Digital marketing is the use of digital technologies to reach and engage a customer. It’s a way for companies to market their products and services in the digital age. Digital marketing has been around since the early days of the internet, but it’s evolved as technology has changed. In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about digital marketing: from its history and components, to how it works and where it’s headed in the future.
Introduction to Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is a broad term used to describe the process of using digital technology to market products, services, and ideas. Digital marketing uses many different channels, such as search engines (SEO), social media, display advertising, and mobile advertising. These channels are used to drive traffic through your website and make sales.
Digital Marketing can be broken down into 4 main areas:
Strategic Planning & Integration
Strategic planning and integration is the process of developing a marketing strategy that aligns with your business goals and objectives, as well as incorporating new features into your digital marketing plan. It’s important to ensure that every aspect of your digital marketing strategy works together in order for you to successfully reach your target audience.
When you have a strategic plan, can help manage all aspects of your business (including social media) by providing direction on how best to allocate resources or budgets toward each project or campaign. This ensures that all efforts are focused on reaching one goal at a time instead of trying every tactic at once without seeing results from any strategy before moving on to another one.
The steps in the Strategic Planning Process are: 1) Define Your Goals & Objectives 2) Identify Opportunities 3) Evaluate Alternative Strategies 4) Select A Strategy 5) Execute The Strategy 6) Monitor Progress 7) Make Adjustments 8.) Repeat Steps 5 through 7 As Needed
The Digital Marketing Environment
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. The digital marketer’s job is to understand and use these channels to reach customers. There are currently six main online channel categories: social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest), video (YouTube), mobile (iOS or Android), content networks e.g., LinkedIn, banner ads, and search—although other technologies may be included as well; each has its own unique advantages in terms of cost-effectiveness over traditional mass media such as television advertisements or print ads.
The Digital Consumer
As a digital marketer, it’s important to understand the digital consumer. To do this, you’ll need to consider how this consumer is different from the conventional consumer and how their behavior has changed over time.
The Digital Consumer Is More Demanding
Digital consumers are more demanding than ever before. In fact, they expect brands to provide them with exceptional service and value at every touchpoint—online or offline. And if your brand doesn’t meet these expectations? Well, there are plenty of other options out there!
The Digital Consumer Is Connected Like Never Before
Digital consumers have become highly connected as part of their daily lives—to others via social media sites like Facebook; through email updates from companies; etcetera (the list goes on). They take advantage of mobile devices for everything from watching videos online all day long until late at night—and even during meals if they’re not careful!
Digital Marketing Tools and Channels
Digital marketing is the process of promoting your brand, product, or service using digital channels. It’s growing rapidly because it’s easy to access, can be cost-effective, and is measurable.
It consists of many different tools and channels that all work together to help drive traffic, create awareness and ultimately nurture leads. Digital marketing can be broken down into five main areas:
- Email Marketing – Sending emails to customers who have previously expressed interest in your products or services via an opt-in box on a website, email program, or mobile app;
- Websites & SEO – Creating websites that are optimized for search engines; providing useful content on those websites; optimizing analytics reports so you know how well your website is performing in search engine rankings;
- Paid Search – Paying Google (or other search engines) when someone clicks on ads that are next to paid search results;
- Content Marketing – Creating blog posts/videos/images/audio files that people want to share with their followers (or “followers”);
Digital marketing works best when each area complements the others. For example, A paid advertising campaign would likely benefit from having great content produced by an agency specializing in content marketing so they could offer more insights into what resonates with their target audience through their research findings than simply relying on statistical analysis alone.
Email, Websites, SEO, and Paid Search
Email Marketing
Email is one of the most affordable and effective marketing channels available. It’s simple to implement and easy to track, plus it doesn’t require much time or effort. But what sets email apart from other channels? First, there’s its potential reach: A study by the Direct Marketing Association found that 90% of consumers use email as their preferred method for receiving marketing messages, making it easier than ever before for companies to reach out with their products or services. Second, there are countless ways you can use email as an effective marketing tool—one of the best is when you send targeted campaigns directly from your website with a call-to-action button that directs users back to your site (e.g., “Click here” or “Shop now”).
Finally—and perhaps most importantly—email has proven itself time and time again as a powerful tool for converting leads into actual sales: According to Campaign Monitor, companies who engage in frequent customer outreach see a 24% higher return on investment (ROI) than those who don’t!
Content Marketing
Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.
A well-planned content marketing strategy can help you communicate with your target audience, build up trust and authority online, and therefore improve your search engine rankings.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is an important part of digital marketing. Your business can use it to get new customers and grow your brand, even if you don’t have much experience with social media.
So how does it work? Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allow users to post content or status updates that their friends see when they log in to the platform. You can also advertise on these platforms so that potential customers see your posts in their feeds or timelines.
These are some examples of how social media can help you grow your business:
- Reach new customers by advertising on social networks like Facebook or Instagram where they spend time online (e.g., at school)
- Build trust among existing fans by talking about them on your blog or website every week (e.g., weekly newsletters) – Engage with current fans through live chat sessions so that they don’t forget about what makes them love being part of the brand community
Online Communities
Online communities are one of the most cost-effective ways to connect with your customers and build brand awareness, equity, loyalty, advocacy, and relationships. There’s no better way to accomplish this than by participating in online forums where people who share some interest or passion can come together to talk about what they love.
The best way to create an online community is from scratch, but if you don’t have the time or resources for that then there are plenty of other ways that you can get involved with existing communities. You can even just join them as a guest so you get an idea of what it’s like before deciding whether or not it might be worth starting your own community from scratch!
Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing is a form of marketing that uses mobile devices to promote products, services, or brands. Mobile marketing is a subset of digital marketing and includes SMS (Short Message Service), MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), and mobile apps.
Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality
Augmented reality is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics, or GPS data. Virtual reality is an immersive, interactive experience that takes place within a simulated environment.
Marketers need to understand these technologies and how they can be used for marketing campaigns in order to stay relevant and ahead of their competition. If you’re considering using these technologies for your next campaign or project, here’s what you should know:
- Augmented Reality (AR) allows users to view and interact with the digital world via their mobile device while they are experiencing the real world at the same time. It’s often used in gaming apps like Pokémon Go but there are many other ways it can be used outside of games as well. For example, You could use AR technology to help visualize how new furniture would look in your living room before actually buying it; Or visualize what kind of car would fit best into your driveway before purchasing one!
Digital Marketing Strategy and Planning
A digital marketing strategy is a plan for the overall direction of digital marketing activities. It includes the key objectives, actionable goals, and metrics that will be used to track your success. Digital marketing strategy needs to be integrated with the overall business strategy as well as with other components of an organization’s overall digital marketing plan, such as content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).
Digital Marketing Audits
- What is a digital marketing audit?
A digital marketing audit is a process by which you evaluate your existing digital strategy, looking at all aspects of how you use the internet and social media to grow your business. An audit can uncover opportunities for growth, as well as areas where performance could be improved.
- Why do I need a digital marketing audit?
The goal of any business is to create new customers and increase revenue while minimizing expenses. Digital marketing provides businesses with many different tools (both paid and free) that allow them to accomplish these goals more effectively than traditional direct mailing or print ads alone ever could. By conducting regular audits on their online presence, companies can make sure they’re getting the most out of these tools so they don’t waste time or money on ineffective campaigns.
Digital Marketing Strategy and Objectives
The first step in creating a successful digital marketing strategy is to define your goals. You should be able to answer the following questions:
- What do you want to accomplish?
- Why are you doing it?
- How will you measure success?
Once your goals and objectives are defined, it’s time to put together a plan for how those objectives can be met. As part of that process, the first task is to determine which channels will be most effective for achieving your goals.
Digital Marketing Planning
Digital marketing planning is the first step in creating a successful strategy. It’s what you do before making any decisions about your digital marketing initiatives, and it involves mapping out all of the moving pieces so that you can move forward with confidence.
Here are some things to consider when planning for your next digital campaign:
- What are we trying to accomplish?
- How will we measure our success?
- What resources do we need at our disposal?
Digital Marketing Management
As the name suggests, digital marketing management is the process of managing the digital marketing function. Digital marketing management involves managing the digital marketing function which requires a lot of planning and integration with other functions in an organization.
Managing Resources and Reporting
Managing resources and reporting is an integral part of the digital marketing process. It helps you make informed decisions and course correct when necessary so that your digital strategy is on track for success.
Using a regular reporting schedule, you can track your progress toward meeting objectives. By comparing results to goals over time, you’ll be able to get a sense of whether adjustments need to be made in order to stay on target.
Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics
What is a metric?
A metric is a quantifiable data point that can be used to evaluate performance or progress over time. It’s important to understand what your goals are in order to determine what metrics you need to measure and track. Some examples of common digital marketing metrics include:
- Conversion rate (eCommerce)
- Average order value (eCommerce)
- Revenue per visitor/customer (eCommerce)
Takeaway: What you need to know about digital marketing.
It is important to understand that digital marketing is a part of your overall business strategy, not the entire strategy. You need to know what your customers want and how they want to interact with your brand.
So, if you want to get started with Digital Marketing, but aren’t sure where to begin or what steps to take? Contact us today!
Conclusion
We hope this article has helped you better understand the ins and outs of digital marketing. If you want to get more involved with this emerging field, there are plenty of ways to do so: learn how to create effective marketing campaigns, build up your skillset with an online course or two from a reputable provider like DigitalMarketingSchool.com or Udemy, or even take a class at a local college if one is available in your area! Alternatively, you can talk to a Digital Marketing Agency like ours.