Digital Marketing/Internet Marketing/Online Marketing are one of the most used terms in the industry today. Sadly though, it’s just a bunch of slang to most people who hear it and use it to convey their mind. What exactly is digital marketing and what part of it is essential for today’s business person? We are here to break it down into the simplest words possible.
Online marketing is simply marketing your product or service on digital platforms to retain your loyal consumers and quickly increase your reach to a potential new target audience.
That is. That is what online marketing is. There are some additional questions that need attention to resolve your confusion; as:
Is digital marketing the same as social media marketing?
The answer is yes. Internet/digital marketing is a broader concept compared to social media marketing in the sense that all social media platforms are available digitally, i.e. via the internet. However, there are other platforms that fall under digital marketing besides social media marketing.
What are the concepts and platforms of digital marketing?
The search engines that we use to look up our queries and requirements are in themselves a gigantic platform for online marketing. This concept is called “Search Engine Marketing” or SEM.
Search Engine Marketing is marketing your product on search engines like Google and Bing by Yahoo. This platform is of paramount importance for companies that are in a B2B industry.
Another concept that comes under the wing of digital marketing is “Search Engine Optimization” or SEO. Search engine optimization is a way of developing the content of your website in a way that allows the search engine algorithm to crawl and test your website efficiently. It is a way to get higher rankings in the search results in the search engine; helping us to have a better hand in SEM.
SEO is a paramount necessity for each and every website owner as it helps you stand out from the sea of websites we see today.
Social Media Marketing is a concept that comprises campaigns designed to market your product or service on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. SMM is a great tool when it comes to products that have a B2C segment.
There is an interesting concept called Re-marketing in internet marketing that allows us to reach the potential consumer base multiple times. It can be seen as following your consumer across various platforms, websites and showing them your personalized ad copy to remind them of their visit to your website.
This also allows us to work on another factor called Consumer Lifetime Value where we can increase our reach to existing customers and improve our ROI from these consumers through various practices such as email marketing, remarketing, paid ad campaigns, RSS feeds. , etc.
However, for a great digital/internet marketing experience, a campaign should be built using all of the platforms mentioned above.
How is digital marketing different from traditional marketing?
Digital marketing is profitable in terms of better reach and results.
Internet marketing allows you to target a specific audience based on demographics, interest, and devices.
Internet Marketing gives us real data that can be statistically analyzed. For example, if a billboard is marketing your product, you have no idea how many people viewed the billboard, read the content, and became customers because of that billboard. However, in digital marketing, suppose we run a marketing campaign of the same product, we can analyze the data produced by different marketing platforms that can show us how many people viewed the product, how many actually became consumers, and which consumers reached through which of the platforms used. This allows us to find flaws in our campaign and work on it to make it even more action driven.
But then, should traditional marketing stop altogether?
Of course not! Traditional marketing, in fact, combined with digital marketing can give superior results than traditional or digital marketing.
However, one thing that people confuse about digital marketing is that it can be done for free. It is true up to a point; however, to get the best results, digital marketing needs to have an independent budget. Money must be set aside to be able to exploit all the opportunities that digital marketing has to offer your business and its glorious future.