What is Digital Marketing? Let’s take a bird’s eye view 🐦
This is going to be a lengthy comprehensive guide. But it will be worth it 😉
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing is also known as online marketing or Internet Marketing. Digital Marketing is marketing using digital platforms. It takes place upon the Internet infrastructure, hence, Digital Marketing.
Places upon which Digital Marketing take place
- Search Network
- Display Network
- Application Network
- Social Media
- Chatbot Marketing
Let’s decode them one-by-one
#1. Search Network:
Search Network means search engines in general. The most popular ones are
- Bing
- Yahoo
- Yandex (If Russia is your Target Market)
- Baidu (If China is your Target Market)
The idea with marketing over search network is to come up top in search results with your value proposition.
And it can be done organically as well as by running ads. In Google, you run Google Adwords PPC Campaigns.
Why would you want to rank higher in the search results?
Welcome to the age of consumerism. Consumers are actively educating themselves every step of the way.
With optimized content on your website, you will grab the opportunity to solve your target customer’s queries & hopefully sell your products & services.
You can rank in Google’s first-page results with Google Adwords PPC Ads or even organically.
Let’s first deconstruct the paid ads
On search network, you can run 3 kinds of ads for your business to gain exposure, generate leads & drive conversions.
Your website homepage appears in the search result with the site title, URL, meta description & sitemap
In the above screenshot, you can see the SERP (search engine result page) for the keyword on Google “Amazon”. (Based on my country of origin — India).
Google search algorithm took a quick dive into its indexed web pages & PPC Campaigns. Then, based on the website optimization, it fed the search results in 0.54 seconds.
The first result is Amazon.in of course. Amazon’s website is obviously optimized & it’s running a PPC campaign.
In this search result snippet, we can clearly see the site title, the URL, Meta Description & Sitemap.
Since they are running this on Google Adwords PPC that is why we can see “ad” right before the URL begins.
In this sitemap, they are highlighting the current deals & exclusives. Whomsoever finds this search result snippet & is interested in buying clothes would definitely click on “50%-80% off on Fashion” that is the way Amazon will drive conversions.
So, if they are paying 2$ per click & if that click goes on to purchase merchandise worth 50$ then it will be totally worth it.
In the above screenshot, you can see the sponsored product results that returned for the search query “OnePlus6T”. First two places are occupied by Amazon itself.
Along with this, search network advertisement also takes place on Google Maps, think of it more as Local SEO.
Let’s say you started a Cafe at Mumbai, so what you will do is register your business on Google My Business with your address & other details. As a result, if anyone in your locale searches “Cafe near me” or “Cafe at Mumbai” then your cafe will show up in local search results.
To rank higher, you can run an ad campaign over search network.
Now, let’s talk about organic search engine marketing
Organically also you can make your website rank higher on Google’s first-page result. It is done through SEO, an acronym that stands for Search Engine Optimization.
SEO is a vast concept that I am afraid, I cannot cover in this article. Will dedicate an article to it in future.
Basically, the idea is to optimize your website & content for the search engine to crawl, index & rank easily. And to achieve that, best SEO practices are adopted.
SEO is bifurcated into ON PAGE SEO & OFF PAGE SEO
ON PAGE SEO includes activities like
- Optimizing site structure
- Meta Tags
- Meta Descriptions
- Keyword Research
- Page load speed
- Title Tag
- Easy Navigation
- Search Engine Friendly URL’s
Basically, Search Engine ranks website using their algorithm that sends bots to crawl, index & rank web pages on search results.
The Google Bot, for example, will be able to crawl the web pages that load faster, has sitemap & whose Robots.txt file isn’t preventing them from crawling data that needs to be indexed.
I have another blog called “Investigating Answer”
I invested adequate time in keyword research & curating authentic content. As a result, today this article ranks #5 in Google search engine result page (SERP) for the keyword “Doppelganger Brand Image”
#2. Display Network:
Display network, as the name suggests, takes place visually with attractive & compelling pictures, GIFs, videos & banners
With Google Adwords, you can create advertising campaigns that will take place on the Google Display Network it takes place via Google Adsense
Do you remember a display advertisement from a website following you after you leave that website & find you on other websites?
I bet you do. 😏
That display advertisement is nothing but Google Adsense advertisement. As you go over a website the website cookie collects your data. So, if you didn’t take the dedicated action like made a purchase or downloaded an e-book, they remarket it to you in the hopes of converting you.
Until they do. 😈
It’s not just websites upon which display advertisement takes place.
Display advertisement also takes place over social media & applications
Some of the major Social Media Platforms are leveraged by brands to market & drive conversions
Example:
… And there are more platforms like these.
Basically, you run PPC Campaigns on these platforms to obtain your objective. Social Media is one of the most engaging places there is.
You will receive feedback in the real-time & hopefully make some noise.
#3. Social Media Marketing:
Let’s dig into Social Media marketing
Like I mentioned, Social Media is one of the most engaging places over the internet.
HERE ARE SOME STAGGERING FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW
- Facebook has 1.6 Billion Active Users
- An average Facebook user creates at least 90 pieces of content each month
- Instagram has nearly a Billion active users
- Quora has 250+ Million active users
- Pinterest has 250 Million active users
- Twitter has 336 Million monthly active users
- Every second on an average 6,000 tweets are tweeted on Twitter
- Reddit has 638,959 subreddits, also called threads, used for discussions
- Reddit has 542 Million monthly users
- 300 hours of YouTube video are uploaded every single day
- Nearly 5 Billion videos are watched on YouTube every single day
Overwhelming it is, isn’t it? 😱
Over social media, there are two ways you can jam your game
- Organically
- With Paid Ads
Organic is a term in the world of web marketing which simply means your non-paid efforts.
The idea is to curate content that educates your target customers, nurtures them & pulls them through the stages of purchase decision journey. Also called the ‘Funnel’.
You have to plan, curate & distribute the content that gets your ideal customers down the funnel from awareness stage to the decision stage where they finally make the dedicated purchase.
However, all of this cannot be achieved 100% organically. You need to combine your organic efforts with paid campaigns to get optimum results.
Because organic growth is almost dead, there is only so much that you can do organically.
However, over time as you build your loyal fan base, by establishing credibility & thought-leadership you will see your organic efforts pay-off. Takes time, but you will get there eventually.
Keep Reading: How to use Instagram on your PC
Over social media, you can run paid ads to generate brand awareness, engage the community with your content, generate leads & convert those leads.
Facebook is one of the most preferred platforms by advertisers to run ads & see success. That’s probably because of the insane targeting & retargeting features that it offers.
On Facebook, you can generate a pixel tracking code & install it on your website. What that code will do is, that it will capture the data of your website visitors so that you can remarket to those who left your site & didn’t take a dedicated action like check out the cart or download a book or book a demo.
On Facebook, you can run ads to generate Brand Awareness, engage the community & drive conversions.
Instagram is more inclined towards visual representation. Boosted Instagram stories work wonders when it comes to encouraging customers to take a dedicated action. Instagram stories are interactive in nature & give a full-screen experience to your target customers.
#4. Application network:
It encompasses Android & iOS Applications. With Google Adsense, you can run advertisements on the application network as Android is Google’s property. The application creator has to sign up for Adsense, as soon as the application is approved the ads will run on his application & he will begin earning money.
In between usage of the application, a full-screen ad might pop up & that’s how advertisement on application network takes place. If you are to click on that pop-up ad, then that will take you to a landing page, where you will be encouraged to convert. Even if you don’t, the cookie or pixel code will capture your data & with that data advertisers will remarket to you until you are converted.
Applications are also promoted on play store to show up in user’s search query so that users install the application & begin using it for good.
#5. Email Marketing:
Email Marketing is a huge concept that encapsulates an array of functions.
Email Marketing heavily relies on list building. List building means that you build your email list by collecting emails of your prospects in every step of the way.
You can build your list from the website, social media, PR Events, blog or maybe just purchase the database of your target audience, based on geography & psychography. (However, I wouldn’t recommend buying a database, as it feels to be a massive invasion of privacy. Besides, they would be caught off-guard with promotional emails & might not take it in good spirit)
How do you go about using that email database?
The emails that you collect is potentially your lead, a lead that you can convert into a satisfied customer & eventually a promoter of your business.
You can send newsletters to your email list, like 3–4 times a week. Do not bombard them with your emails every single day. That might appear spammy & the user can easily unsubscribe from your mailing list.
You can send newsletter updates about the recent developments of your products or services. Also, maybe you achieved a feat & you want to share that with your tribe.
Your blog can generate significant traffic with the help of email marketing. You can set up a newsletter template where you send blog post updates via email to your email list.
Use tools like MailChimp. You can select the templates according to your objective, add personalization to your email recipients & shoot the mail at once using their service.
You can add personalization of recipients name. so, now when the person receives the mail. The email would start something like. “Hey, Mike”
You get the idea how awesome this feature is. You do not have to go through the trouble of individually typing everybody’s name. Just add the personalization & the email to the recipient would appear as if the email is talking to him/her personally.
With personalization, you make them feel special
You can shoot promotional emails to your list, with CTA button like “SHOP NOW”, “DOWNLOAD”, “BOOK NOW”.
With promotional emails, you can actually drive conversions. Even if the person doesn’t buy right away, he/she probably will keep it in mind. The reader may even ⭐ the mail.
Or, that person ends up on the landing page, add the product to the cart but checkout later. There is a myriad of possibilities.
#6. Chatbot Marketing:
This is an emerging format of marketing. Very effective & is giving a tough competition to emails.
Did you know, A Facebook Messenger Bot has 98% opening rate, whereas an email has a 21.3% opening rate?
You can automate your Facebook Messenger chatbot using tools like ManyChat & MobileMonkey. You can automate the responses, greet the visitors with your business’s value proposition and also, send daily updates.
Okay, I hope this lengthy blog post answered most of your queries. In the future posts, I will deconstruct each and every aspect of digital marketing.
Quick summary
We learned the places upon which Digital Marketing takes place
- Search Network
- Display Network
- Application Network
- Social Media
- Chatbot Marketing
Originally published on iamdigitalmarketing.blogspot.com
