Download Digital Marketing Fundamentals: Strategies, Evolution, and Benefits and more Study notes Digital Marketing in PDF only on Docsity!
Unit- 1
Introduction to Digital Marketing
Overview of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is a strategy that utilizes various online channels and techniques to promote products, services, brands, or individuals to a target audience.
- Digital marketing is conducted through online channels, such as websites, social media, email, search engines, mobile apps, and online advertising platforms.
- Digital channels enable two-way communication. Marketers can engage with their audience through comments, likes, shares, and direct messages.
- Digital marketing can be more cost-effective, especially or small businesses. It allows for real-time tracking and analytics, making it easier to measure the performance.
- Digital marketing can easily reach a global audience and is well-suited for businesses with broader, even international, target markets.
- Digital marketing encompasses a wide range of content types, including text, images, videos, interactive media, and user-generated content. Traditional marketing :
- its also called conventional marketing ,This includes marketing methods such as television, radio, print media (newspapers and magazines), billboards and telemarketing.
- Traditional methods have a more limited reach and targeting capability.
- Traditional methods are one-way communication. There's little to no interactivity with the audience.
- Traditional campaigns can take longer to plan, produce, and distribute. Changes or updates are not immediate.
- Traditional methods can be more suitable for local or regional marketing.
- Traditional methods often rely on static content such as print ads, billboards, and radio/TV commercials
Evolution of digital marketing
let’s look at its interesting history and track its progress over the years. Here is a timeline to establish the evolution of digital marketing over the past few decades.
- 1991 − The World Wide Web, or WWW, arrived on August 6, 1991, and its service was made available publicly on the Internet when Berners-Lee launched the first-ever website.
- 1994 − On October 27, 1994, the first clickable banner went live on hotwired.com. 44% of its viewers clicked on it for over 4 months. This gave a boost to the digital marketing transition. After Yahoo! was launched in January 1994, the digital era started to evolve, with more technologies appearing around this time. In its first year of launch, Yahoo received around a million visits. As a result, it helped promote many businesses and brands, allowing marketers and business
owners to rethink their marketing approaches around digital media. Therefore, they started optimizing their businesses for search engines to boost their rankings and reach. It enables eCommerce businesses to track their buying interests and shopping patterns to create better-targeted ads and messages.
- 1996 − This year saw the rise of new search engines and smart tools like Alexa, Hot Bot, and Look Smart.
- 1997 − This year saw the launch of the first-ever social media site, named SixDegree.com.
- 1998 − 1998 saw the birth of Google, along with Microsoft’s MSN, and Yahoo’s Yahoo! Web Search.
- 2000 − October 23, 2000, is the date that internet marketers will remember, as it saw the birth of the first-ever online advertising platform, Google AdWords (now renamed as Google Ads).
- 2001 − In 2001, the first mobile marketing campaign was launched in the name of Universal Music.
- 2002 − 2002 saw the birth of today’s popular professional social platform, LinkedIn.
- 2003 − One of the most popular content management systems (CMS), WordPress, was introduced on May 27, 2003. WordPress is used to create any kind of website or blog.
- 2004 − February 4, 2004, saw the birth of our favourite social media platform, Facebook. In the same year, the most popular email platform, Gmail, was also launched.
- 2005 − A year after the launch of Facebook, the global online video-sharing platform, YouTube, was introduced on February 14, 2005.
- 2006 − Microsoft introduces MS Live Search, and in the same year, Twitter was also made live. What's more, in 2006, Amazon’s eCommerce sales hit $10 billion
- 2007 − Another year of growth and development, 2007 saw the launch of Tumblr, iPhone, and the web streaming platform Hulu.
- 2008 − Spotify was introduced in 2008 to help users listen to online songs.
- 2009 − Our all-time favourite messaging app, WhatsApp, was founded in 2009. In the same year, Google launched Instant to help users get real-time search engine results.
- 2011 − This year saw the launch of Google+, also written as Google Plus, which helped digital marketing to grow. However, currently, the customer version of Google+ has been closed.
- 2012 − 2012 saw a drastic rise in social media budgets to 64%.
- 2013 − In 2013, Yahoo acquired Tumblr, the short-form social media channel, specifically used for microblogging.
- 2014 − The year 2014 marked many advances in digital marketing, one of them being the launch of Facebook Messenger. Also, the year witnessed mobile internet usage exceeding that of PC, mainly for shopping or browsing.
- 2015 − The year 2015 marked the dawn of smart wearables, active content marketing, predictive technology, and inbound marketing growth. In 2015, Snapchat was also introduced.
● Mobile marketing: This involves using mobile apps, SMS, and other mobile channels to reach customers. ● Marketing automation: This involves using software to automate marketing processes such as email campaigns and social media posts. ● Influencer marketing : This involves collaborating with influencers, or people with a large following on social media, to promote a business. ● Video marketing: This involves using video content to promote a business, such as through YouTube or social media. ● Affiliate marketing: This involves using affiliates, or people who promote a business’s products in exchange for a commission, to reach new customers. Each type of digital marketing has its own advantages and disadvantages, so it’s important to choose the one that’s best for your business.
Importance and Benefits of Digital Marketing
1.Global Reach The first digital marketing advantage is global reach. Traditional marketing is restricted by geography and creating an international marketing campaign can be hard, expensive, as well as labor-intensive. However, digital marketing happens on the Internet, which means that the reach you can achieve with it is immense. Even a very small local business owner has the ability to reach an international audience with an online store. This would never be possible with traditional marketing or would cost a whole lot of money to do so. This online accessibility has opened many growth opportunities for businesses to explore. The combination of global reach and visibility is a great opportunity for any business.
2. Local Reach While global reach is a significant advantage of digital marketing, it also improves local visibility, which is especially important if your business relies on nearby customers. Local SEO and locally targeted ads can be beneficial for companies trying to bring more customers to their doors. Think of the reach you can get to a whole neighborhood with digital marketing versus the reach it would take you to print out flyers and distribute them around. 3. Cost-effective The next digital marketing advantage is cost-effectiveness. Whether you want to promote your business locally or internationally, digital marketing provides you with cost-effective solutions. It allows even the smallest companies to compete with larger companies using highly targeted strategies. Most of these strategies won’t even cost anything at all to start with (such as SEO, social media, and content marketing). However, not every form of digital marketing is suitable for every business and some may even have more costs than others. A business can find appropriate solutions based on its marketing goals.
4. Brand Awareness Digital marketing can help businesses build brand awareness and recognition. This is important for businesses that want to attract new customers and grow their business. 5. Effective Targeting Even if you don’t have a clear idea of your target audience, digital marketing enables you to extract data to see which audiences will work best for you and optimize your campaign around them. There are many different options for targeting such as through keywords for search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per- click (PPC), or demographic information on social media. This enormous amount of targeting elements at your disposal makes sure that every campaign reaches the right audience. It also helps you to analyze the changing behaviors of customers and modify campaigns for those changes. This ability to understand customers’ changing needs quickly is a sure way of success for any company. 6. Multiple Strategies There are different strategies of digital marketing that can be used by different types of businesses. A B2B business that is interested in gaining international leads may have a totally different strategy than a B2C local business selling clothes. While some companies can benefit more easily from content marketing and SEO, others can benefit from conversion-based ad campaigns. The key is to always analyze the results and develop better tactics and methods with time. A well-executed digital marketing strategy is one that changes and adapts quickly as the needs of the business transform. 7. Multiple Content Types Another crucial advantage of digital marketing is the different content types available to showcase your brand online. For a lot of platforms, there is a wide range of content types you can choose from to keep your brand fresh and build effective online campaigns. Unlike traditional marketing, you can more easily reproduce one piece of content to fit as many platforms as you want. Here are some of the most common types of content that you can choose from: Blogs, Podcasts, Emailers, E-books, Visual content, Infographics, Whitepapers, Quizzes, Social media posts and Webinars. 8. Increased Engagement One of the most important advantages of digital marketing is increased engagement. Digital marketing is designed to be highly engaging by default. Users can share a blog post, like a photo, save a video, or engage with your website via a paid ad click. The best part is that all of these actions can be measured. This enables you to create even more engaging posts to increase brand awareness or boost sales. The more you engage online, the more loyal customers you can get. Businesses that use engaging formats effectively in their online strategies have an easier time converting cold traffic to loyal customers.
Types of Digital Marketing Channels and platforms
1) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search Engine Optimization, as the name suggests, is about making your website page rank higher on internet search engines like Google, Bing, etc. Suppose a user does an online search on ‘How to bake a cake.’ If the web page of your recipe is among the top results, the user is more likely to click on it. Boosting the SEO of your page will not only enhance its online visibility and also improve its traffic and activity. It is an SEO best practice to include relevant keywords and manage links in your content to appear in the unpaid ‘organic’ search lists. Also, you can also take help from online tools like Google Keyword Planner, Bing Webmaster, Moz, Keyword tool. 2) Pay Per Click (PPC) Pay Per Click can prove to be one of the most effective internet marketing channels if utilized correctly. The goal of PPC is to turn latent users into engaged prospects and further convert them as buyers. For example, clicking on an online display ad can lead prospective clients to another page whose content gives more information about it. If they remain hooked throughout the experience, they can end up making a purchase. PPC ads are usually shown as sponsored stories, product listings, or video ads on websites and social media platforms. Most of the time, these online promotions are based on profile interests and search terms 3) Email Marketing Email offers a much more personal way of connecting with your targeted customers. It is a type of internet marketing that can truly make you stand out. You can offer exclusive ‘insider’ content, special discounts, and customized content to your email subscribers to make them feel special. The attractive bargains may also prompt non-subscribers to sign up for updates. By implementing the advanced techniques of email marketing, you don’t just help in driving more sales and conversions but also develop a sense of loyalty. This is one of those online marketing channels that lets you match your spending to individual clients and know where they stand in their purchasing cycle. However, your well-crafted and targeted email campaign could also end up in the spam folder. So, make sure that your program does not disregard spam laws. 4) Social Media Marketing Social media is one of the most powerful internet marketing channels today. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, etc. provide a space for dynamic two-way communication. Internet users spend most of their time in these online spaces. So, brands cannot miss the opportunity to grab more eyeballs and effectively need to promote their brands.
Users see promoted content based on their profile, interests, likes, and the content they share. The “everything to everyone” approach no longer works. Moreover, social media makes it possible for organizations to connect with prospects, answer their queries, and enter conversations! 5) Video Advertising Video advertising is one of the most entertaining and interactive online marketing channels. It includes online display ads that have a video within them. Such ads are also played before, during, or after a video stream. After watching the ad, the viewer usually sees a call to action to purchase that product or service or know more about it. With television advertising, there is no way to do such a thing! 6) Network Marketing Network marketing is an offshoot of the social media marketing that makes use of the associations and groups existing all over the internet. It is all about identifying a pool of influencers, wholesalers, or professionals who can tell your targeted audience about your business. You have to find a way to assemble such groups and keep them updated and engaged throughout your digital campaign. And your product may become the next web sensation with a positive word of mouth from them! 7) Contextual Marketing Contextual marketing is not just a form of advertising but also a brand image-building exercise. Here, the marketer intends to advance the business without being a stickler about the medium used. Companies can engage in this type of online marketing through guest blogging and purchasing blog reviews. The first step is identifying a platform with a significant overlapping audience and high-ranking pages. Follow this by promoting your content on the site to optimize your online presence. 8) Affiliate Marketing Online sellers can get other dealers to sell their products and services. This is called affiliate marketing, wherein one business offers another’s products as an add-on or deal package along with its own. The guidelines and prerequisites may be different for every seller. Affiliate marketing is quite similar to a commissioned sales job. 9) Content Marketing Content marketing is a way of aligning the content of your online advertising campaign in a way that it achieves all the key goals. These may include: Sharing: Is it getting exposure? Is it on its way to becoming ‘viral’ on the internet? Discussions: Is the campaign entering conversations? Is it getting people to talk?
Digital Marketing Strategy and Planning
Experts define digital marketing strategy as using online resources to reach the target customer. Identifying where, why, and how a company makes a profit is one of the building blocks of a digital marketing strategy. It helps formulate a marketing plan that aligns with the business goals and customer requirements. A brand has to evaluate owned, paid, and earned media while formulating a digital marketing strategy. While owned media consists of the organization’s communication channels, earned media and paid media are external communication channels.
Importance of Digital Marketing Strategy
- Competitive advantage over peers Digital marketing strategy helps businesses take over their business peers. It suggests ways to evoke creativity and innovation in product design, development, and promotion, eliminating competition.
- Staying relevant In the current business milieu, staying relevant is the number one priority of business organizations as it helps them (the company) to keep on top of new competition. Digital marketing strategy helps companies achieve that will the help of modern tools and techniques.
- Reaching a global audience Digital marketing channels connect brands to a global audience by giving them the medium and exposure required to expand their business.
Digital Marketing Strategy
1. Inbound marketing. Inbound marketing refers to the whole ecosystem of strategies, tools, and tactics that a marketer uses to convert a website visitor into a paying customer. It includes: ● Content marketing ● Email marketing ● Lead nurturing ● SEO ● Marketing automation ● Website optimization ● Website analytics. Inbound marketing is an overall approach to attracting, qualifying, nurturing, and delighting customers and prospects. It is not a one-off or something that is deployed quickly or temporarily; rather, it is focused on a long-term relationship with customers.
Why use inbound marketing? ● It's affordable. ● Trust and credibility ● Relationship focusses.
2. Content marketing. Content marketing is focused on answering people’s questions and truly helping them through content rather than interrupting them with unsolicited promotions. It includes content such as blog posts, landing pages, videos, podcasts, infographics, white papers, eBooks, case studies, and more. In most cases, content marketing has several goals. You may use it to: ● Increase brand awareness ● Improve brand loyalty ● Educate your target audience ● Convert and nurture leads. Savvy marketers create content that’s ideal for multiple user personas in all stages of the sales funnel. For example, a user who is unaware of your brand and found your website through organic search needs different content than a prospect who is almost ready to buy. You’ll need to understand your buyers' journeys and come up with unique content that addresses their needs every step of the way. Why use content marketing? ● Strong relationships with customers. ● Better SEO. ● **Increased brand authority.
- ABM.** Account based marketing (ABM) is a powerful B2B marketing strategy that targets specific accounts you select. It’s intended to help sales and marketing teams move prospects through the sales funnel quickly. With ABM, you target the accounts that are most important to you. Why use account-based marketing? ● Personalization. ● Collaboration. ● **Shorter sales cycles.
- SEO.**
Why use email marketing? ● Traffic to your website. ● Cost effective. ● Delivers targeted messages.
7. PPC advertising. Pay-per-click advertising or PPC is a strategy in which you (the advertiser) pay every time a user clicks on one of your online ads. It’s often done through Google Ads, Bing Ads, or other search engines, and it can be an effective way to reach people who are searching for terms related to your business. However, costs can range from relatively inexpensive, to thousands of dollars per month, depending on the size and scope of your campaign. And, when a campaign is discontinued, the traffic generated by that campaign is also discontinued. When users click on pay-per-click ads, they are directed to dedicated landing pages that encourage them to take a certain action: ● Make a purchase ● Complete a form ● Download a report, or similar. If you implement a PPC campaign, your primary goal will likely be to increase sales or leads. Why use PPC? ● Easy tracking. ● Controlled spend ● **Instant results.
- Video marketing.** Video used to promote your products, services, and brand may include product demos, interviews with thought leaders in your industry, customer testimonials, or how-to videos. You can add videos to your website, PPC landing pages, or social media outlets to encourage more conversions and sales. KPIs may include: ● Engagement. Time spent watching the video. ● View count. How many times it was watched. ● Click-through rate. How many users clicked through to the website. ● Conversion rate. Number of leads, prospects, or customers content generates.
Why use video marketing? ● Improved SEO. ● Increased conversion rates. ● Improved brand association.
9. Online (and in-person) events. There’s nothing like an event to create buzz around a product. Of course, trade shows have always been a thing, most notably the International CES tech show. But Apple redefined such events for an online audience with its series of high-profile iPhone and Mac launches throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, often watched by up to 1.8 million people. It’s unlikely you’ll reach such engagement levels, but there are nevertheless lessons to learn, whether you’re using an event to launch a product, service, or new business. Why use online events? ● Build anticipation. ● Showcase your product. ● **Stimulate conversation
- Chatbot and live chat marketing.** Chatbots and messaging apps have become more common in the past decade and are now seen as a valuable marketing, as well as customer service, tool. Some 1.4 billion people who use messaging apps are happy to speak with chatbots[1]. Brands use chatbots to: ● Deal with customer complaints ● Answer questions about products ● Promote live events But despite these different uses it’s worth considering research from chatbot platform Drift. It says the number one predicted use for a chatbot is ‘getting a quick answer in an emergency[2] so perhaps keep your chatbots simple. Why use chatbots? ● Provide quick answers ● Enhance customer experience ● **Sell your products.
- Earned media.** Put simply, earned media is coverage of your business, products or events written by a third party and which you have not paid for. In digital marketing, it’s best described as PR which you outreach to the
- Prioritize whether to generate online sales, create source of targeted sales, built brand awareness. 5)know how you’re doing:
- Everything that happens digitally can be tracked and compare the progress against predefined goals.
Setting goals:
- Goals tend to be long term and therefore set out the underlying elements of your vision.
- Goals need to be structured to meet a set of criteria. The 4 Rs: ● Relevant: does it fit with your vision? ● Resonating: does it fit with your business’s values and goals? ● Responsive: is it adaptable and flexible so that it can change if needed? ● Recognizable: is it easily understandable?
- Goals should focus on the key aims of your strategy and fit with the strategic pillars of your business.
- They also need to be integrated so that they fit together without any conflicting elements.
- Each goal will have objectives, strategies and action plans. Some example goals are: ● increase sales; ● improve profitability; ● provide best-in-class customer service; ● deliver a world-class digital experience; ● hire the best talent; ● become the thought leader; ● gain market share.
Objectives:
- Objectives are specific, quantifiable and time-based. They are the steps or milestones that you need to take towards meeting your ultimate goal.
- Many businesses use a SMART approach to creating objectives. 1)Specific : The 5 W’s Who: who will be involved in achieving the action plan? Where: is a specific location involved? What: what exactly needs to be achieved? Why: what is this action plan going to achieve? When: what is the deadline and any milestones along the way? 2) Measurable:
- there is a clear measure so that everyone involved knows when the action plan has been hit and there is no confusion.
- This also allows you to understand how much progress you are making towards meeting your action plan. 3)Attainable:
- setting action plans that are realistic is very important.
- If action plans are not attainable then you can never meet them, which ultimately means you can never reach your goals.
- The key metrics such as conversion rates, engagement rates and response rates are need to review historic performance.
- Also need to consider known macro factors such as seasonal changes, competition and regulation.
Resource allocation:
- Resource allocation in digital marketing refers to the distribution of budget, time, and personnel to achieve marketing goals effectively. Resource is very important for delivering plans.
- It should be flexible and adaptive to changing market conditions and the evolving needs of your business.
- Allocate team's time to manage and monitor your digital marketing efforts.
- Allocate resources for staff training and development if needed. Ensure to have the right team in place with the necessary skills and expertise.
- Allocate funds to different channels and campaigns based on their potential impact and your objectives.
- Prioritize high-impact areas such as paid advertising (Google Ads, social media advertising), content marketing, SEO, and email marketing.
- Allocate resources to the channels that align with the target audience's preferences and behaviour.
- Allocate resources to create high-quality and relevant content for your target audience.
