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.

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