Introduction

What is digital marketing ?

Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium.

At a high level, digital marketing refers to advertising delivered through digital channels such as search engines, websites, social media, email, and mobile apps. While this term covers a wide range of marketing activities.

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for all of your online marketing efforts. Businesses leverage digital channels such as Google search, social media, email, and their websites to connect with their current and prospective customers.

The reality is, people spend twice as much time online as they used to 12 years ago And while we say it a lot, the way people shop and buy really has changed, meaning offline marketing isn’t as effective as it used to be.

Marketing has always been about connecting with your audience in the right place and at the right time. Today, that means that you need to meet them where they are already spending time: on the internet.

Tactics 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The process of optimizing your website to ‘rank’ higher in search engine results pages, therefore increasing the amount of organic (or free) traffic that your website receives.

Content Marketing

The creation and promotion of content assets for the purpose of generating brand awareness, traffic growth, lead generation, or customers.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing refers to the ‘full-funnel’ approach to attracting, converting, closing, and delighting customers using online content.

Social Media Marketing

The practice of promoting your brand and your content on social media channels to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, and generate leads for your business.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

A method of driving traffic to your website by paying a publisher every time your ad is clicked. One of the most common types of PPC is Google AdWords.

Affiliate Marketing

A type of performance-based advertising where you receive commission for promoting someone else’s products or services on your website.

Native Advertising

Native advertising refers to advertisements that are primarily content-led and featured on a platform alongside other, non-paid content. BuzzFeed sponsored posts are a good example, but many people also consider social media advertising to be ‘native’ -- for example, facebook advertising and Instagram advertising.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation refers to the software that exists with the goal of automating marketing actions. Many marketing departments have to automate repetitive tasks such as emails, social media, and other website actions.

Email Marketing

Companies use email marketing as a way of communicating with their audiences. Email is often used to promote content, discounts and events, as well as to direct people towards the business’ website.

Online PR

Online PR is the practice of securing earned online coverage with digital publications, blogs, and other content-based websites. It’s much like traditional PR, but in the online space.

Digital marketing provides the businesses an access to the mass market at a reasonable price, unlike TV or print marketing.

Some specific benefits of digital marketing include:

1. Cost-efficient: You can easily plan a successful online marketing strategy within your budget by the use of digital marketing that offers an inexpensive technique in comparison to other advertising channels such as radio, TV and more.
   A well-panned and well-managed digital marketing campaign can reach a large audience at a lower cost than the traditional marketing methods.
2. Better exposure: Reach numerous prospects by switching to a digital marketing campaign within a small investment. Be found where your audiences are looking for you. You will notice long term results by using digital marketing.
3. Save Time: Digital marketing provides real time results within no time. Time is precious for all of us, so why waste even a Nano second. Digital marketing gives you an opportunity to see the number of visitors to your site, what is the conversion rate, what is the peak trading time, how many subscribers have added you in a day and more.
4. Social currency: Digital marketing gives you a chance to create engaging campaigns using different types of media. These campaigns can go viral on social platforms, passing on from one person to another, hence gaining social currency.
5. Brand Building: Brand building is what every business tries to accomplish and digital marketing helps develop your brand by promoting it on several platforms, the more viral your brand goes, the more reputation your brand will earn in the eyes of search engines as well as users.

Benefits and importance of digital marketing

Nowadays, customers have access to information any time and any place they want or need it. Thanks to the Internet and globalization, most people on the globe are able to access the information via computers, tablets or mobiles. What business owners should remember is that everyone can influence the image of their companies via ex. Social Media and you can be sure that your customer feedback will be more trustworthy for others to read than your own one. 

Why Digital Marketing is so important and gives you so many benefits?

Because via electronic channels and by posting positive comments, feedbacks about your company/product you (and your happy customers) can attract new customers and build long-lasting relationship. But, be careful! It works both ways! Happy customers can help you, but unhappy customer can harm your business very seriously. That's why as a business owner make sure you always remember about the following points: 

Encourage engagement through digital media

You can simply acquire new clients via ex. Social Media channels. When doing so, ensure you segment them into different customer groups according to their interests. Later, you will be able to interact with them and encourage to various actions. 

The more likes the better!

As part of Digital Marketing – Social Media is underestimated. It's a big mistake because your “Facebook” likes or “Twitter” shares can help your company grow as they build credibility and trust. They also bring traffic to the website and are costless. What you have to do is to insert a Social Media plugin onto your site and keep updating your customers about the company news, discounts, etc. Bear in mind to schedule the frequency of updates and not to overwhelm them with too much information at once. You may be surprised with the outcome.  

Get ahead of your competitors

Every year more and more businesses give up traditional advertising methods and focus on SEO, Google Adwords or Social Media spending huge money on these resources. This is the reason why the market gets increasingly competitive and big players get ahead of little companies. As a small business on the market, you cannot compete with them but there is something you can do. You can use Google Alerts tool to monitor your competitors. This tool will allow you to track your competitors products and marketing strategies so that you can learn something from them and improve your own business strategy.   

Go beyond the boundaries

It's important to understand that digital marketing doesn't only apply to your website! However most of the marketers create a website or an eCommerce and  invest in SEO and/or AdWords. But to make your business stand out from the crowd, you need a real strategy that puts potential customers first and use all the available tools to acquire them. 

Business reputation first!

Good reputation of any business is essential. Without the trust and confidence of the customer, a company will not survive. Especially in the past years the importance of reputation has become increasingly noticeable. If a business has a good reputation, customers may choose that particular company from many on the market. The positive reputation enables marketers to differentiate their products/services in a highly competitive market and successfully compete with big players. How to build a good reputation? Make sure that you communicate with your customers and everyone who interacts with your company through website, e-mail, Social Media. Answer any doubts, offer help and make sure you build a long-lasting relationship with your customers.