Traditional marketing methods no longer cut it in this digital age. The rise of the internet has transformed the relationship between a business and customers. This is where digital marketing comes in, a form of marketing that utilises every available online platform and tool to reach, engage, and lead the audience into paying customers.
In this digital marketing introduction, we will learn the fundamentals of digital marketing and how to create a digital marketing campaign to stay ahead in today’s fast-paced world.
What is digital marketing?
First off, “What is digital marketing?” Explaining it is pretty straightforward. As its name suggests, it is a form of marketing that happens in the digital or online space.
Another way to look at it is that businesses use digital marketing to promote their brands, products, and services in the digital space, where a lot of people are on these days. They communicate their message digitally via email, social media, and other online platforms.
Why is digital marketing important?
The importance of digital marketing is immeasurable in this digital age. It enables businesses to reach out and forge a relationship with their niche audience. Moreover, direct engagement online helps build a better impression and, ultimately, trust.
In the case of startups and small businesses, it enables them to market their products and services without having to allot a big chunk of their financial resources and get a sizable return on investment (ROI) in the process.
When should you use digital marketing?
Digital marketing is a powerful tool for businesses. It can help reach business goals, not just help generate profit.
With that said, here are a couple of scenarios when you should use digital marketing:
- Create awareness about a brand, product, or service, and generate buzz before the initial launch.
- Reach a wider audience and target specific groups of people via social media and online platforms.
- Create a strong online presence and create a loyal following that trusts the brand.
- Generate leads for your business by attracting potential customers through targeted campaigns and lead magnets.
- Drive sales through targeted campaigns and promotions to encourage people to make a purchase.
What are the different types of digital marketing?
There are different types, a quick check on the internet can show an array of digital marketing examples of what these are and how they function. Moreover, each has its advantage and method to help reach a business’ goals.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This marketing tool involves making web pages more visible and attractive to search engine platforms like Google and Bing.
There are various contributing factors to get your pages ranking high on search engine results pages (SERPs). The critical elements to consider are quality content, user engagement, mobile-friendliness, and inbound links. Of course, technical SEO should not be neglected, either. Businesses should take special care to optimise their web pages to get better results and help search engines navigate and crawl your site more easily.
Content Marketing
It shows a great way to attract potential customers. With content marketing, brands share valuable content with the audience, like offering information via blog posts, e-books, and infographics.
People expect companies to produce entertaining and helpful content. That is why most large and established companies allocate their resources to digital marketing and produce content daily.
Moreover, content marketing ties in with other types of marketing as well since the aim is to provide value first before converting the audience into paying customers.
Social Media Marketing
It is a valuable tool to drive traffic and increase brand awareness by engaging with people online. In fact, with billions of people spending time on social media platforms, this is a great way to reach a wider audience compared to some of the digital marketing tools.
There are plenty of social media platforms. However, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube are the most popular. With that said, when choosing which platforms to join, the core deciding factor will be business goals and where the target audience uses the most.
For example, business-to-customer (B2C) companies are on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. While business-to-business (B2B) companies are on LinkedIn.
Pay-Per-Click Marketing (PPC)
With PPC marketing, businesses need to pay a fee every time someone clicks on a digital ad instead of paying a set price to run targeted ads on online channels. Google Ads is a platform that most businesses use since its corresponding search engine is very popular.
The way it works is that when a spot opens on the SERP there is an instant auction to fill it. Google’s algorithm prioritises ads based on ad quality, keyword relevance, landing page quality, and bid amount. Thereafter, a Google Ad from a business will show up at the top of the search results.
Affiliate Marketing
Well-known brands and people with an audience use affiliate marketing to earn money by promoting a business and its products and services. On the other hand, businesses use a revenue-sharing model so affiliates earn a commission for every successful sale.
Businesses can use affiliate marketing to tap into another relevant audience base. By providing incentives, affiliates can promote and attract potential customers for the business.
Native Advertising
This is a way to somewhat disguise an advertisement and make it less obvious. The aim is to let it blend with content marketing.
Marketers use native advertising for consumers who are cynical towards obvious ads. Moreover, a lot of consumers think ads are heavily biased towards the benefit of the business that runs the ad.
Native advertising circumvents this. It downplays the advertising aspect by providing valuable information and entertainment before leading to the promotion. The intent of this tool is to be less obtrusive but never deceptive.
Influencer Marketing
It is somewhat similar to affiliate marketing, the key difference is the people the business will be working with. For influencer marketing, a business works with people with a bigger audience, like celebrities, industry experts, or well-known content creators.
Influencers expose a brand and endorse its products and services to their large follower base. However, businesses should be careful with who to associate with. Partnering with the wrong influencer or when an influencer faces a scandal, the business and consumers’ trust will be negatively affected.
Marketing Automation
This improves the efficiency and relevance of digital marketing campaigns using marketing software. It frees up marketers from time-consuming processes and enables them to focus more on the important aspects of digital marketing, such as strategising, optimising, and tracking.
Moreover, marketing automation can help marketers create better campaigns with the consumer data collected. This gives insight into how to better target a specific audience and send relevant messages at the right times.
Email Marketing
The concept for this digital marketing tool is simple: Marketers send a promotional message to a list of people and hope they open the mail and do the desired action, like clicking the link attached.
However, execution for email marketing is a bit more tricky. For one, a business needs to build its email list. A way to do that is by using other digital marketing tools, providing value, and encouraging people to give their emails. Moreover, there are a few steps as well:
- Create individualised content in the body, subject line, and preview text.
- State what people will receive when they subscribe to the email list
- Provide an unsubscribe option when people no longer want to receive mail
In addition, email marketing is not just a promotional tool. It can be used to provide value to people.
Mobile Marketing
Lastly, mobile marketing is where businesses engage with their audience in the following avenues:
- SMS and MMS messages
- Social media notifications
- Mobile app alerts
The aim is to pique the interest of the audience so they open the message or notification as a way to get a brand’s foot in the door. It can also be used to notify the audience of something that will provide value to them.
How to start your digital marketing campaign?
After identifying the various types of digital marketing, naturally, the next question would be, “How to do a digital marketing campaign?” Below is a step-by-step guide on how to do just that.
Outline Marketing Goals
Before creating your digital marketing campaign, it is vital to have a clear idea of the marketing goals. These need to be setting specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely (SMART) objectives.
Keep in mind, it is important to establish this early on since the goals will be the guide down the line. Moreover, the goals set will help in the decision-making process.
Determine Budget
Aside from goal-setting, it is important to figure out how much of a business’s financial resources should be allotted to the digital marketing budget. This will cover the costs for everything related to marketing, such as research, strategising, content creation, advertising, tools, and staff, to name a few.
Perform Market Research
Next is to understand the audience, the market, and the competition. To do this, the business needs to perform a market search. This will yield the necessary information and provide insight when creating a digital marketing campaign.
Make sure to collect the data for the following:
- Pricing
- Service
- Distribution
- Placement
- Market Dynamic
- Industry Benchmarks
- Potential Partners
With the insights provided by market research, businesses can be more clear-cut on how to market their brand and what they offer.
Determine Target Personas
Determining target personas is usually part of market research as well. It is just separated in this article to underscore its importance.
With that said, marketers should have the demographics, psychographics, and behaviours of the target personas:
- Job title
- Company size and industry
- Role
- Gender
- Salary
- Education
- Location
- Age
- Education
- Consumer pain points
- Goals
- Types of content or promotion they positively respond to
- Types of content or promotion they dislike
- Fears
- Motivations
- Common objections
It should not stop there. Marketers should test the assumptions of the target audience to create a more accurate target persona. This can be done through online focus groups, customer surveys, or targeted quizzes on social media.
Outline Campaign Goals
After laying the groundwork, it is time to outline the goals of the digital marketing campaign. For this step, marketers will define the “Big Idea” for the campaign and how to connect and convince the audience.
Similar to the initial goal-setting, businesses should create SMARTER objectives. However, for this step, key performance indicators (KPIs) will be applied to track the performance of the campaign based on the defined goals.
Create Content
Next is to create the actual content for the campaign. It is crucial to carefully choose the types of content that work best for the target personas and the channels these will be disseminated.
Most startups and small businesses do not have the human resources to create the necessary content. Some opt to partner with agencies, like Flexi Digital Marketing, to do it for them, like blogs, ebooks, videos, infographics, and graphic materials.
Promote & Execute
Once the content has been created, it is time to promote and execute the marketing campaign. This is the step where marketers use a multitude of marketing tactics such as social media, email marketing, and PPC to attract potential customers.
Keep in mind, while not everyone will make an immediate purchase, they are still valuable. These types of people just need more convincing before converting into paying customers.
Analyse Marketing Campaign
Going back to the KPIs, this is the step wherein metrics are used to measure the success and efficacy of a digital marketing campaign. Here are a couple of metrics to take note of:
- The number of people who visited the website
- How long people stayed on the website
- How many people actually opened the email and click on the attached link
- How many people clicked on the ads and were sent to the website
- How many leads were generated from an event
- How many people engage on the social media post
There are tools that track the progress of the campaigns such as Google Analytics, Marketo, Mailchimp, Ahrefs, and Simply Measured, to name a few.
Invest & Improve
However, it does not stop there. Marketing campaigns can be further improved based on the information and insights that were gathered. Moreover, marketers should also invest time in honing their digital marketing skills and staying on top of trends. These will enhance a business’s marketing efforts and yield more positive results down the line.
Understand the Fundamentals to Reap the Benefits -3
Understanding the fundamentals of digital marketing will greatly benefit any business. For one, in this fast-paced digital era, having an online presence alone can make a brand more trustworthy and legitimate than those relying solely on traditional marketing methods.
Moreover, digital can yield plenty of benefits, most of which help the business reach its goals and grow further.
With that said, while digital marketing is ever-evolving as there are more innovations and trends driven by technology, the fundamentals remain a vital aspect. As such, mastering these will help increase the chances of staying ahead of the stiff competition online.
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