With the advent of technology and internet services, the world has come considerably closer. The buying behavior of customers has changed drastically over the past decade. For half a century, consumers' media consumption was dominated by offline media. Consumers have started online shopping, completing the whole cycle of virtual buying and selling.
Today, more than half of the media we consume comes from digital channels. Reaching consumers through digital channels offers several advantages over traditional offline marketing. Firms’ ability to target specific consumers has increased greatly.
Another advantage of reaching consumers online is measured by the total number of visitors and regular customers. Many companies struggle to embrace digital marketing because of digital marketing instruments for a store in the flux.
The instruments keep updating or turn obsolete with the introduction of any new better digital tool. The most important challenge is the mindset of business owners in terms of digital marketing. For the past 50 years, marketing executives used to make their decisions of marketing based on their intuition, experience, and observed market trends.
Today, marketing managers need proper analytical skills to run a successful marketing campaign. The change in buying pattern of consumers has made digital marketing a must for businesses to operate successfully in this competitive modern online marketing world. It is important for business owners to know what digital marketing is, to use proper digital tools to engage and retain their place in this sea of the digital world.
What Is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is a way to promote products and brands through digital platforms to reach the targeted market using the best digital channels. Digital marketing is vital for today's business as everything is based on the internet, which plays an important role in consumer purchasing decisions.
The internet impacts how consumers purchase online or from any store. This makes it important for businesses to not only be present online but also to boost their visibility. Gone are the days when consumers had to search through a store and ask the customer service personally for a product.
Now, all the information regarding any product is available through the internet which plays a vital role in the decision making for any purchase.
According to Elizabeth Smith Brigham, there are three digital marketing channels:
- Owned media: Websites, Facebook pages, and other owned sources.
- Paid media - Blogs, video portals, and companies' best digital marketing resellers.
- Earned media - Google, IAB Media, etc.
For your business to survive, the company should take advantage of the internet and grow your business through online strategies.
Following are 5 ways digital marketing helps achieve business goals:
Convert Leads to Actual Customers
Digital marketing can be classified as, well targeted and interactive marketing of products or services, by innovative digital transformation of a targeted audience into consumers, consumers to retaining clients and sustain them ethically. Here is the flowchart explaining the same concept of digital buyers’ journey:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is one of the finest, effective and most important digital marketing tool. It is the process of improving your website, to rank high when searched through search engine toolbar. There are certain keywords that can be used while compiling the content, to rank higher in the search engine toolbar. Less than 10% of users navigate on the second page of the search engine. Less than 10% of users navigate on the second page of the search engine. Share on X The more you rank high, the greater number of people will see your website and that eventually will increase your business.
SEO aims to direct more traffic towards your website through the usage of proper keywords. The traffic is based on your target market, consumers who constantly look for the related products and services, and people who search for quality content.
There are many experts who can build quality content to upscale your website through their skills in putting the proper keywords enhancing your website.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing increases brand awareness and helps build conversions. It has many platforms, since the increased influence of social media towards this generation. For social media marketing, we can select any platform, depending upon the target market and the social media platforms they use. The biggest influencer in social media is Facebook.
When it comes to targeting a specific and huge market, Facebook is the most effective social media platform compared to other platforms. Other social media channels include:
- Snapchat
- YouTube
& more
Social media platforms also focus on maintaining your company's reputation in the specific market. It is imperative to develop informational, promotional and engaging posts to build the brand identity and a positive image in front of consumers.
Social media is the best tool to influence people in this era - make great use of it. The increased usage of all social media channels has proved that major buying decisions are made based on social media marketing. The trend of investing in social media marketing is slightly low, but it will be wise if companies start investing in social media marketing considerably, since more than 25% of the user’s internet time is spent on social media these days. More than 25% of the user’s internet time is spent on social media these days. Share on X
Pay Per Click Advertising
Another form of digital marketing, an economical platform is to pay per click advertising. Your call is to bring organic traffic towards your website and bring in substantial profit through the end result of a conversion.
PPC is a type of advertising that, every time the visitor clicks on your advertisement placed, you pay to the advertiser. Google AdWords is one of the most popular and effective PPC advertisers. It also increases the visibility in the search engines, while searching for the related product or service. You can bid on keywords, that you want your ads to show up on for. So you don't have to pay for the space that your ad might appear, you pay when someone clicks on it.
With PPC, the searchers aim to buy your product, hence if they land on your webpage, they are ready to do the transaction. This kind of search is transactional. Once they land on your page, they immediately convert into call to action (CTA). Either they make a purchase or sign up for an email newsletter.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the digital marketing strategies that target the existing customers as well as the new ones. It's an excellent source of building brand awareness and helps in keeping the brand in the consumer's mind, as well as building pipelines for new purchases.
Like content marketing, email marketing as well focuses on providing valuable information to consumers. The specific reason for email marketing is also to develop and refine your campaign of digital marketing.
With the right kind of information and creating appealing and interesting content at the same time, businesses can develop a new customer base who definitely turn into organic buyers. According to webfx, email marketing as a digital strategy has ROI $44 on every $1 spent. Now, that is almost 4400 percent return. According to webfx, email marketing as a digital strategy has ROI $44 on every $1 spent. Now, that is almost 4400 percent return. Share on X
Digital marketing is the best way to reach your customers and target market, as well as achieve your business goals. It is very important to note that it requires special skills to analyze and execute proper digital marketing strategies to achieve the best results and returns to your business.
Sohail Rupani is a Senior SEO Strategist and Blogger for Link Building HQ, a white-label link building services provider. He is passionate about technology and loves to analyze the tech industry in his spare time and stay in touch with the latest happenings. He also writes technical articles about SEO and digital marketing. Follow @sohailrupani for more updates.
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