Digital Marketing Agency – The complete structure
Digital Marketing – The complete structure: Digital marketing as the name suggests is marketing your products and services on the digital platforms. The digital platforms include websites, search engines, email, social media, mobile applications and many more. It has a wide range starting from any electronic device to the internet. It involves employing tactics that allow an organization to engage with the users across various platforms. This is done where people spend most of their time: online. At its core, digital marketing is essentially promoting brands and products on more than one form of electronic media. With a wide variety of medium like online brochures, email marketing, forums etc. there is no limit to digital marketing.
Digital marketing is a must for any business be it small scale or large scale. With such a vast online population, your products are bound to reach every corner of the world. And that’s not it, according to a recent survey in 2017, the percentage of online adult users has gone up by 5% in the past 3 years. Smartphones have definitely helped in widening the boundaries. Any user with a basic internet has access to millions of products and services all around the world. Keeping that in mind, there is no better way to advertise your business to the masses. The days of traditional marketing are well behind us. Although it still has a part to play in reaching out to offline media, it alone can take your company nowhere. It is important that you recognize the world is evolving and so should you.
It not only allows you to sell your products better but, you can get to know the traits of your customers. What they like, what they don’t. Serving a customer in need will always be beneficial to both parties, the customer getting what he desperately needs and the organization making profits and building trust. This can only be possible if you have an insight into the customer ’s thoughts, which is exactly what digital marketing offers. It helps you build valuable relationships with the customers keeping them locked to your company. Eventually, they become your loyal supporters spreading the word for you, building your brand. Every big organization you know today has started from the bottom, building values and communities and through a gradual progression, they are where they are today. With the advent of the internet, this progression is rather quick. When I say quick, you still have to be patient. After all, Success doesn’t happen overnight even with the rapid-paced internet.
We take a look at some of the effective digital marketing platforms that take your business to the next level
- Websites
Most of the users prefer discovering the content from a website rather than AdWords or any other form of advertising. It is more reliable and fills the potential customer with confidence. Websites are probably the most used form of digital marketing because of their informative nature. Your website can stand as a representative point for your brand. A good website can turn potential into prospects.
If you are starting out, the website helps you to size up your target audience and tailor your marketing campaigns based on that. Moreover, it is relatively cheap to buy a the domain of your choice. It acts as a source for all of your other advertising. The way you
customize your website can tell a story to any visitor and it is up to you to make sure that the story is a good one. Employing
SEO techniques to build your website can greatly help in on the ranking front. Having said that, your sole priority shouldn’t be just about increasing your rankings. Your website should be informative, pleasant and precise. Optimizing the website can increase in
conversion rates. Here are a few things you could address to have a better website
- Visual media
- Background colors
- Positioning of forms
- Homepage
- Landing page
- Headlines and titles
- Styling and fonts
A Website can act as the conversion point for your business. Having a quality website that best represents your brand should be a priority.
- Social Media
Over the last decade and a bit, social media has grown leaps and bounds scaling unimaginable heights. It has a whopping 3.196 billion users raising 13% from the previous years. It is basically half of the earth’s population. With the sheer numbers and its reachability, social media is the most powerful tool of digital marketing. The main contributors to social media include Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp etc. just to name a few.
The best thing about social media is undoubtedly it’s reachability. With little to no cost, you can get your message across the oceans and continents within the snap of your finger. The scary thing is, it is still growing. Millions of people signup to these apps every single day. Age is just a number here. Anyone can scroll the feed on Facebook, browse videos from YouTube or check out the pictures on Instagram. Anyone can do that, anyone, with the basic internet.
How do you use something so powerful to market your products?
Well, the answer lies in the question itself. It is powerful so, capitalize. Due to its cost-effective nature, it is easy to advertise your products. Because of the sheer number of people present online, the reachability and visibility are under no threat. Social media can help build communities across the various platforms. The time it takes to sketch a plan and implement it is also relatively less compared to other digital marketing platforms. Even if the marketing campaign doesn’t go to plan, you’ve got nothing to lose as the investment you make is very little. Even in social media, knowing your target audience is vitally important. You can’t just go advertising anything and everything on all the platforms. There’s a place for everything. Timing is also crucial. Knowing the rush-hours of social media can help you release the products at the correct times.
You can engage with the customers. Make conversations, respond to queries. Your profile can basically serve as an online customer support. One of the most significant things you can do is, ask questions. By asking questions, you will get to know the feedback and act on it. Comments are also a great way of reaching out to the customers.
Below are some of the effective ways to build your social media profile
- Schedule your posts
- Use hashtags for discovery
- Build communities
- Ask for feedback
- Represent your brand
- Hire brand advocates
- Post regularly
- Engage with the customers
When done right, social media alone can drive your business. Such is it’s prowess. Choosing your platforms on social media can be tricky. Here is a guide to it
- Facebook can be used to advertise pretty much everything. Being the most popular of the social media, it can attract attention towards anything. You can use this as your primary marketing campaign.
- Twitter can be used to answer queries. Due to it’s restricted character limit, it is not possible to give an in-depth product description.
- Instagram and Snapchat can be used to share pictures. Because of their visually rich nature, they are bound to give views and attention to crafty work.
- YouTube is your place if your target audience is into watching videos. It is one of the most effective ways to advertise as millions of people are on YouTube.
These are the big guns when it comes to social media. There are several other platforms like LinkedIn, Pinterest, messenger etc. you could make your mark on.
- Email marketing
The directness and criticality of an email makes it one of the most prudent ways of digital marketing. It has been around for 20 years and it is going nowhere any time soon. The simple fact that customers care about their emails makes this an effective medium. To top it off, the speed at which emails get delivered is unprecedented. Just because it is easy to compose and deliver an email, it cannot be taken for granted. There’s a lot of fine tuning that needs to happen. Attention to detail is key as there is not much going on in an email. The email you compose must be engaging, informative, relevant and should convey the need. It can be personal or to a group of people based on the requirement. Every message you exchange with the client is email marketing in it’s sense. An email can be sent for advertisements, business requests, sales or donations. Whatever the purpose is, it is all done in an attempt to raise brand awareness, build trust and loyalty. Emails can vary from the existing customers to potential new ones. They can be used to improve relationships, encourage queries, remarketing and lead the current customers into a profitable action.
Digging into the history of emails, the first ever email sent in 1978 by the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) to approximately 400 clients resulted in $13 million worth sales of DEC products. Even in it’s early stages, it has always showed potential to be a gamechanger in the world of digital marketing. From a customer’s point of view, because of its direct nature, it feels like a one-on-one chat with the marketer allowing him to get an in-sight into the products or services. Email marketing excels in being able to find out the effectiveness of the campaign run. It takes into account the details of communication, feedback and the level of customer satisfaction. It does all of this in real time. It has an upper hand over television marketing when it come to this.
Emails can be primarily of three types
These are the mails that correspond to customer’s action with a company. Customer initiates the action. The basic purpose of this email is to facilitate the customer with any information, complete the action or confirm an action. They include password reset emails, order confirmation mails, order status mails, receipts etc.
Their sole purpose is to convey a promotional message. It could be anything like an offer, promo code, end of sale etc. The companies normally have a list of emails to send direct mails to.
A large chunk of email traffic if from mobiles and tablets. Special focus is on these users to make them view the advertisements for longer periods of time. Although it is still a process very much in the making, it could be implemented to great effects. The emails can be personalized based on the recipient’s behaviour tracking their previous activities.
Some of the advantages of email marketing
- Cost-effective
- Direct & specific
- ROI is high
- Ability to track the extent of success
- Widely used
- ESP can be used
- Higher response rate
- Clients check emails on a day to day basis
Email Service Provider (ESP) can be used to collect information about the recipient behavior in organizations who typically send a large volume of emails. This information can be used to tailor the emails as per the customer.
- Content marketing
It is creating content relative to the company’s products and services in an attempt to market them on the internet.
Content marketing can increase brand awareness as per, growth in traffic, lead generation and customers. It can be employed to enlarge the customer base, increase the number of online sales, build credibility and engage with the online communities.
It is a great way of generating leads and turning leads into customers. A few bits of information can be shared for free to build trust and relationships. It can act as a source for customers to come back in the future for more purchases or even refer to other people. This form of digital marketing is not about driving in direct sales rather it is about trust and credibility that makes a customer visit a multiple number of times. This is more about quality than quantity.
As the word goes “ You get what you give” in terms of content marketing you get more than what you give. Giving is as important as what you give to the customer, if you give a piece of information that he is already aware of, that takes you nowhere. Find his need, try and fulfill the need. I’m not suggesting give products away for free. Give a guide to those products. It’s a strategy to pull the customers back for more. It’s a win-win situation as both the customer and the marketer go home happy.
Here’s why you need content marketing
- Brand visibility
- Builds relationships with the audience
- Loyalty and trust
- Brand recognition
- Credibility
The content can’t go bland. With the ever-evolving world around us, it is optimum your content keeps pace as well.
- Paid search
Paid search is yielding results by paying them. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a form of advertising where the marketer pays the search engines in order that his keywords are ranked high on the search engine rankings. It happens through the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.
Every time one of the ads is clicked, the advertiser has to pay a certain amount of money to the search engine. The money is entirely subjective, it could vary from product to product or search engine to search engine. It is essentially busying traffic instead of earning it.
The ads are not guaranteed to be at the top of the rankings just because you pay for the clicks. It is an automated process where Google determines the relevancy of one’s ads based on the information they provide. For instance, Google prefers it when you specify the shirt size, color, brand, type, category etc. ranking it higher than your competitors who don’t specify the peripheral details. Bidding takes place to attain the desired keywords with which the ads can be displayed. The marketer makes a payment every time one of his ads is clicked.
Digital marketing with all the aforementioned platforms is raising its level every passing day. This is only going one way. Some of the advantages of digital marketing are
- Cost effective: Digital marketing is cost effective compared to traditional marketing. Small businesses cannot afford printed media that’s where digital marketing comes in offering online services with relatively little cost.
- It is for everybody: The old popular belief of marketing is only for well-established companies is no longer pertinent as small companies have as much chance of advertising their products and services online as the multi-national organizations.
- Conversion rates: With the rapid rise of digital marketing, the conversion rates have never been higher. At the end of the day, everybody does business for the profits. Conversion rates help bring profit.
- Interaction with the audience: Engaging the audience, giving them a sense of belonging is vitally important. The social media, in particular, does that better than anything else.
- Knowing target audience: Digital marketing prides itself in being able to market the products where they will be most successful. This can only be possible if you know your target audience.
- Brand reputation: Digital marketing cares about your brand and the values it brings. Without taking the authenticity away, it can cater services that best represent your company.
In short, digital marketing has revolutionized the way marketing is done. As in olden days, it was all about creating the products and using the printed media for advertising those products. Digital marketing provides unbelievable exposure to your products and services taking them where people are most present: online.
http://www.sanbrains.com/services-reputation-management/
