What’s up Folks?
Welcome to the fifteenth episode of The Logophile’s Lounge (#TLL)… Your one-stop-source for all content and digital marketing particulars.
Moving ahead in this journey, we now take this opportunity to brief every nook and cranny of digital marketing and dispel its prevalent myths.
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Before starting the topic, one little disclaimer for you:
Disclaimer: Declining attention span of internet users is effectively making a digital marketer’s work ‘Catch-22.’
DIGITAL MARKETING
If you wish to get an overview on Digital Marketing and the best way to learn it, quickly check out our video below.
For detailed information, keep reading and keep learning.
Digital Marketing- Replacing Traditional Marketing
While traditional marketing is convenient and wide-spread, it is not driving the results that a 21st-century marketer is looking for. Changing times require modern strategies to connect with the target audience at the right time and at the right place. At present times, this simply means that one needs to communicate with audiences where they are easily reached, on the Internet. With technological advancement, internet penetration has increased and is considered a viable option for information dissemination.
57% of the world’s population are now internet users, and on average people spend 6 hours online every single day. Acknowledging that target audiences are always available and quickly reachable online, marketers must direct their efforts online to engage customers and promote their services or products. Here enters digital marketing.
Digital Marketing, unsurprisingly, is the marketing or promotion of products, services, or brands using the internet via mobile phones, tablets, Laptops, Desktops, or any other such devices. It is one of the most viable ways to connect with current as well as prospective customers. Companies leverage multiple digital channels such as Search Engine (Google, Bing, Duckduckgo, etc.), websites, social media, email, etc. to communicate effectively with customers.
WHY CALL FOR DIGITAL MARKETING
It is no surprise that newspaper readers have decreased over the years and that print ads are not paid much attention. Do you remember the information written on Billboards that you see on a Highway? Probably Not.
Traditional marketing that found its presence offline such as billboards, print ads, telephonic communication is often limited. Also, nation-wide offline campaigns require heavy investment and multiple quick fixes to meet dynamic demographic needs. The case is not so when communication is done through an online platform.
Online campaigns offer endless marketing possibilities. Wide variety of options combined with strategies and real-time feeds makes digital marketing the best option for marketing leaders. It promises opportunities to incorporate various media in marketing efforts.
Apart from successfully accomplishing what traditional marketing can achieve, Digital marketing offers following added benefits to marketers:
- Much lower implementation costs: Running multiple campaigns online costs much less than traditional marketing.
- Power to customers: Digital marketing allows audiences to directly speak with the authority on concerned matters.
- Real-time Tracking: The preconceived notion that marketing efforts cannot be measured changes when marketers deal in digital marketing. It allows marketers to keep track of real time actions happening on any platform. Data analytics help marketers to keep track of lead generation as well as lead conversion.
- Better engagement opportunities: Through digital marketing, businesses can better engage with audiences by incorporating influencers and getting them to endorse the campaigns, products, or services.
Digital marketing allows a marketer to be as flexible, creative, and experimental with its campaigns as possible to increase customer engagement with the brand. Whether one is on a fixed budget or flexible, online marketing trends to give a better return on investment.
TYPES OF DIGITAL MARKETING
Following are five ways of Digital marketing:
- Promoting through Search Engines: Widely known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is promotional efforts to rank a website on the first page of search engines like Google. As a marketer, one must know that no internet user is ever going to look out for all the search results that the engine offers. A user at most checks 4-5 search result pages before visiting any of the landing pages to get the job done. This is the main reason why a marketer must focus on increasing the rank of their website on any search engine. Better ranking increases the online visibility of a particular website, from where lead conversion can be effectively done. At present, there are multiple ways to perform SEO to create quality traffic on the website.
- On-Page SEO: This type of SEO focuses on entire page content that is visible ‘on the website page.’ In this the marketer puts effort to optimize the page in order to assign a proper structure including (Heading, Summary, Body, Conclusion, Keywords, others). This enhances visibility in search engines and increases ranking of the website.
- Off-Page SEO: This type of SEO focuses on each and every activity that is not visible on the page, that is ‘off the page.’ The idea is again to optimize the page and increase ranking of the website on Google search results. One may wonder how external environment activities affect the website ranking? Inbound links are the reason why off page SEO is important to maintain proper ranking of any page. Inbound links are also known as Backlinks.
- Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC): Paying search engines to list your website as an ad on the top of search results is referred to as PPC Advertising. It is also known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM). To understand better, consider the following example, suppose you search on google ‘Buy Laptop Online’. Multiple search results open to give you a brief idea of buying laptops, be it the laptops’ brands, pricing, model, etc. that are frequently searched by internet users. One important point to note here is that, in certain search results top three-five links are advertisements. These ads are examples of PPC and websites pay Google firm when someone clicks on these ads. This is in line with shopping ads, paid ads, or search engine marketing. Below these ad results are organic listings, also known as free listings which are optimized by websites so that they can rank on the first page of Google or on top of Google.
- Social Media Marketing (SMM): Promoting a website through social media platforms like facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tik Tok, etc. This can be either paid as well as Organic Promotion. Social Media Marketing is used by organizations to stay in touch with their target audience and provide post-sales support.
- Promoting through Search Engines: Widely known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is promotional efforts to rank a website on the first page of search engines like Google. As a marketer, one must know that no internet user is ever going to look out for all the search results that the engine offers. A user at most checks 4-5 search result pages before visiting any of the landing pages to get the job done. This is the main reason why a marketer must focus on increasing the rank of their website on any search engine. Better ranking increases the online visibility of a particular website, from where lead conversion can be effectively done. At present, there are multiple ways to perform SEO to create quality traffic on the website.
- Email Marketing: This includes promotion of services, products, etc. through email. This is one of the best mediums that can be leveraged to send personalized messages to a considerably large number of people. As a marketer, one must know that email marketing works best when email is sent to subscribed users rather than simply buying database and running a bulk email campaign.
- Affiliate Marketing: This is also known as Performance based marketing. Marketers pay an advertiser a commission to sell their products on a platform. It is in line with offline promotions where intermediaries earn multiple commission on every sales of product they promote. It is a widely used way to promote ecommerce websites. Some of the platforms that offer affiliate marketing services to merchants are Commission Junctions, Shareasale, etc,
As a smart marketer, one must use a combination of any of these above mentioned marketing activities in different proportions. This will lead to better ways of reaching the target audience.
EXAMPLES
Content Marketing: This consists of writing a piece of information, often referred to as a content, and then promoting the same through various search engines, social media, email, etc. It is used by marketers to increase customer engagement with the brand. A content marketer first creates multiple related blog posts in order to generate more leads for the business. This effort is further strengthened by the social media marketers, who in turn promote these blogs through either paid or organic posts on various social media accounts of the business. Take for example an email marketer, this person will create personalized emails containing these blogs, and run a campaign to promote the products of the business. He can also attach the company’s ebook, brochures, and other such information in the mail to give the audience better insight on the business as well as its products.
E-Commerce Marketing: This refers to the promotion of an e-commerce website using all possible methods. This mainly includes the sale of products via online marketplaces such as Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, BigBasket, etc.
Native Advertising: In certain scenarios, to double to advertising efforts, marketers matches the format of paid advertising with that of publishing sites. Every single ad that one comes across on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram are examples of Native Advertising.
SUBTLE NUANCES OF DIGITAL MARKETING
Everybody enjoys inside information. Here are some tidbits that one knows after working in the industry for 3-5 years. Quickly scan through the following bullet points and present yourself as an expert in Digital Marketing:
- Smart SEO tools to use- Google Analytic, Keyword Planner, Semrush, Ahref, Backlinko, Google Webmaster, Copyscape.
- A 3-way link is comparatively safer than a 2-way link.
- Do not confuse among Spider, Crawler, and Robots as they are all the same.
- Stay away from Black Hat SEO.
- Limit 70 characters in title tag and 150-160 characters in the meta-description tag.
TOP DIGITAL MARKETING INSTITUTES
- Education and Career Times (ECT): Recognized by the Government of India, ECT is the only training institute that offers a wide range of courses, offline and online, including Content Writing Course, Digital Marketing Course, Communication Skills and Personality Development Course. At ECT, one gets a 51 module comprehensive digital marketing course. Whether a fresher or a working professional, whether you are starting from scratch or scaling up your knowledge, ECT helps you excel at digital marketing and smartly handle all types of projects. Certification included.
- The George Washington University: George Washington University offers one Graduate certificate in Digital Marketing and Communications. It is a full time 12 credit course. The objective of the course is to equip students with a deep understanding of digital marketing practices and how it co-exists with marketing strategies, communication as well as for analytics.
- Manchester Metropolitan University: The university offers 2 MSc courses in Digital Marketing and Digital Marketing Communications. Accredited by the Institute of Data and Marketing, the course is designed to strengthen the skills and knowledge base in evidence-based, applied digital marketing strategy and campaign planning. The university welcomes anyone with a passion for digital marketing and who is interested in honing their skills.
- University of Aberdeen: Situated in the UK, the university offers MSc in Digital Marketing Leadership. The ultimate goal of this course is to assist students in advancing their career opportunities in the industry. The course is online and is designed strategically to meet the dynamic digital marketing industry needs.
- University of Southampton: The university offers MSc in Digital marketing. The course proffers to introduce students with the latest techniques and concepts in digital marketing. It assists students to become career-ready in this dynamic industry.
UP FOR DIGITAL MARKETING- KNOW WHERE TO START
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