Brand
Digital Marketing
Digital marketing refers to activities carried out to connect with potential customers online .Traditional marketing involved using print and other non-digital media to get information about a certain company to the targeted audience by getting their attention. However, digital marketing involves using digital social media, email, and other digital platforms to get information about a certain message across to the targeted audience.
Referring back to our earlier example, if you were a small clothing business owner, you could use Instagram to advertise your clothes and have a website where your customers can go and buy your products, you can also use google ads to advertise your clothes line or shop and send emails to your customers about your new line of clothing.
All the above activities that we have discussed are part of digital marketing activities that target connecting digitally with your customers by getting your message about your business to your customers, connecting digitally with them in order to build a relationship, and eventually getting your customers to buy your products.
Importance of digital marketing:
Consumers are now using the internet for research, networking, and purchasing purposes.
As such, with digital marketing it is now easier to reach potential customers as compared to traditional styles of marketing since you are able to meet them where they are instead of waiting for them to come to you. Secondly, the marketer does not have to spend a lot of money right away since the marketer can carry out several digital marketing activities that can sensitize their potential customers about their business while at the same time connecting with the customers thus building a relationship instead of just getting their ads out there. For instance, local bakeries can carry out advertisements on Instagram, use google my maps to advertise their business, also use whatsapp and emails to connect with their customers. Moreover, unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing activities can be easily evaluated.
This means businesses can generate several statistics such as the amount of traffic flowing into their websites and the amount of sales their websites are generating, the amount of traffic or sales that come from specific advertisements that they run or other digital marketing activities that the businesses carry out, the amount of people who watch a certain video or click on a certain link. The next section will discuss the main components of digital marketing.
The Main Components of Digital Marketing:
Digital marketing has various components, they include:
1. Search Engine Optimization:
This component optimizing a website to rank high on a search engine when certain phrases are searched. For instance, in case an individual has a digital marketing agency, when someone searches for a digital marketing agency, the website that shows up on the first page of google is known as SEO
Aspects that are considered in SEO include:
- Developing informative content
- Using keywords
- Website structure
- Website speed
- Making sure the website is mobile friendly
- Building backink
- Improving website authority
- Improving user experience
Example:
A dentist can develop a blog on how to take care of teeth in order to prevent cavities. Therefore, when someone searches on how to prevent cavities, they stumble on the dentist’s blog, are attracted by the blog, read the blog and end up visiting the dentist’s website and eventually booking an appointment with the dentist.
With good SEO strategies, businesses can reap with having high quality organic traffic since organic traffic involves having people search for certain phrases and end up visiting a certain website instead of another search result that was expected.
This component entails using social media platforms to advertise a certain brand, product or service. Some of the social media platforms that can be used include; instagram, facebook, youtube, linkedin, x, pinterest, tiktok among others.
Social media marketing aims to engage potential customers, inform them about a certain brand, product or service and also provide other relevant information about a certain industry and what the business offers. In addition, businesses can use social media to carry out giveaways, promote the brand, product or service, share their achievements among other related activities.
Example:
A fitness trainer wants to promote their personal training services, therefore, they can create short video content on instagram, give tips on their stories, upload videos on youtube, answer questions on social media, therefore, anyone interested in their content can visit the fitness trainer’s website and buy their personal training services.
It is also important for businesses/persons to interact with their target audience in order for them to effectively sell their products/services using social media.
Content marketing refers to developing interesting and informative content to attract a target audience. Content marketing can consist of developing blogs, video content, article content, infographic content, guides, ebook content, social media content, podcast, case studies and much more.
The main aim of content marketing is to provide value to the target audience instead of directly selling a product/service to them. However, an informed audience is more likely to purchase a certain service or product that a business offers.
Example:
Assume that there is a laptop manufacturing company that decides to develop blog content on the best laptop for students, they could also develop blog content on 5 important things to consider when buying a laptop. Therefore, when anyone is searching for laptop related information, they stumble on this laptop manufacturing company’s blog, find the blog informative and end up buying the company’s laptops.
It is very important for businesses to consider implementing content marketing since it can be combined with other digital marketing strategies since the content developed can be optimized and shared on various digital platforms.
Email marketing is among the best digital marketing components since it entails sending promotional emails to targeted customers.
The business uses this strategy to inform current and prospective customers about new products, offers, and information about the company about special offers, welcoming new customers and reminding customers to make purchases. Email marketing is an extremely valuable strategy that allows businesses to build relationships with current and potential customers.
Example:
There is an online clothing store with a website where customers can shop from. One day, a customer visits this clothing store’s website and subscribes to their email list. A few days later, this customer gets an email notification from this clothing store about new clothes, therefore, they click on the link provided in the email and end up visiting this clothing store’s website again and click on another link in the email about a discount, they then again visit this clothing store’s website and make a purchase.
Email marketing has been proven to be very efficient as businesses can directly target a specific mass of existing or potential customers.
5. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising:
His means that advertising is done and the company only pays once the advertisement is clicked by a consumer.. Google ads is the most common pay per click application where businesses can carry out their advertisements, when certain phrases are searched, these ads show up on google. For instance, in case somebody owns a web designing company and decides to carry out advertisements on google, they could come up with an ad campaign that will run when certain phrases related to web designing are searched, for instance,
When someone clicks on the advertisement, they visit the web designing company’s website.Facebook and instagram also have advertisement options that are similar to those of google ads.
Example:
A restaurant business owner wants to get more customers from a certain area, instead of running ads that will run nationwide and end up costing them a lot of money when they only want to target a specific area, they could run ads targeting this certain area. They could also run advertisement content with special lunch offers and provide details on how these targeted customers can make their reservations. Although it might seem like a good idea to run ads through pay per click since businesses only pay when someone clicks on their ads, it is important that the advertisements are monitored.
6. Digital Marketing Analytics:
This entails analysing the statistics gathered from various digital marketing activities in order to understand what is working and what is not, therefore, making it possible to make some improvements. This data can also be used to show the amount of traffic flowing into a website and the amount of sales that website is generating, the amount of traffic and sales that various products are generating, the source of traffic, the amount of sales that various advertising activities are generating and much more. There are various digital marketing tools that can be used to carry out this analysis, some of these tools include google analytics, these tools help businesses to understand the performance of their website and the number of visitors their website is attracting.
Example:
Assume that a business published 5 blog posts and upon analysing the data they realised that one of the blogs attracted so much traffic and therefore they decided to come up with blogs similar to that certain blog post.
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