Digital Marketing, Its Benefits & Usefulness in P R
The expression " Digital Marketing" is widely in use now days as every 2nd person is either talking about the term or is involved in using digital marketing tools for self or client's promotion. Some people say that digital marketing is any kind of marketing that uses electronic devises. Others say it is Internet-based marketing.
This blog tries to explore the idiom “Digital Marketing”, its’
history, and some of the foremost digital marketing tools that are used in PR
today i.e. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Social
Media Marketing (SMM) and Social Media Optimization (SMO).
Definition of Marketing
The
traditional definition of marketing which was released by the American
Marketing Association in 1985 states that:-
“Marketing
is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and
distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy
individual and organisational objectives”. This definition suggests that the
parties involved must have something of value to offer to the other party and
must have the desire and ability to give it up and find a way to communicate
with one another.
In
2004, the definition of Marketing was revised to reflect these changes:
“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions and processes for creating,
communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for
customers, clients, partners, and society at large”. Creating, Communicating,
and Delivering Value is thus the current focus.
Marketing
is regarded as an integrated process through which companies create value for
customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value for
customers in return.
History of Digital Marketing
There are those who say that the first digital
marketer was Guglielmo
Marconi, because he
invented the radio. Other claim is that the era of digital marketing launched
in 1971 when Ray Tomlinson sent the
first email to himself, because nobody else was on email back then. However,
the term Digital Marketing was first
used in the 1990s. The digital age took off
with the coming of the internet and the development of the Web 1.0 platform.
As users increased, the landscape evolved, from email to search engines like Yahoo (April 1994) and
Google (September1998) and e-commerce sites like Amazon (Founded 1994) and eBay
(Founded 1995). Email became a new outbound marketing tool, as Hotmail
launched first free web-based email service (July1996), followed by Yahoo Mail
(October 1997) and Gmail (April 2004) joining the traditional media platforms
for promotion and advertising i.e. television, radio, print and outdoor.
Digital Marketing (Wikipedia)
Digital marketing is the
component of marketing that utilizes internet and online
based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile
phones and other digital media and platforms to promote
products and services.
Understand Digital Marketing
Digital
marketing is a set of tools and methodologies used for promoting products and
services through the internet. Digital marketing includes a wider range of
marketing elements than traditional business marketing due to the extra channels
and marketing mechanisms available on the internet.
Digital
Marketing incorporates the Art & Science of selling services and products
on the web. The art of Digital Marketing revolves around finding the right
Digital Marketing Strategies that suit your target market, generate leads and
translate into sales. Digital Marketing
involves research and analysis that guide in channelizing the best Digital
Marketing Campaigns and measuring the success of those campaigns.
Digital
marketing is also known as internet marketing, web marketing, online marketing
and search engine marketing (SEM). Digital marketing connects organizations
with qualified potential customers and takes business development to a much
higher level than traditional marketing. Now days the popularity of digital
marketing is beyond compare and soon this phenomenon will fully overcome the
traditional marketing.
Benefits of Digital Marketing
Impact measurement: one of the key benefits of using digital
channels for marketing a business or product is the ability to measure the
impact of any given channel, as well as how visitors acquired through different
channels interact with a website or landing page experience.
Analysis:
analysis can be done of the
visitors that are converted into paying customers to determine which channels
are most effective at acquiring valuable customers.
Low cost: Large
audiences are reachable at a fraction of traditional advertising budgets,
allowing businesses to create appealing consumer ads.
Flexibility & convenience: Consumers may research and purchase products
and services at their leisure.
Analytics: Efficient
statistical results are facilitated without extra costs.
Multiple options: Advertising tools include pay-per-click
advertising, email marketing and local search integration (like Google Maps).
Demographic targeting: Consumers can be demographically targeted much
more effectively in an online rather than an offline process.
Digital Marketing Tools
There
are a number of tools that can be used to build and maintain a robust Digital
marketing program:-
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social Media Optimization (SMO)
Email Marketing
Display Advertising
Content Marketing
Influencer Marketing
E-Commerce Marketing
Video Marketing
Webinars
Website Optimization
A/B Testing
Marketing Analytics
Marketing Automation
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and;
Content Management System (CMS)
Understand Search Engine Optimization
(SEO)
Search
Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing
the quantity and quality of traffic to a website
through organic search engine results. Search engine optimization (SEO) is
the process of optimizing the online content so that a search engine likes to
show it as a top result for searches of a certain keyword.
Search
engine optimization (SEO) is the art and science of getting pages to rank higher
in search engines such as Google. Through “Search” people discover content
online. Ranking higher in search engines can lead to an increase in traffic to
a website. In Google and other search engines, the results page often features
paid ads at the top of the page, followed by the regular results.
Traffic
that comes via SEO is referred to as “Organic Search Traffic" to
differentiate it from traffic that comes through paid search. Paid search is
often referred to as Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC). Through
“Search” people discover content online. Ranking higher in search engines can
lead to an increase in traffic to a website.
In
Google and other search engines, the results page often features paid ads at
the top of the page, followed by the regular results. Traffic that comes via
SEO is referred to as “Organic Search Traffic" to differentiate it from
traffic that comes through paid search. Paid search is often referred to as
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC).
Benefits of SEO
Search
engine optimization is a key part of online marketing because search
is one of the primary ways that users navigate the web. For most websites,
traffic that comes from search engines, known as "natural" or
"organic" traffic, accounts for a large portion of their total
traffic. Search results are presented in an ordered list, and the higher up on
that list a site can get, the more traffic the site will tend to receive.
For example, for a typical search query, the
number one result will receive 40-60% of the total traffic for that query, with
the number two and three results receiving significantly less traffic. Only
2-3% of searchers click beyond the first page of search results. Thus, even a small improvement in search
engine rankings can result in a website receiving more traffic and potentially
business.
Because
of this, many businesses and website owners will try to manipulate the search
results so that their site shows up higher on the search results page (SERP)
than their competitors. This is where SEO comes in.
Understand Search Engine Marketing
(SEM)
Search
Engine Marketing (SEM) is a marketing tactic where a marketer optimizes and
advertises their website in order to appear higher in search results. Search
Engine Marketing (SEM) is a digital marketing strategy used to increase the
visibility of a website in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). While the
industry term once referred to both organic search activities such
as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and paid, it now refers almost
exclusively to paid search advertising. Search Engine Marketing is also
alternately referred to as Paid Search or Pay Per Click (PPC).
Today,
SEM has become Important because with an increasing number of consumers
researching and shopping for products online, search engine marketing has
become a crucial online marketing strategy for increasing a company’s reach. In
fact, the majority of new visitors to a website find it by performing a query
on a search engine. In search engine marketing, advertisers only pay for
impressions that result in visitors, making it an efficient way for a company
to spend its marketing budget wisely.
As
an added bonus, each visitor incrementally improves the website’s rankings in
organic search results. Since consumers enter search queries with the intent of
finding information of a commercial nature, they are in an excellent state of
mind to make a purchase, compared to other sites such as social media where
users are not explicitly searching for something.
Search
marketing reaches consumers at exactly the right time: when they are open to
new information. Unlike the majority of digital advertising, PPC advertising is
non-intrusive, does not interrupt their tasks with immediate results and is
arguably the fastest way to drive traffic to a website. Keywords are everything
for SEM, just as they are for SEO. When we run SEM campaigns, we choose
keywords that determine which ads will show up on which searches.
As a result,
in-depth keyword research is the key to running a successful Search Engine
Marketing Campaign. If we don’t run our on-line marketing campaigns targeting
the exact right terms or keywords, we will miss our target audience.
Benefits of Search Engine Marketing
Generate Highly Qualified Traffic:
SEM speed up the flow of target traffic &
get the interested target users to your website from the beginning.
Generate visibility:
Appearing in the top positions of search
engines, even if the user does not click, makes the brand seen and to be associated with a specific requirement
of the visitor.
Generate conversions:
The end goal of SEM is to improve marketing
results by converting clicks in to sales.
Get the most out of our budget:
SEM is a suitable solution for companies of
all sizes and investment is affordable. If the brand is growing, one can
increase the investment & the complexity of the marketing campaigns to keep
growing.
Get measurable results & follow up in real time:
SEM solutions i.e. Google Ads provide us with
a large number of metrics on campaigns & allow us to know what is happening
at all times so one can correct the course to get better results.
Understand Social Media Marketing
(SMM)
Social
Media Marketing (SMM) is a form of Internet marketing that utilizes social
networking websites as a marketing tool. SMM provides companies with
a way to reach new customers, engage with existing customers, and promote their
desired culture, mission, or products and services on social media websites. The objective of SMM is to produce content
that users will share with their social network to help a company increase
brand exposure and broaden customer reach.
SMM
is the action of creating content to promote the business and products on
various social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram,
Pinterest, MySpace, and YouTube. Marketing message or content should be
tailored keeping in view the specific social media platform it’s being shared
on to increase conversions and enhance brand awareness. SMM is all about
meeting the target audience and customers where they are and as they socially
interact with each other and the brand.
SMM
helps a company get a direct feedback from existing as well as potential
customers while making the company seem more personable. The interactive parts
of social media give customers the opportunity to ask questions or voice
complaints and feel they are being heard and is called Social Customer
Relationship Management (SCRM).
Social
media websites allow marketers to employ a broad range of tactics and
strategies to promote content and have people engage with it. Many social
networks allow users to provide detailed geographical, demographic, and
personal information, which will enable marketers to tailor their messages to
what is most likely to resonate with users. Because Internet audiences can be better
segmented than more traditional marketing channels, companies can ensure that
they are focusing their resources on the audience that they want to target.
SMM
Campaigns have the advantage of appealing to a broad audience at once e.g. the
campaign could appeal to current and prospective customers, employees,
bloggers, the media, the general public, and other stakeholders i.e.
third-party reviewers or trade groups. SMM strategy involves the creation of
content that attracts user’s attention and increase the possibility that he or
she will conduct a desired action, such as purchase a product or share the
content with others.
SMM
content should be designed in such a way that it could be spread between users,
their family, friends, and coworkers instantly. While SMM is very beneficial to
the overall growth of any business today, but the SMM strategy will differ
based on which social networks our audience spends their maximum time each
day. Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to connect
with the target audience to build the brand, increase sales, and drive website
traffic. This involves publishing great content on the social media profiles,
listening to and engaging the followers, analyzing the results, and running
social media advertisements.
Understand Social Media Optimization
(SMO)
Social
Media Optimization (SMO) is a marketing discipline that emphasizes a
holistic approach to social media and website content management. The term
Social Media Optimization (SMO) was first used in year 2006 by Sh. Rohit
Bhargava in his article the ”5 rules of Social Media Optimization” as the
core focus was driving traffic to websites from social sites.
In
general, SMO refers to optimizing a website and its content in terms of sharing
across social media and networking sites”. SMO is used to drive traffic from
social media sites to a website or to raise awareness of a product, a
promotion, or an event. Due to its close ties to websites and Search Engine
Optimization, SMO is often defined to include efforts to improve a website’s
social media effectiveness through the use of techniques such as “Content
Optimization” and “Social Sharing”.
“Content
Optimization” is the process of making sure content is written
in a way that it can reach the largest possible target audience. The process
of optimizing content should include making sure associated keywords
are present, adding the title tags, and relevant links. SMO bridges the gap
between our website and our social presence on
Facebook-Twitter-LinkedIn-Instagram-Pinterest whatever accounts, making us more
visible on the web, and giving our audience more ways to connect and interact
with us.
Social
Media Optimization (SMO) is the process of optimizing our website to make it
more “sociable.” In other words, SMO makes it easier for our business to get
discovered online by all the right people. That’s why SMO is sometimes called “search
marketing optimization”. SMO enhances a company's presence and online
reputation through interactive communities and social media networks.
Implementing
the right SMO strategy comes with benefits which include: generating leads,
increasing sales, building consumer trust, and staying in the forefront of a
customer's mind. When done right, SMO keeps the brand messaging consistent
across all networks, improves site rankings on search, drives traffic from
social sites and organic search, and boosts awareness of the brand.
While
working on the SMO strategy, you should compare your target audience i.e.
the particular group at which your service or product is aimed and customer
personas to social media audiences. In general, here are the focus points of
the main social networks:
Facebook: Social Life and Social Networking
LinkedIn: Business Oriented Posts and
Discussions
Twitter: Generating Discussions
Instagram: Sharing Photographic Snippets of
Life
Pinterest: Encouraging Crafting, Lifestyle,
and Purchasing
Points to be remembered while working
on a SMO strategy
Create
Shareable Content
Share ability is
the content's potential to be shared or transmitted by a third party. Creating shareable content sounds easy, but
you never know what is going to take off on social media. Some reasons
content will be shareable to a user on social media include: entertainment,
practical value, a cause or belief, incentive, and interest. A good way to start sharing the content is to
look at target personal social media accounts to determine what content you
consider to be shareable.
Engaging
Online Influencers
Think
about the people on social media who can influence your target audience on
social media to drive sales for your brand, product or the services. If you happen to know any online
influencer(s), request them to post about your brand, product or service, of
course for a fee. And, If the marketing budget permits, you can also appoint a
brand ambassador for social media
promotions.
Thanks
for reading the BLOG.
Please
do leave your comments at the bottom of BLOG in “Comments Column”.
Well researched and well presented. It gives a rare insight in the field of Digital Marketing.
ReplyDeleteExcellent blog with impressive and worth reading contents. Well done Mr Suresh.
ReplyDeleteVery elaborative content and easy to understand because of detailed descriptions.
ReplyDeleteAcademically informative and beneficial for students of Marketing Management, specially who are in digital marketingš
ReplyDeleteVery well explained. Elaborate and informative blog. Good work Suresh ji
ReplyDeleteExcellent
ReplyDeleteWell-researched blog with detailed description makes it easy to understand . Digital Marketing is going to be the norm in the coming days of social distancing. It is an excellent reading for the students of Marketing Research/Digital Marketing.
ReplyDeleteThe concept of marketing encompasses several aspects starting from the idea of doing something till customer satisfaction. Congrats Suresh Ji, Nicely written.
ReplyDelete