What really is Digital Marketing?

As per Mailchimp, the definition of digital marketing is – ‘Any marketing that uses electronic devices to convey promotional messaging and measure its impact. In practice, digital marketing typically refers to marketing campaigns that appear on a computer, phone, tablet, or other device. It can take many forms, including online video, display ads and social media posts’.

The world is now online. Our electronic devices have become our go-to for us to get any and all information. Digital Marketing is the utilisation of those devices to reach the right audiences. 

Marketing has always been about reaching the right audience through the most ideal channels, with effective communication.

“90% trust peers on social networks (even strangers); only 15–18% trust brands.” – Danny Brown

We know that the number of people using the internet is still increasing by close to 5% every single day. As your marketing consultant will inform you, the right channels are no longer offline – they are online.

Through social media, blogs, search engines, email, one can reach the right audience and start communicating. And with the right digital marketing consultant, you can make this journey even more effective.

Why should one opt for Digital Marketing?

The following few stats are self-explanatory and would substantiate why digital marketing is absolutely necessary for all businesses to not only grow, but to survive!

1. 92% of consumers look at a company’s website when choosing a service provider or product.
2. 97% of people go online to find products and services.
3. 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine.
4. 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations.
5. 86% of people look up the location of a business on Google Maps. 

Hence digital marketing allows you to target exactly the right audience – you can focus your communication on the people that would actually make a difference.

It’s also highly cost effective. Your marketing consultant can help you track your campaign every week or month and realise if any course correction is required. Whenever you feel one channel isn’t working, you can switch to another that’s more effective.

That’s not all. With the right digital marketing consultant, you can easily outshine your competition – even if they’re larger players. Your marketing consultant can help you identify the right channels – through SEO, social media, maybe an influencer? The right choice can help you leap ahead of any and all competition.

You could even measure all the metrics of your campaign throughout the duration. Your engagement, website traffic, impressions, shares, clicks – everything is measurable. So, no matter what you need to check and when, your digital marketing consultant could provide you with the answers.

What is a Digital Marketing strategy?

This strategy enables you to reach the right audience by identifying their consumer journey and narrowing down on the key touchpoints. Working with a marketing consultant, you can craft the ideal strategy in terms of communication, spends, focal points, etc. And you can learn to move on to something new, as and when the need arises. Whenever the consumer’s habits change, your marketing consultant can crack a different plan to keep generating the ideal results.

What does Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, mean?

For your business to rank higher in a search engine page, your SEO strategy needs to be powerful. This goes on to increase the organic traffic to your website. Partnering with a marketing consultant, you can find the right keywords to build your SEO through blogs, infographics and your website itself.

Decoding SEM and what it can do for you.

As your digital marketing consultant will tell you, SEO and SEM (search engine marketing) mean two very different things. SEM involves bidding on certain keywords to ensure your business appears at the top of any search engine results. These paid ads then go on to boost traffic to your website.

What is Online Reputation Management (ORM)?

ORM is understanding and managing how your brand is perceived online. Your digital marketing consultant can help you see what your users are saying about you, so you can correctly manage these opinions and ensure, they’re positive.

The benefits of Social Media Marketing.

While Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter are widely used by all of us, your marketing consultant can tell you the ideal way to use each platform. They devise the perfect strategy for you to achieve your goals by understanding the strengths of SMM.

What about Email Marketing?

Email marketing is an essential tool to reach your prospects and existing customers. Your Digital Marketing Consultant can help you create the right content to boost brand awareness, sales conversions or even to amplify consumer loyalty through the right email marketing strategy.

All of this falls under the main pillars of digital marketing:

1. Content
2. Communication
3. Community
4. Commerce

Key Takeaways

1. To begin with all businesses and individuals must understand which digital marketing channel and which social media platforms can be most effective for them, as the psyche of the audience across platforms varies, hence the efficacy of all communications may vary as well.
2. Tracking the respective analytics for every digital marketing channel is imperative before new messaging, communication or promotion is done, as it can be fatal in terms of ROI campaign optimisation.
3. Uniqueness and Relevancy of content are the two main pillars for a successful engagement across digital marketing platforms. Hence without the two all communications across digital marketing platforms bear the risk of falling flat.

So, there you have it. A quick introduction into almost everything digital marketing stands for and what your digital marketing consultant can help you accomplish. If there’s one thing, we need to remember overall, it’s that digital marketing is no longer just the future of marketing. It is the present. And it is here to stay.