Table of Contents
What is Digital Marketing?
Do not get confused with the name, Digital marketing, Online marketing, Internet marketing, Social media marketing. I am here to clear up the confusion about what is Digital marketing. All, more or less say the same thing in full or part. Here we shall use only Digital Marketing words for our convenience.
There are not many differences in these, except some of these are part expression like social media marketing is a vital part of digital marketing but digital marketing overall is beyond social media marketing.
What is digital? One-zero or the binary numbers used in electronic processing and communication is called digital. Digital is a two-digit signal, high or low, not a linear signal which is a continuous waveform. So it can be used for mathematical and logical expression is behind communication overexploitation in today’s world. We not only talk to each other over the phone but can see him or her live, send pictures, videos and text. The reason is whether it is; a sound or a picture, all are basically combinations of different bits (high and low).
The digital word really has no relevance with marketing but sounds good and a fashion statement. The whole world accepted it and let us accept it and use it in this article to explain it further. I explain above as I believe it is important to give full clarity instead of giving some definition. Such definitions are available in millions of places, but this blog is unique to clarify everything in an easy-to-understand manner.
People should learn digital marketing in today’s work to be successful in the marketing profession as it is unavoidable, least expensive (cost per lead) but most effective. Especially to attract youth and middle-aged people across the globe. Fortunately, India is on the leading edge of it and Indian companies are helping the global giant to implement digital marketing. Also, one need not to be an electronics or software engineer to understand it but anyone with some intellect and learning can be an expert digital marketer who belongs to any discipline.
Digital marketing is a new age technique to reach a customer, especially youth and middle-aged customers using the internet, laptops, desktops and most importantly mobile taking the loopholes of people’s addiction to social media. It is very popular as one organisation can target a specific person of different ages, social status, earning, spending power & pattern, religion, demography and what not. Digital marketing uses a large amount of data about each human being and uses unique algorithms to reach them. As such it is very effective, and least expensive as no need to deploy a large team, paper or expensive medium. It is on time and fast as well as can get instant feedback on the effectiveness of the content (like impression, click, how much time spent on it, how many converted to customers or showed interest etc.
Digital Marketing Techniques
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
There are millions and billions of websites, Blogs, and YouTube videos. The purpose is that the targeted audience read it or watch it. However, experienced people know that not a single person (generic) will visit the site on his own. You may send some links on social media and can do WhatsApp marketing but those are mostly one-time and can reach to few hundred to thousands only. However, your purpose will be fulfilled when millions of people come to your channel or site.
For that, you need to develop a technical friendship with Seach Engine. A search engine is by which we search a content. The two most popular are Google and Bing. Google and Bing (shall use Google only in this article for simplicity though most of these equally apply for both) have one and only one intention, which is to provide the most relevant result of the search. They are extremely intelligent in finding the best result using unique algorithms. SEO experts try to understand the algorithm and try to bring the site to the first page of the search. Sometimes experts try to fool Google to bring his/her site to the first page using many tricks. However, google/Bing knows that and keeps on changing the algorithm. The quest continues forever. That is the reason it is one of the most complicated subjects and jobs to rank the site on the first page of the search. As well as, it is so much dynamic that today’s knowledge not going to work tomorrow unlike many other subjects and the experts need to learn daily through failure and hands-on experience.
Content Marketing
This is a way to connect the targeted audience through some content like websites, blogs, newsletters, mail bursting, and YouTube to create brand awareness and/or generate leads.
Email marketing
As mentioned above Mail bursting is an effective way to reach very specific customers. It is a simple email with specific content. However, if one sends a bulk email, it is blocked by the email server detecting it as spam. For such cases, companies use a third-party application (can be free or paid depending on use). The third-party software/applications ( Mailchimp, Bravo, ActiveCampaign etc) do nothing but send the same mail at different periods to a specific number of recipients. Suppose you collected one thousand contacts and want to send content to all of them. When you send by the third-party software it will break the recipient list (say 20 x 50) and send the same mail with an interval, each time to 20 recipients and send it 50 times. That is all. One more advantage is that you can personalise the mail like the software picks the name, surname, address etc and uses it in salutation which gives a feeling that the mail is a specific mail sent to him/her only.
However, nowadays this works the other way around. Many unethical organisations buy email IDs which are stolen by someone or sold by unethical service providers and the company send random emails using those IDs. It really irritates the person who receiving the mail, especially if it is irrelevant. I receive such 10/15 emails daily and used to block the senders however they find ways to reach using other IDs. As such, I have now more than a few thousand blocked contacts in my mail address book. Surprisingly the emails come from across the globe led by China and SEA but Europe and US are also not much behind.
So, it is very effective if you use it judicially.
Not discussing WhatsApp and SMS marketing as by nature all these are the same with equal pros and cons, to limit the length of the article.
Pay-Per-click (PPC)
It is paid AD in Google or Bing. When the customer clicks the link then only Google/Bing charges to the customer. For that customer can set their budget and different criteria. It is very interesting that unlike other platforms here customer has the freedom the set the budget and how much he/she wants to pay per click. Also, the customer’s set cost is an indicator only and the actual charge will not be the same but around. Here also Google uses a nice algorithm which they intimates in detail following the transparency Google follows.
Unlike any other advertisement platform, here Google does not show the AD based on how much he/she wanted to pay. Rather, how relevant is the topic to the search? The reason is Google/Bing at any cost does not want to lose the trust of the searcher and gives top priority positioning search results as per relevance.
For example, someone is searching ‘Hotels in Delhi’. There may be several paid promotions. Site-A is giving INR 1.5 per click and Site-B is giving only INR 0.50 per click. It is not Google will show Site-A because it is giving more but if Site-B’s site ‘Authority’ is better than Site-A then it will show Site-B. This is for PAID promotion (Google also mention it as AD on the site for transparency). However, for generic results, Google uses its algorithm to find the best result where no money to be paid. The SEO plays the most important result in getting positioned on Page-one.
You can conclude that Google will show most relevant results be it paid or generic, the only difference is the paid sites mostly come on top. As well as it can be featured also using pictures, videos etc.
This is itself a very interesting and large topic to understand. I wish I could write one or a few articles on this when time permits. Also, ‘Ranking’, and ‘Site Authority’ are very important topics for a digital marketer.
Social Media Marketing
We all used to experience it when we scroll through Facebook, LinkedIn, X (Twitter). Dozens of paid advertisements related to selling a product or service keep on coming to our screen. Here also the advertiser needs to pay a fixed charge and some variable based on clicks. It is quite cheap on Facebook and Instagram compared to LinkedIn, as a result, you shall find more AD on these two platforms.
Viral Marketing
It also said word-of-mouth marketing. Companies create contagious content and the same spread like an inferno through viewer’s reactions.
We are living under a social media boom and are used to see viral content on social matters or products, so does not require much explanation. One thing we need to take care that the contents should be interesting but follow all ethical aspects, rules of the land and do not create a negative impact on any particular person, society, region, religion or organisation.
Conclusion:
It does not end here. There are a few more techniques which can also be discussed but above techniques are mostly used in Digital Marketing.
I feel you got the big picture on Digital Marketing. I wish to write in detail on each of them, at least SEO and Social Media Marketing (Facebook, Instagram & LinkedIn). How to do it, process, expenses, knowledge required, specific purpose, effectivity etc in subsequent articles. Also, AI slowly entering in this field which will open up a new avenue in Digital Marketing. It’s a large subject and shall try to explain part by part.