Digital Marketing 101

 

Digital marketing is a broad term that refers to any digital activity intended to promote brands, products, or services.

Although digital marketing can encompass paid advertising on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, it covers so much more. Digital marketing includes email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), mobile apps, display ads, video marketing and more. The goal of digital marketing is to create an online presence that generates brand awareness and attracts customers and clients to your company.

In this article, we’ll discuss the basics of digital marketing and introduce you to the major players in the field who can help you get started with your campaign.

Introduction to Digital Marketing

It is simply defined as the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, such as mobile phones, computers, social media and online ads. Digital marketing has been in existence since early 2000s. Since then, it has evolved and grown at a fast pace with new strategies and techniques being discovered frequently.

A number of tools are being used in digital marketing like SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SEM (Search Engine Marketing), Social Media Optimization etc. Nowadays, most companies use multiple channels for advertising their products or services and that's what is known as integrated marketing communications(IMC).

 IMC integrates all other promotional activities under one umbrella i.e., digital media and good old-fashioned word-of-mouth or other traditional forms of advertising.

Different Types of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for all marketing activity that utilizes a digital touch point, like websites, mobile apps, and social media. Digital channels are able to deliver highly-targeted messages, which are oftentimes displayed immediately based on previous interactions with your customers. This means that your chances of successfully influencing consumer behavior are much higher than traditional channels (like print or TV).

We’ll dive into five types of digital marketing below 

1. SEO Marketing, 
2. SEM Marketing, 
3. Social Media Marketing, 
4. Affiliate Marketing, 
5. Email Marketing.
   

First, some Terminology! When you hear someone mention social media marketing what do you think? How about lead generation? Before we can get started with these forms of digital marketing, let's first learn some lingo. After all: knowing what something is called will be helpful when you're comparing your own strategy to that used by others in your industry. As you read through these terms - think about how they could apply to any company - even yours!

How Digital Marketing Works

Digital marketing, also known as internet marketing, is a set of promotional methods that help businesses market their products or services over computer networks, primarily through social media and search engines. Learn more about digital marketing and how it can help your business grow.

The Basics Of Digital Marketing: To understand how digital marketing works, you need to first take a look at what one of its sub-categories – online advertising – has to offer. Online Advertising: Internet advertising includes email advertisements delivered to customer inboxes; online banner ads placed on various sites; and pop-up messages on websites you visit for shopping purposes. Depending on your target audience, online advertising may be more effective than conventional advertising techniques in helping you attract new customers.

An Overview of Paid Advertising

The most common type of digital marketing is a form of advertising known as paid search, which includes both pay-per-click (PPC) and pay-per-view (PPV) campaigns. Essentially, advertisers bid for placement on search engines like Google or Bing, and may also buy ad space on social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn.

A PPC campaign can be set up in just minutes using a platform such as AdWords, which offers point-and-click shopping for keywords. Once you've generated some leads through free organic search engine optimization, it's time to spend some money to make them convert.

An Overview of Organic Search Engines

The first kind of online marketing you should learn about is organic search engines. These are where search engine users go when they want to find something to buy, a site to visit, or information about a subject that interests them. For example, when someone searches for women’s clothing in Google, an ad for your site might show up as one of their results.

However, if you start paying money (through PPC or by buying organic links) then you could end up on top of page 1-3 in Google and other search engines like Bing and Yahoo! What Is Digital Marketing? We all know what traditional advertising looks like, so it’s no surprise that digital advertising also has several different components. But instead of TV commercials and newspaper ads, these ads take place inside videos, popups, text ads, and more—and even within social media sites like Facebook or Instagram.

Digital Ads: How Do They Work? It’s impossible to talk about digital advertising without mentioning CPM and CPC campaigns. CPM stands for cost per thousand impressions—in simpler terms, how much it costs per thousand people who see your ad. CPC means cost per click; how much it costs each time someone clicks on your advertisement.

Best Tips for Online Success

It's tempting to try and make your new website a one-stop shop for all of your potential customers. Instead, figure out what kind of business you are running and tailor your digital marketing strategy around that. If you're trying to sell clothing online, you'll have different tactics from someone who is selling consumer electronics.

Make sure that whatever channels you employ (social media, search engine optimization, etc.) speak to your target audience in their language and on their terms. And remember: any successful digital marketing campaign must begin with a strong idea of who you are trying to reach—and why they would want to do business with you instead of your competitors.

Conclusion

Digital marketing can be an intimidating concept to grasp. It is a fast-paced field with a large array of acronyms and concepts that are constantly changing as technology advances. As soon as you get comfortable with one thing, something else will come up and change your world again. So it is important to stay on top of things and know what’s going on in digital marketing at all times. After reading my guide to Digital Marketing, you should have a good understanding of where we’ve been, where we are now, and what the future holds for digital marketing. The next step? Start practicing these skills so you can incorporate them into your business or personal life and achieve your desired results!