Importance of digital marketing: All you need to know!
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Abdul Wadood
The importance of digital marketing is something that you can’t overlook anymore.
In this era, digital marketing is essential to increase your business’s visibility and profit. If you don’t utilize the digital marketing strategy, there’s a high chance for your business to stagnate.
If you’re new to digital marketing, you’ll probably wonder what digital marketing is and its importance. In this blog, you can find the answer to your question.
Let’s get started!
Topics to be covered in this blog:
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing refers to marketing a product or service through smartphones, computers, tablets, or similar devices.
Digital marketing can appear as blogs, social media posts, videos, infographics, or other forms.
From small startup brands to multi-national companies, many business owners started to utilize digital marketing. They do so because it can increase their sales — if done correctly.
Nice!
Types of digital marketing
There are several types of digital marketing. I’ve listed the key types below.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO refers to optimizing a website to rank high on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for a set of keywords.
The primary motive behind SEO is to make a website rank high in the SERP and increase its exposure. By doing so, you’ll get more customers.
The traffic from SEO is organic, which makes it one of the most effective and affordable digital marketing strategies.
There are two types of SEO:
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
On-page SEO
On-page refers to optimizing a website for internal factors like content, title tags, URL, and images.
- Content: Creating highly informative and worthy content is essential for SEO. If a user reads your content, he should get the solution to his problem. If he needs to read another content to solve his query, your content isn’t the best quality.
- Title tags: Title tags is the HTML element that specifies the title of a webpage. You should ensure to format it correctly as it influences SEO. Besides the primary title, you should also optimize the sub-titles (H1, H2, H3, etc.).
- URL: The URL should be clear and descriptive. Moreover, it should be easy to read for the users.
- Images: Alt text appears when an image fails to load for a user. Optimizing the alt text can enhance the user experience, besides improving the SEO. Also, ensure to make the alt text descriptive.
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to optimizing the website for external factors.
Links are the primary external factors that determine off-page SEO. However, besides links, reviews, brand mentions, etc., may also contribute to off-page SEO.
Below, I’ve explained the two types of links.
- Dofollow links: Dofollow links are the default types of links. In dofollow links, the link equity (link juice) will pass from the source website to the target website.
- Nofollow links: In nofollow links, the link equity will not pass. You can make a default link (dofollow link) as nofollow by adding a rel=“nofollow” tag.
2. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
PPC is a marketing strategy for bringing in paid visitors to your business website. In this strategy, the advertiser pays the publisher a specific amount each time someone clicks on their ad.
Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, etc., are some of the most popular PPC ad networks.
The following are the factors that influence the success of PPC ads:
- Quality of the ad
- Bid
- Keyword relevancy
- Enabled ad formats
- Quality of the landing page
Here’s an example of how PPC advertising works.
Say that Righty Guide bids for the keyword “tools for digital marketing” on Google Ads with proper optimization. Now, if someone searches for this phrase on Google, Righty Guide’s advertisement may show up on the top of the search results.
If someone clicks the ad, Righty Guide has to pay a specific amount to Google.
3. Social media marketing
Social media marketing (SMM) refers to using social media platforms to advertise products, increase brand awareness, and build an audience base.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn are some of the most popular social media platforms.
As you know, people spend a lot of time on social media, and there’s a high chance for your potential buyers to be on it too. So, why not reach out to them and build a healthy and loyal audience base.
In social media marketing, you can build your audience base organically or by running advertisements. Either way, you should have a proper strategy to succeed.
Also, note that running advertisements can be expensive. If you advertise without prior skills, you may end up losing a lot of money.
4. Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing has been around for so many years, and it has proven to be effective.
In affiliate marketing, the affiliate (publisher) partners with a seller or merchant and promotes their products for a commission.
Several top companies like Amazon, Tesla, Adidas, Walmart, etc., have an affiliate program.
In affiliate marketing, both the seller and the affiliate marketer are in a win situation. Here are the reasons why.
- It’s a win for you as a seller because you’ll pay the affiliate only if he makes a sale.
- It’s a win for the affiliate marketer because he’s getting to promote the product for free.
If you have a product to sell, you can start an affiliate program. However, to attract affiliates, make sure to offer generous commissions.
5. Email marketing
Email marketing refers to using email to advertise products or services. It’s a powerful marketing strategy and offers a high Return on Investment (ROI) of $42 for every $1 spent.
Email marketing offers several advantages, making it one of the most popular and widely used digital marketing strategies.
Below, I’ve listed some of the benefits of email marketing.
- Increased engagement with the audience
- Increased brand awareness
- Better lead generation
- Increased sales
Ok!
If you want to send an email to someone, you should first collect their email address. Nowadays, people receive a lot of emails. So, they might be hesitant to provide their email address.
However, don’t worry!
You can use the proven technique of offering people a free product to collect people’s email addresses.
For instance, you can provide the people an e-book in return for their email address.
6. Content marketing
Content marketing is a strategic approach to creating and providing highly relevant, consistent, and valuable content to convert people into potential customers.
According to Content Marketing Institute, 92% of marketers view their company’s content as assets.
The following are some of the popular forms of content marketing.
- Blog posts: Blogs are a fantastic way to deliver content to people and convert them into potential buyers. Fortunately, starting a blog has become pretty simple. Moreover, it’s affordable. Top web-hosting service providers like HostGator offer hosting solutions for less than $60.
- Videos: Videos are gaining a lot of popularity nowadays. Content marketers can utilize videos to increase engagement with their audience.
- E-books: In this era, many people have started to read e-books. Moreover, some even prefer e-books over physical books because of the flexibility it offers.
Advantages of digital marketing
Having seen the fundamentals and types of digital marketing, now let’s discuss its advantages.
1. Scalability
In digital marketing, it’s possible to scale your marketing efforts quickly and indefinitely — provided you have proper strategic planning.
Here’s an example.
Say that you do SEO. If you wish to scale your SEO campaign, you can publish more SEO-optimized blogs. By doing so, you’ll attract more visitors, and your sales will increase.
This scalability factor shows the importance of digital marketing in this era. In traditional marketing, as you know, a lot of complications are involved in scaling the campaigns.
2. Cost-effective
Digital marketing is cost-effective. With digital marketing, you can generate sales or leads by spending a fraction of the money you would otherwise spend on traditional marketing.
In traditional marketing, small companies struggle to compete with large companies because of their higher marketing budget.
While, in digital marketing, a small company can easily compete with large companies. However, make sure to implement the correct strategies.
3. Targeted audience
If you want to sell a product quickly and effectively, you should advertise to the right people.
Thankfully, in digital marketing, it’s possible to target specific people to show the advertisements.
Here’s an example of how you can target people specifically.
Say that you run an advertising campaign on Facebook. As you know, Facebook stores the information of users, which they share with their advertisers. This information includes age, gender, language, location, etc.
As an advertiser, you can utilize this data to display your advertisement to the right audience group.
Speaking of traditional marketing, it isn’t possible to target specific people to show the advertisement. This means your Return on Investment (ROI) will be less.
4. Measurable results
As an advertiser, you should know how your advertisements are performing to improve your marketing efforts.
Thankfully, in digital marketing, you can measure the results of your marketing campaigns with ease.
Regardless of the digital marketing strategy you use, it’s possible to measure the results.
For instance, if you do SEO, you can know the performance of your website by checking Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
Similarly, if you run a PPC ad campaign on Google, you can measure the results of your ad in several metrics like clicks, impressions, conversions, etc.
This ability to measure the results of a marketing campaign is one of the significant advantages of digital marketing.
5. Retargeting
In digital marketing, it’s possible to retarget the customers.
Retargeting refers to targeting customers who have already engaged with your business.
Here’s an example of how retargeting works.
Say that a person saw the advertisement of your product and clicked on your website. But, he didn’t make the purchase.
In this case, you can target that person again by showing him a different advertisement that can convince him to purchase.
Now, since the person has already engaged with your business, the chance of conversion is extremely high.
You can utilize the analytics to create a successful retargeting advertising campaign.
6. Digital marketing works 24/7 — Make money while you sleep!
Since digital marketing takes place online, it can drive sales 24/7.
In digital marketing, it’s possible to automate everything — starting from the sales funnel to processing the online payments.
If you have correctly structured your digital marketing campaign, it can generate sales even when you sleep.
Sounds interesting! Doesn’t it?
Conclusion
In this era, digital marketing is more important than ever.
Digital marketing, if done correctly, can increase the sales and the reach of your business.
Digital marketing may appear intimidating at first. However, once you start implementing the strategy, you’ll become familiar with it.
I hope you found this blog to be beneficial and got to know the importance of digital marketing.
Before ending this blog, I have a few questions for you.
- Did you get to know the importance of digital marketing?
- Will you implement digital marketing in your business?
- What do you prefer, digital marketing or traditional marketing?
Comment your answer below by typing YES/NO. Let’s discuss!!!
