What Is Digital Marketing? | Complete guide to Digital Marketing in 2021

When we hear about the term Digital, it has something to do with the internet. And by marketing, we understand it has something to do with creating, communicating, and delivering value to your customers. Thus, digital marketing is the technique of marketing your products, and brand value and connecting with a wider audience all over the world through the internet.

Now that we know what digital marketing is, let’s learn about its uses and importance. Digital marketing outranks traditional marketing because it is fast, more interactive, cost-effective, targeted, and measurable.

Fast

We have already entered the digital world. Everything is run by the internet. The days of promoting your business or brands through radio ads and pamphlets are long gone. It is way faster to send emails and texts to as many people as you want than to call them. Digital marketing ensures you reach your targeted audience quickly through the internet with the help of social media.

Interactive

With the help of social media, you can interact with your audience 24\7 all over the world. It is way easier to get their feedback through the internet and communicate with them through your social handles –be it Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. Etc.

Now, just imagine how you would communicate with your targeted audience through radio ads or TV ads. It is impossible to get the data of your audience, you don’t know if they listen or watch your ads.

Cost-Effective

What do you think is cheaper – doing ads on TV, pamphlets, and radios, or doing ads on your social media handles?

You have nothing to lose when you choose the internet to promote your brands. You use Facebook, Twitter, etc. to reach your audience and if they like it they might share, and buy your products – which is a win for your business.

Targeted Audience

Using traditional methods it was impossible to target or know your audience. With the internet, we can not only target a custom audience but target particular geography, the behavior of the audience, and demographics – all possible from the large amount of data collected through the internet. 

Measurable

You can now track how many audiences visit your website, from what region, and what are they interested in. Due to this, it is possible to quantify all of your results. With all the data available to you through tracking, you can now determine what you need to do if something is not working,
You can quantify your results. Once tracking is installed on your website, you will be able to see conversion data on your website.

Types of Digital Marketing

So by now, we tried to cover why digital marketing is important briefly. Now let’s dig in a little deeper on this topic.

There are 6 major types of digital marketing which consist of:

1.    Website

When you look at any website of a popular brand, the first thing you notice is their artistic and eye-catching design. Their contents are very easy to read, they clearly mention their product, and what makes their product unique, and also include customer feedback.

This is the first step and the most important step to succeed in digital marketing. You must design your website very effectively – it might take a little more time and money but you must be successful.

The fact that any customer looks at your website first, makes it even more valuable. If you fail to make a good first impression, your audience might bounce back. A good website is a decoration you will need for all of your marketing.

Good traffic attracts good traffic, it is that simple to understand.

2.    SEO

Search engine optimization or SEO is the technique of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to any website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets only unpaid traffic which is known to us as organic results. This unpaid traffic can originate from various image searches, text searches, video searches, news or academic searches, etc.

Search engine optimization (SEO) helps to optimize your online content in such a way that search engines tend to show it on the first page of the search result. It is possible if you have used the important keywords intelligently in your content.

Where exactly, on the search engine results pages, your website or page appears is determined by various ranking factors like site accessibility, page speed, optimized content, keywords, title tags, and many more.  These are the elements that you can control or change accordingly anytime on your website.

SEO is all about optimizing your website, and pages and using the correct keywords for your content. It doesn’t matter how quality stuff your website consists of, your page will not get enough traffic if you haven’t considered all these mentioned factors.

Here are some tips for better SEO optimization:
You have to use valuable keywords in the title tag of each page on your site. (55-60 characters max).

• Choose your headings very intelligently and insert as many keywords, but be realistic. Do not spam the same keywords repeatedly.
• Keep your URLs short and sharp by including one major keyword.
• Make your website fast by properly optimizing the page with the help of various SEO optimizing tools like PageSpeed Insights.
• Using images with a size greater than 100kb is not recommended, as higher-size images slow down your website.
• With all this being said, the major factor is the content of your website, it must be reasonable and interesting to the customers. 

3.    Content Writing 

When it comes to content there is one very popular phrase- CONTENT IS THE KING

Content makes our pages, and website worth visiting. It is the core element of digital marketing. It was, is, and always will be the most determining factor for the success of your business. 

Content writing is a very complex job that requires a lot of hard work and hardworking manpower to do it right. Basic to advanced knowledge of SEO-friendly content, optimization tools, etc. very compulsory to master content marketing.
One of the main goals of content marketing is to understand what the audience wants and how to effectively engage with the audience.

Content doesn’t always mean texts, it can be emailed, web content, blogs, e-books, videos, and whitepapers – just to name a few. Now to achieve your goals, you have to know how to develop a campaign that will help attract a large audience.

Content marketing is necessary for generating trust among the audience. Once the trust is established among customers, it will create greater value for your business among people. Providing quality information to customers, and connecting with them regularly by replying to their feedback will encourage users to buy your products.

You can use content marketing strategy in blogs, eBooks, videos, pages, etc.

4.    PPC Advertising (pay-per-click)

SEO and Content marketing are not easy to achieve. They are most important and can be very effective for digital marketing. The main problem, however, is, that it is time-consuming.

The solution can be PPC, also known as pay-per-click advertising. It is a fast process and if you wish to speed things up for business, you might want to throw some PPC advertising.

This can be the fastest and legal way to gain heavy traffic for your website, but as the title suggests, you have to pay for it. 
You have to pay for your digital advertising on the internet.

These PPC ads are widely used on search engines. When you search for something on the search engines, the first few results that appear on the top are the ads. These ads will cost you money, hence called pay-per-click.

5.    Social Marketing

This can be the cheapest way to build brand awareness among people all over the world.

Of course, you can also advertise on other social media handles by paying them a certain amount. 
But using your social media will cost you nothing.

Social media marketing is an excellent way to connect with the audience and interact with them through feedback or comments.

All you have to do is be consistent and post quality content daily. It’s only a matter of time before people start noticing your work and appreciate it. 
 You have to be intelligent, funny, and energetic to attract an audience quickly.

Any quality content that inspires or entertains the audience is the best weapon for the rapid growth of your business. You have to be informative and polite while replying to the feedback.

Social Media Marketing is all about the target audience. The more traffic you get, the more popular your brand becomes.

Many celebrities earn thousands of dollars just from one post on their social media. The power of social media is only increasing and this could just be the best way of marketing in the future.

6.    Email Marketing

Let’s say you are getting a lot of traffic with all the activities mentioned above, now what?

Now it’s time to generate revenue by making the audience buy from you. The main goal is to make the audience invest in your business.
With the help of Email Marketing, you have the perfect opportunity to maximize your revenue in no time.

Email marketing is a perfect strategy to stay in front of an interested audience or keep in touch with previous customers consistently.

The main strategy can be sending emails to customers and providing them with various offers and schemes like a 30% discount, etc.

Even you may have gotten various emails consistently from various brands promoting their products and offering discounts.

You can find such emails in the social category of your Gmail account.
Keep in mind, that all these types of digital marketing work best for your business if used in synergy with each other.
With all this being said, you must work to build an integrated marketing strategy.

Whether it's a Twitter post, Facebook post YouTube, or any other platform, you have to convey a consistent and informative message to the audience.

You should be careful while using use brand logo, voice, and tone. The main focus should be to ensure, your audience experiences a seamless experience all over the world.

Important skills best suited for digital marketing

As a digital marketer, you need to have several skills. Although the specific skill requirements will vary depending on your niche of digital marketing, some of the common required skills are as follows:

1.    Be Tech Savvy

Now a day’s most industry is driven by technology. It's best for you if you have a certain grip on technology-related kinds of stuff. The more you learn about tech, the better for your business.

Just having the basic idea of web coding and Content Management Systems, you can contribute a lot in making quality design websites and SEO-friendly articles for the audience. Knowledge of WordPress is a plus point for anyone trying to excel at digital marketing.

2.    Be Persuasive 

The most important skill to have for marketing – be it digital or other, is pursuing an audience to buy your product.
You have to make strategies and start a campaign to gain the trust of people in your brand. People tend to invest in you when they trust you and your product.

No matter how many people visit your website, it doesn’t matter if they never buy any of your products.
The main challenge is not to increase traffic but to increase buyers. 

3.    Data analysis 

Another major factor leading to the success of any company is the data. The more data you collect from your audience, the better for you to make a respective strategy.

Data is everything, you can analyze the user record and find what they are interested in, where they are from, etc. Based on that you can focus on a specific audience, interact with them and persuade them to buy your products.

You need to understand how to track and gather data legally and use this to your advantage. You need to use this data to make plans and strategies to promote the business and products.

With all this knowledge, you are now ready to enter the world of digital marketing.