Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is the component of marketing that utilizes the internet and online-based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones, and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services. Marketing is a combination of creating goods/products or services then communicating about it to the potential customers or clients available followed by delivering them to clients by exchanging commodities for money. The last stage of marketing is offering such a service to make long term customer/client.

Purpose of marketing:

To make the customer/client happy so that he or she comes again and again and become your ambassador for your future clients.

“Think about what the user is going to type” — Matt Cutts

Evolution of Marketing

I. Trade Era (Pre-Industrial Revolution)

The trade era or the pre-industrial revolution period is the first initiative in the history of marketing. Every item used by the masses were hand made within the limited resources available as there was no machinery manufactured and available for people to use. The people of this era are completely unaware of the automation system. There was no currency used instead a barter system was used as a model for trade; barter system is a system of exchange where participants in a transaction directly exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. For instance, if you have rice and another person has cotton so you both exchange your stuff with each other for your personal use.

II. Production Era (1860–1920)

In the early 19th century placements of factories and machinery started with the sole purpose to reduce the unnecessary human workload therefore this era in history is known as an industrial revolution. Mass production of items was started for the first time as machines were used instead of a human. Marketing then was an only concern to increase production efficiency.

III. Sales Era (1920–1940)

The third era in the history of marketing is termed as Sales Era as the hiring of the salesperson and the importance of sales started. Businesses started to compete with each other. Due to competition, everything was about price and not about quality hence the customer demands and needs were neglected mostly.

IV. Brand Development (1940–1960)

In this era, companies focused to develop a brand name and focused on the strategies to spread their objectives among their potential customers. Brochures, pamphlets, and leaflets were adopted to create awareness about products and services among the mass for the branding of companies.

V. Marketing Company (1960–1990)

In the late 19th century companies understood the importance of marketing, hence the marketing companies were started for the strategy formulation to cater to the customer’s demands and need. In this era, customers become the king and every step was taken by companies to satisfy them.

“Make the customer the hero of your story.” — Ann Handley

VI. Relationship Era (1990–2000)

Companies started to understand how important is to create a healthy and friendly relation with customers/clients to increase their sales. Customer loyalty was given utmost importance

VII. Social Media Marketing (2010- present)

The revolution in marketing comes after the use of social media as a tool in advertising and promotion of products by companies, as a result now the customer is in the driving seat controlling the sales and revenues of companies. Customers can communicate with suppliers 24/7.

“The modern marketer is an experimenter, a lover of data, a content creator, a justifier of ROI (Return of investment)”. — Kim Walsh

Benefits Of Marketing

A brand is no longer what companies tell the consumer it is — it is what consumers tell each other it is. As people don’t buy what companies do, they buy why they do it. As marketer companies have to understand that consumers are functioning in the age of efficiency. The benefits of marketing are listed as:

1. Exploring new avenues

2. Optimizing production

3. Creating and advertising brands

4. Marketing company-wide efforts

5. Creating a customer-friendly relationship

6. Involving communities

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital Media refers to audio, video, photo, or textual content that has been encoded using a computer having internet or any smart device and can be transmitted digitally to people. Digital Marketing is all about strategy, without strategy and plan marketing is just stuff, and the world has enough stuff already.

Traditional marketing talks at people. Digital marketing talks with them. For instance, traditional marketing and advertising are like telling the world you’re a rock star. Digital Marketing is showing the world that you are one, that is done by the content used in marketing as content used in marketing strategies builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue. So the net result is for the benefit of the company. The only way to win at digital marketing is for the reader to say, ‘This was written specifically for me.’

“Here’s everything you need to know about creating killer content in 3 simple words: Clear. Concise. Compelling.” — Demian Farnworth

Features Of Digital Marketing

1. Mass reach through one click:

According to GSMA real-time intelligence data, there are now over 10.06 Billion mobile connections worldwide, which surpasses the current world population of 7.81 Billion implied by UN digital analyst estimates. This data means there are 2.25 billion more mobile connections than people worldwide. Statista predicts substantial growth for all cellular-enabled phones, tablets, or IoT devices on a global scale. The company’s data sources estimate that in the next three years, we’ll see the number of mobile device users increase from 5.17 to 7.33 billion by 2023.

In the world of Internet Service, Digital Marketing provides the ability to remember the companies’ competitor is only one mouse click away, resulting in the widening of their reach among their potential clients.

2. Interactivity

One of the main advantages of digital marketing for both consumer and supplier is the ease of interaction between both the parties hence reducing the time and energy.

3. Social networking

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to connect with the audience to build the brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic. This involves publishing great content on social media profiles, listening to and engaging followers, analyzing results, and running social media advertisements. Social media marketing is a powerful way for businesses of all sizes to reach prospects and customers. The customers are already interacting with brands through social media.

The major social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat.

4. Global reach

According to Statista, the current number of smartphone users in the world today is 3.5 billion, and this means 44.81% of the world’s population owns a smartphone. This figure is up considerably from 2016 when there was only 2.5 billion users, 33.58% of that year’s global population. Global smartphone users increased by 40% in 2016–2020.

Well planned and designed strategies in digital marketing allow the business to sell their products to the customer globally.

5. Personalized marketing

The main benefit of personalized marketing is the ability it gives companies to reach specific audiences. By collecting user data from list segments, surveys, or studies they can create more effective email campaigns targeting audiences based on their interests or buying habits. Some go for customers to select specific products of brands.

6. Customer engagement

Customer engagement marketing happens when a company uses personalized messaging to move its audience through a sales cycle, changing a lead into a customer and nurturing current customers to become more brand loyal.

7. Content variety

A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. The objective of digital marketing is to drive profitable customer action. The four main purposes of content variety in digital marketing, are to entertain, inspire, educate, and to convince. Failure to create content that aligns with these criteria could result in missing out on attracting your potential audiences.

Digital Marketing Activities

1. Paid advertisement

In digital marketing paid advertisement is also known as pay per click. Pay per click is an advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which companies get paid when the ad is clicked. Pay-per-click is commonly associated with first-tier search engines.

2. Social media marketing

Social media is about sociology and psychology more than technology. The secret to getting results from social networking is to act like a member, not a marketer.

The future of business is social. There’s a problem with the word ‘social’. Social is not just Twitter, Facebook, etc. Social has now become a language in digital marketing.

3. Email, SMS, WhatsApp

In the time it took you to read this sentence 20m emails have been sent, that can emphasize the important message in digital marketing either through email or WhatsApp.

4. Search Engine optimization

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.SEO makes the website easier for users and search engines to navigate because it rearranges links and the site’s architecture, making it easier to find. This simplifies the process of finding information on site and makes it easier for search engines to maneuver site for relevant pages as well. It is about helping customers find out about business from among thousands of other companies. SEO is an integral part of any digital marketing strategy.

5. Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing is a multi-channel online marketing technique focused on reaching a specific audience on their smartphones, feature phones, tablets, or any other related devices through websites, E-mail, SMS, and MMS, social media, or mobile applications.

6. Blogs

A blog, also called a web blog, is a journal that is maintained by a blogger and contains information that is instantly published to their blog website. Blogging is a very popular activity in digital marketing. The number of online users creating and maintaining blogs has increased dramatically over the past year.

Freelancing Jobs For Digital Marketers

1. Blogs

2. Community management

3. Advertisement

4. Search Engine Optimization

5. Online Selling

6. Online Campaigning

7. Email Marketing

8. Mobile Apps Marketing

Digital marketing is the key to hold an in-demand profession. Apart from these, there is a broad scope of digital marketing as promoting and branding business through digital media is the fastest and reliable mode of marketing to target mass audiences. Digital marketing trends continue to evolve each year as more companies enter the space and new technologies are born.