DIGITAL MARKETING 101: THE BASICS OF DIGITAL MARKETING

DIGITAL MARKETING 101: THE BASICS OF DIGITAL MARKETING

Advertising has evolved at break-neck speeds. No longer is it limited to radio and television, static billboards or print publications. Keeping in tune with the Internet and the modern digital environment, advertising campaigns of businesses have slowly shifted to methods that are cost-effective and provides an assured increase in turnover and profitability.

Most importantly, the latest analytics tools in digital marketing provide measurable and tangible results of the value of the campaign. It also enables business owners to know if the desired results and maximising returns on market spends (ROI) are being achieved. Digital marketing provides limitless opportunities to marketers and advertisers. Using specific tools and cutting-edge techniques as well as advanced technologies such as the Internet of Things and Chatbots, they can adopt a more personalised approach to existing and potential clients and core audiences across multiple channels.

What is digital marketing?

Before going into the tools and various aspects of this form of advertising, it will be relevant to have an idea of what digital marketing is all about. In a nutshell, digital marketing is advertising that is delivered through specific channels such as websites, search engines, email, social media and mobile apps. All these cover a range of activities that are universally applicable to each business. However, every client of a digital marketing agency will have unique and specific needs, and digital marketers have to keep this in mind when structuring exclusive campaigns for them.

Here are some of the main tools used by marketers that you as a business owner will find particularly valuable to optimise business growth and development.

What are the tools of digital marketing?

Web design & Development

With the exponential growth in usage of Internet-enabled devices such as smart phones and tablets, all that people have to do to get information on products and services is to search the Internet. Hence, it is essential that your business has a well structured, attractive and user-friendly website.

Web designers today use complex applications and programming languages to create dynamic websites. Web design, on the other hand, focuses on the design and layout of the site and considers user’ experience as the primary aspect. A professionally created and visually appealing website can guide visitors towards taking action, whether that is directly contacting you or concluding a sale. Once your turnover increases, the bottom-line will grow too.

Mobile App Development Marketing

Mobile devices today are the most common means to interact with the Internet, and it is natural that you should tap into this opportunity to stay connected with customers round the clock. You can use your mobile app to market your products and services and provide information to customers. It is an excellent way to build relationships and customer loyalty through push notifications, QR codes, and live chat. You can also get quick customer feedback through interactions on social media platforms.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Today, most customers do not visit a brick and mortar store to decide on a product to buy. Instead, they whip out their smart phones and search online for sites dealing with it. At this point, if your site does not rank high enough on results pages of major search engines, you will be missing out on business opportunities. This is what SEO is all about – ensuring that your website has high online presence and visibility to increase traffic and by default sales and conversions. Top digital marketing agencies  have technicians that use specialised tools and technologies that make sure that you have a good ranking on search engines.

Social Media Marketing

In the present social media driven world, it is necessary that your business stays active on one or more social media platforms. Consider a few cold statistics. 90% of large enterprises have a running social media strategy in place with 47% of small to medium businesses following suit. Moreover, 64% trust brands that interact with customers on social media. From the customers’ perspective, 80% of people have a social media profile, and a third of them visit the sites over 5 times a day.

You will miss out on this large chunk of potential customers if you do not have a solid and active social media strategy in place. A top of the line digital marketing agency will help you keep your profiles continually updated with pictures, posts, and company news and project photos to increase brand awareness of your business.

Chatbot

A Chatbot is a service that is powered by the rules of Artificial Intelligence. Since marketing is primarily based on customer interaction, large and even small and medium companies are embedding this feature on their websites. Instead of customers spending hours on emails and messaging to you, all that they have to do is visit your site and interact with you in real time. It is a very effective way to reach out to customers and provide a much-personalised experience. Further, if you have a robust and successful online business, you can quickly service your customers from inside a Chatbot interface or Messenger platform.  

Tracking

What makes digital marketing unique when compared to traditional forms of advertising is its ability to measure results of a campaign accurately. This has a two-fold effect. The first is that you will know which aspects of the overall campaign is giving the desired results and hence you can make mid-course corrections for those that are not. Secondly, with analytics tools, you can precisely know the returns on the market spend of your strategy. With advanced marketing tools, it is possible to know who is your target audience, and what they are looking for, allowing you to tailor your marketing campaigns for maximum impact. By knowing which sections of the population are reaching out to you, the position of your brand can be placed at all the right places.

These are some of the digital marketing strategies that you can use to optimise business growth and development.