That would result in developing the customer loyalty.
In this digital marketing cloud above mentioned methods gives the same outcomes and result. Therefore there can be some differences as well as similarities. Sometimes there is fine line between some techniques and methods. Also share common thermos and procedures. Therefore, best thing is not to rely on one technique but to adopt all.
