Digital Marketing - An Introduction And its Benefits|L J Tutorials|

Today, we will begin to learn about Digital marketing. It is truly a revolution in today’s times!

                                     

Let us begin with an introduction to Digital Marketing. 

Digital marketing is known by many other names – Online marketing, web marketing or Internet marketing. Traditionally, marketing is done via advertisements on radio, television or the Print media. Digital marketing, on the other hand, is done online, over the Internet.

You probably use Internet for two to three hours or more in a day. But, are you aware that Internet can be such an effective medium of advertising? Well, it is not just an effective medium; it is an effectively successful medium.

Digital marketing involves promotion of the services and products, just as traditional marketing does. It, however, reaches a larger number of people. Almost everyone you know has a social media account. Advertising on social media is also a form of digital marketing and a very cost effective method. You can reach a large number of people with the relevant information timely.

So, what is the importance of Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing works on the simple premise – time is money. This statement is of prime importance in today’s world. For example, consider the shopping situation today and compare it with your parent’s days. How much do people go out to shop? Most consumers prefer online shopping. Why? Well, it saves a lot of time and they get more options without having to move out of their houses. They get a wide range of choice that they would not get in a store.

This online presence of people has improved brand recognition at a worldwide scale. For small scale businesses, digital marketing is the best form of advertisement.

How beneficial is Digital Marketing?
Creates Awareness – To help you understand how beneficial digital marketing is, consider this simple example. When you are browsing your timeline on Facebook or any of your preferred social networking sites, you might see many advertisements on the side. You would be surprised at how many times you click on one of those advertisements because they seem relevant. I am sure, many times you are unable to resist and end up making purchases at one of those sites.

Even if you don’t, there are a number of people who do. Most importantly, though, when you click on the Facebook advertisement, you find out about a new brand that you would not have heard of through traditional media.

Thus, digital marketing creates awareness about products and services in a simple and efficient way.

Provides Equal Opportunities – A person with a small scale business may not be able to use the traditional forms of marketing. Money is necessary and this form needs you to spend a hefty sum of money on advertisements for people to know you. However, when you opt for digital marketing, you need to have a well-planned website and you can draw traffic to it smoothly.

The size of your business does not matter here. What matters is the quality of service and products that you are offering. You can get easy online visibility without spending much when you are on social media.

Understand the Consumer’s Response – Another big benefit of digital marketing is that you can view how well your business is working and see the results of your hard work. If you feel that a particular area of your business needs more attention, then you can make changes in your strategies.

You get real time response from consumers. One mistake will have the consumers backing out. But, the best part is that you can rectify the mistake immediately and pull the customers back.

There are various tools like Google Analytics to help you determine how well you are doing. These tools are accurate and easy to use for anyone. The results are real time as well because in a matter of a few hours, you can see a peak in your traffic, sales, revenue and subscribers.

Going Viral – I have seen a large number of advertisements going viral because people liked it and could share it with others in a matter of seconds. This is not possible with the traditional marketing means.

The best example is the ‘Kolaveri Di’ video that became immensely popular. The music was catchy, foot tapping and captivating. Similarly, there are many advertisement videos that become viral. If it provides value to the consumers, then they like it, share it with their family and friends, who share it further.
It is shared a hundred times in a matter of a few minutes.

To give you statistics, on an average, a person on Facebook has 190 friends. Out of those, 12% have a chance of seeing a shared or liked post. This means, that even if one person shares your ad, 15 people would see it, and these are modest estimates. If these people share the same thing too, the post could become viral instantly.

No Sales Calls – One of the biggest advantages of digital marketing is that you don’t get calls if you have not subscribed to a service.

The advertisement style is not pushy. People are looking for the products that are delivered to them and thus, instead of being angry, they are thankful. It is tailored to people’s needs and allows the practical demonstration of targeting only that customer base which needs the product or service.

If a consumer is interested in clothes and has subscribed to that website, then only he will get mails from them and only, if he has opted for the mail service.
Now, think about digital marketing and see if you can come up with some viral advertisements that you may have shared with your friends.

                                                


               Digital marketing works by employing certain strategies to grow traffic on your website, and/or to make your brand/business more popular on the Internet. In today’s session we are going to introduce to you various strategies digital marketers adopt. All of the below mentioned techniques will be put to use in the later chapters when you have been prepared for it!

Some of the more common strategies used in Digital Marketing are given below:

SEO - SEO or Search Engine Optimization teaches you how to stay on top of search engines, when it comes to website rankings. People use search engines like Google, Bing to find what they are looking for. If your website are in those results, you’ll get relevant traffic. Relevant traffic means people who are interested in what your website has to offer. The process of getting your website ranked on the search engines for the relevant terms is SEO.


Social Media Marketing - Social Media Marketing, which teaches you about marketing on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter, and also about video marketing. All these social networking sites are excellent methods of digital marketing. More people would see, visit the merchant’s pages, and invite their friends to visit them.
Advantage of social marketing is people are more likely to share stuff they find helpful, funny or interesting in any way. For example, if you have a website or blog on say ‘travelling’, if you’ll post information on “Famous Celebrities’ Honeymoon Trips”, people will share the stuff and you’ll get a lot of traffic.


Paid Marketing – You can buy traffic (visitors) from various traffic sources such as Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads etc.


Email Marketing – Here, you build your email list through your website and then send emails to your list inviting them to visit your website.


Please note that all of the above strategies work even better if you actually have a useful website which people love, bookmark and share. The goal is to create a content rich blog or website that provides value to the visitors. ‘Value’ here means that your aim is to provide high quality relevant information to your visitors which is helpful to them. This will make them bookmark your website and recommend it to their friends.


Take for example, the website http://www.improve-vision-naturally.com. The website promotes “Rebuild your Vision”, that helps improve vision. If you go through the website, you will find that it is rich in content relating to improvement of vision. This is what you will need to do to attract traffic.

As you read these strategies, you may realize that you have already come across one or all of them. You may have clicked on an advertisement to be taken to a merchant’s website, received email promoting a product and others. 

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