Marketing is generally advertising. You advertise certain things of your choice and use various techniques to elevate that advertisement. This technique may be through billboards, radio, TV, newspaper, or anything else.

But all these were traditional modes of marketing. In the consistently changing digital world, this marketing is done online through various channels search engines, websites, social media, email, and mobile apps. Because of this occurring online, it is known as Digital Marketing.

Marketing through digital medium had started a long time ago across the world but ever since the pandemic struck, it developed more rapidly. Everyone started visiting e-commerce websites for purchasing products as “social distancing” spread.

How is digital marketing useful?

Marketing works on “making the right offer at the right time & place”. Earlier this was done through TV ads and billboards on roads. People used to watch TV for entertainment and when they were traveling, the billboards attended them. Therefore, they were in the midst of advertisement and marketing all the time.

1 The Past: Billboard Advertising

Now, a similar process has shifted online. People are tirelessly scrolling the internet 24*7. Even if they don’t scroll, their phones are always handy all the time. They have switched to online platforms like Instagram & Facebook for entertainment, eCommerce websites for shopping, and online portals for banking transactions. Thus, digital marketing is highly in demand.

2 The Present: Digital marketing

This is because the potential consumers who were there in outer space are now available on these platforms. By adopting digital marketing, the marketer is put in front of those same consumers who are searching for necessities, entertainment, and other requirements online. They are converted into leads once they understand the advertisement and visit the website.

There are various strategies of digital marketing that you need to acquire to dive into the business. All these tactics create a foundation for converting potential leads, nurturing relationships, and advertising fairly.

Make every engagement count:

How digital marketing works is no myth because every day some of the other firms register to get domain authority or create a website. This is because marketers have so many ideas and the consumers have really less time to go to the market & search for something. To merge these two issues, digital marketing is the key.

Regardless of what a consumer has to buy, he will search the online services first before entering into the physical market. Therefore, developing a great ‘virtual market’ strategy is today’s requirement.

How it could be achieved? Some techniques are listed below:

The most basic technique is to develop a strategy that will land you in front of your prospects. Then you could use a variety of channels to connect with your leads.

• Content creation: whether you’re selling something or writing blogs to engage the audience, rich-quality content is required everywhere. Even in initiating digital marketing, content is the first step. So, enrich your content writing skills which include advertisement, brand outreach, and information for the audience.
• SEO: the method to rank your website higher on search engines is through Search Engine Optimization. It is the best method to get organic traffic and a high ranking. Empower SEO skills within yourself before becoming a digital marketer.
• Social media: proper social media sharing is required in the beginning to share the brand as much as possible. This part covers 80% of the digital marketing strategy. If your content and brand are engaged in your social handles, there are chances that half of your audience is sitting there only.
• Email marketing: it is done to follow up the potential leads to deliver the solutions of what they are looking for.
• Google Analytics: it is used to monitor the trending keywords, tags, and competitor’s actions to keep track of marketing returns.

If you’re confident enough to perform all these activities by yourself then plan ahead. Or if you require assistance for brand outreach, you can go for the best digital marketing companies. These types of companies take all the responsibility to give you the best possible results. They work in the domain of content creation, email marketing, SEO, and other techniques to generate leads and ROI as much as possible for you.

Various methods of Digital marketing:

Many people might get confused between “internet marketing” and “digital marketing”. Internet marketing is just based on the internet or online services only. Whereas, digital marketing includes online channels, mobile devices, subway advertising, video games, or smartphone apps.

It reaches a highly specific set of audiences, called “receivers” or “leads”. Not everyone is shown everything on the internet. The user data is collected effectively through:

• age,

• demography,

• user history,

• daily scrolls,

• previous purchases, etc.

After going through all this, the process of digital marketing is carried out by various methods:

1. Website marketing: it is the core of digital marketing. Normally people build websites to enhance their digital marketing practices. Having a genuine website helps in branding, publishing, and servicing in an enhanced way.

2. Pay-per-click advertising: it involves the use of paid ads. Traffic is driven not by organic SEO but through PPC. This is done to gain a market outreach faster. PPC campaigns are set up in sites like Google, Bing, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram to show desirable ads to people. Examples of PPC platforms are Google Ads and Facebook Ads.

3. Social media marketing: as described above, social media plays a vital role in digital marketing. Brand awareness and social trust are formed through these channels.

4. Affiliate marketing: in this type of business influencers promote other people’s business and generate leads for them. They get a commission every time a sale is made or a lead is gained. No doubt to say that it is the oldest form of marketing.

5. Email marketing: it is the method to get in touch with your potential leads regarding their interest in your brand. All the other methods are used to increase leads to the email lists, and email marketing is used to create customer acquisition funnels of those potential leads.

6. Video marketing: to send audiovisuals about the review of the company. To generate advertisement through video, content creation, branding and SEO is needed. Most users relax on platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Thus, digital marketers can effectively use these channels for gaining organic traffic.

Make most of Digital marketing (the benefits):

Although there is no fixed tactic to determine your marketing results, you can relate to the above-mentioned techniques. What works for you, works!

• • There is a journey of every buyer, from selecting among thousands of products to purchasing the most suitable one. Digital marketing reduces the time for such a journey. It presents the right offer at the right time in front of the buyer.
• • It helps to convert the new buyers into potential leads who are interested in purchasing.
• • Awareness of the brand is spread faster because limitless is the time for people to be on their phones.
• • Engagement of traffic on and after the sale is maintained through effective digital marketing.

Challenges in the journey:

• • A deep understanding of consumer behavior is required to get insight into digital marketing. Not everyone can suddenly wake up one day & tell that he is going to be a digital marketer. It is followed by effortless meetings with experts and tireless work of engaging consumers.
• • The digital generation is changing rapidly. Thus, it becomes difficult for marketers to understand how to engage in methods that are effective enough to reach the audience. In short, catching up takes time.
• • The audience is always at the risk of getting overburdened by the competing ads. It becomes difficult for the digital marketer to form a suitable strategy to entice the consumers.
• • There are massive collections of data everywhere for the marketer. He has to make sure how much of them he has to take. Putting efforts into driving this data for useful purposes is a hectic challenge.

 A great way ahead:

You must be wondering how effective a digital marketer can be. Well, the journey of digital marketing begins by starting a serious plan about it. It is obvious that for a field so broad, handling all the things by one single person is NOT POSSIBLE.

So, don’t panic. Even if you have basic skills like web designing, web development, blogging, copywriting, or SEO you can begin a career in digital marketing. There are many certificate courses too which are available to learn strategies of digital marketing.

But keeping all this aside, the most important thing is to know why you want to start this career; what are your ambitions aligned to it; what will you pursue by this and how will you handle a tough time.

A digital marketing career is quite lucrative if you handle it right, and not if you don’t. Many people assume that success will surface on the first day itself & one failure means it is over! Stop believing in such assumptions and make your way through the woods.

Happy marketing!