A business can increase its sales by expanding its customer base only with an effective digital marketing strategy. But they must have an integrated digital marketing plan to do that. They need to update their way of digital marketing according to market trends and customer behaviors. However, first of all, they have to know what digital marketing is.
Thanks to the internet, acquiring consumer behavior data is easy now, and you can also store them on the Web. The data should be used for promotional corporate activities.
The methods to promote digital marketing are widely diverse, while you should adopt a method keeping your products, resources, and market environment in mind.
Digital marketing and its purpose
Digital marketing comprises digital methods like websites, search engines, email, SNS, and mobile apps.
The basic purposes of digital marketing are categorized into three aspects:
Increasing customer base
The main target of marketing is to connect with more and more audience to increase customer base. But, to do that, connection should be made at the right time and place. Therefore, a modern business aims to meet its audience through different online platforms where many people or organizations are coming together.
Accumulating audience data
Digital marketing is not only limited to offer the users solutions and information. But it’s about gathering user behavior data and utilizing it properly. Digital marketing methods accumulate digital data, and find ways to grasp insights on the intentions of users that conventional questionnaires couldn’t bag.
Providing information to meet everyone’s needs
A proper utilization of digital data enables a business recognize the problems and needs of each user in a further detailed way. Once the problems and the needs of the users are identified, it’s easy to provide the most accurate solution and relevant information to each individual as per their needs.
Digital marketing: techniques and examples
Digital marketing campaigns involve a wide variety of things. Whatever technique you approach, it should be organized enough to achieve your short-term and long-term goals. These goals and the overall digital marketing plan will be structured upon your marketing objectives and needs. Well, there are scopes to run large-scale campaigns which combine both free and paid marketing channels.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO builds the impression of your website, helps it appear on the top of search engine result pages (SERP). That’s the way to improve the website’s organic or free traffic. SEO benefits various channels including
- Websites
- Blogs
- Infographics
Social media marketing
Social media marketing means promoting your brand on different social media platforms that will help you build brand awareness, engage real traffic, and convert maximum leads to sales. The channels for social media marketing include:
- Snapchat
Content marketing
Production and promotion of your content is the ultimate way to increase traffic, brand awareness, and successful lead generation. An ideal content marketing strategy leverages channel such as:
- Blog posts
- Infographics
- EBooks and white papers
- Online catalogs
Pay-per-click (PPC)
Pay-per-click is the method of traffic generation for a website where fees are paid according to the number of clicks on online advertisements. Google Ads is currently the most common PPC which displays your website’s page link at the top of its search results and you need to pay a fee to Google whenever a user clicks on your ads.
Retargeting ads
Retargeting ads track and target users who have left the website. They can prompt the users to reconsider acquiring a product or service even after they already left the site without purchasing. These ads increase the potential buyer’s willingness of purchase by repeated appeals.
Affiliate marketing
1. The number of contracts sealed during the sale of products via performance-based websites and blogs determines how much rewards will be paid.
2. Each time a click-based ad is clicked, a reward is paid here.
3. Another type of affiliate marketing combines the click-based and the success rate-based types.
Email marketing
Email marketing is a fruitful method to communicate with your target audience. It promotes content, informs about discounts, and events, and essentially guides people to a site. These campaigns involve:
- Newsletter to subscribers
- Welcome emails to customers
- Follow-up emails to users who performed downloads on the website earlier
- End of Year promotions for Loyalty Program Members
- Email series, like helpful tips, for customer nurturing
Marketing automation
This software automates easy marketing tasks which are repetitive, and requires much time and human effort. The automations reducing that time and effort include:
- Email newsletter
- updating the contact list
- Social media post scheduling
- Tracking campaign and preparing reports
- Lead nurturing
Online PR
Online PR leverages content-based websites like digital publications and blogs to create a space for them in earned media. It’s almost similar to the traditional PR, just that it works online. Some channels for online PR are:
- Intimating reporters using SNS
- Engagement in online reviews
- Engagement in comments on personal sites and blogs
Inbound Marketing
It’s an online content-based approach to engage and satisfy customers through your marketing funnel. This strategy incorporates advantages of all the digital marketing methods.
Conclusion:
Remember, if you’re in digital marketing, you always have a chance to improve your methods. To do this, you need to clear your concept on different digital marketing techniques and channels and keep yourself updated with innovations in the field.
