What is Digital Marketing? Types, Importance and Benefits
Digital marketing, a procedure that is employed by businesses to market and promote products or services online to their targeted audiences. Digital marketing consists of various forms such as social media marketing (SMM), email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), etc. Digital marketing offers an opportunity to businesses for boosting their brand by using its effective techniques.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing, also referred as online marketing is the process of promoting and advertising products to customers by utilizing websites, mobile applications, search engines, social media platforms, and other digital channels. In simple terms of business, digital marketing allows you to reach targeted customers by boosting your brand awareness.
Digital Marketing includes various techniques to connect and communicate with customers through digital tactics, including pay-per-click marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, etc.
What are the Types of Digital Marketing?
There are many types of digital marketing that can be used to promote a brand and increase its audience reach. Here are a few types of digital marketing that can be used for effective results.
1. Social Media Marketing (SMM) - It is one of the most efficient digital marketing types, that is used to create content on social media to connect with customers and promote products or services. SMM is an approach that can be employed by organizations to connect and communicate with customers about deals and updates. The most popular social media platforms you can use for social media marketing involves Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. Across 5 billion people around the world use social media which makes it a effective way to drive brand awareness.
2. Email Marketing - Email marketing is another form of digital marketing that lets businesses use email to connect with potential customers. It helps them to promote their products and services via email. In email marketing, companies engage with their audiences by sending targeted messages about their new products, sales and updates. It is an effective method that is used by businesses to increase their sales, boost brand awareness, generate website traffic, customer engagement, etc.
3. Pay-per-click (PPC) Marketing – Pay-per-click marketing, a digital model of advertising used by businesses to pay a fee for clicks on their online ads. Business pays publishers such as Google, Facebook, etc. for targeted ads on digital marketing channels. Search engine marketing is one of the most used types of PPC because of Google. Most businesses use Google Ads to reach their potential customers by placing their ads on the top of search engine result pages.
4. Content Marketing – Content marketing is a method of creating and distributing high engagement digital content on blogs, social media posts, emails, newsletters, videos, etc to targeted audiences. The aim of content marketing is to attract and retain customers by providing them valuable content. Companies need to post high quality content to rank on search engine result pages. Posting relevant content on digital channels helps businesses to grab the attention of their target audiences.
5. Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate marketing, a type of digital marketing in which businesses pay commissions to companies and influencers to promote their products or services. Many companies organize affiliate programs where affiliate marketers get paid a commission every time a sale is made. Affiliate marketing allows businesses to meet their marketing goals, such as increasing web traffic, brand awareness, etc.
6. Search Engine Optimization [SEO] – It is the process of improving a website by increasing its online appearance on search engine result pages (SERPs). SEO involves various practices including keyword research, on-page seo, off-page seo, technical seo, analytics, etc. that are employed by SEO specialists to increase website visibility on Google, Bing or other search engines. The basic aim of seo is to drive site’s organic traffic by increasing its ranking position on search results.
5 major benefits of SEO, including –
- Improve site’s quality
- Enhance user experience
- Increase brand awareness
- Drive website traffic
- Increase credibility
Why is Digital marketing important?
The main importance of Digital marketing is that it helps businesses in building an opportunity for them to acquire customers using various methods. This marketing approach also helps businesses to target audiences that are interested in their products or services. It assists businesses to perceive the preferences of customers by using various means, i.e. the responses of customers. Businesses can use digital marketing to reach target audiences, increase sales and drive web traffic.
Online marketing can help you to achieve amazing return on investments (ROI). You can earn profits by investing in digital marketing methods, i.e Email Marketing. As it is cost-effective, so you don’t need to spend high money to run ads on various digital channels. You can run multiple campaigns including social media ad campaign, email marketing campaign, PPC campaign and brand awareness campaign that helps in growing your business.
There are numerous strategies in digital marketing that give you an opportunity to grow your business online. You can use multiple strategies to reach target customers and market them online.
What are the Advantages of Digital Marketing?
Some of the major advantages of digital marketing are listed below -
1. Gain Brand Awareness – It’s crucial for businesses to increase their brand awareness, Digital marketing does the job for them by boosting their brand awareness using various digital platforms, such as Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. which assists them in extending their businesses.
2. Accessible & Cost effective – Investing in digital marketing techniques is much lower for companies as compared to traditional marketing practices. Digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, newsletters, etc. are free and low-cost which makes online marketing cost effective and accessible for businesses of all sizes.
3. Global Appearance – The first advantage of digital marketing is global appearance. Traditional marketing is geographically bound which can be a huge hurdle for global marketing. However, in digital marketing, internet is used to market products and services which makes it straightforward for businesses to expand their business globally.
4. Target Audiences Efficiently – Digital marketing helps in finding the target audience and understanding their preferences using various forms such as seo, pay-per-click (PPC), etc. This approach allows businesses to organize and modify campaigns by analyzing data and examining customer’s changing behaviour.
5. Customer engagement – Digital marketing enables businesses to engage with customers at every phase of the customer life cycle. Companies can interact with customers using various digital means including, website, email, social media, etc. Digital marketing helps businesses to maintain close relationships with customers which is crucial in understanding their point of view towards the business.