By Mashum Mollah
Digital marketing is the phrase to be heard in every organization. What is it exactly? Digital marketing is a form of advertising through digital channels such as social media, mobile applications, emails, search engines, websites, or any digital platform. Simple!
Why is Digital Marketing?
The answer is, why is marketing? Marketing is to connect with potential customers to sell products and services. Where are potential customers? Undoubtedly, they are on digital platforms. Thus, digital marketing is the crux to simplify the road map, from a product to the consumer.
It is a substitute for traditional marketing methods like billboards. Google and Facebook are its two core strengths. As they are generating more revenues, the digital marketing industry is also growing at the same pace.
Two pillars of digital marketing-
1. Online marketing:
Online marketing means using the internet for marketing opportunities like targeting audience, lead generation, lead nurturing, and conversions.
Seven aspects of online marketing:
i. Search engine optimization-
Millions of people are sharing millions of posts every day. Can a reader read all of them? How can he know what is best and what is vague? And If a user is confused, Google is of no value. Agree?
Here comes SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization, ranking the valuable content high on the search engine organically. It is the process of optimizing online content with specific keywords, backlinking, and other on-page and off-page techniques.
It acts to furnish the content and the web page to display the business value on the first page when someone searches with a specific business-related keyword.
ii. Search Engine Marketing-
When the organic traffic attracted by SEO doesn’t seem sufficient, and you need faster results, Search Engine Marketing comes in handy. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is typically described with paid search activities.
It is used to enhance the visibility in search engine result pages with paid search methods.
iii. Content marketing-
Content marketing stands for developing and amplifying informational content to digital platforms in ebooks, blogs, infographics, videos, images, and whitepapers. Content marketing is performed to create awareness and interest in the targeted audience. It helps marketers to engage with them through multiple platforms. According to Richard Bishara, content marketing is an inseparable part of digital marketing.
iv. Email marketing-
A solid email marketing strategy is a cost-effective way to educate a large audience base. It is primarily focused on nurturing leads, developing a relationship, and converting them into customers.
v. Social media marketing-
As social media platforms are powerful, their marketing is so. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Snapchat are the leading platforms to build brand authority, establish a connection with new people, and improve credibility with existing customers.
vi. Pay-Per-Click Advertising-
When advertisers pay each time the ad is clicked, it is called PPC marketing. It allows advertisers to place ads on sponsored links when someone searches for a specific keyword. Google AdWords is the most popular platform for PPC advertising.
vii. Affiliate marketing-
When a third party person brings a visitor to someone’s website or a customer for a product purchase, the business pay commission to the affiliate, it is called affiliate marketing. Affiliates use multiple advertising methods, including SEO, PPC, SEM, email marketing, and content marketing, to bring more customers.
2. Offline marketing-
Offline marketing methods are general and not much in demand. As they are self-explanatory, here is the list:
- Television marketing
- Phone marketing
- Electronic billboards
- Recorded videos
- Calling and texting
After understanding the core pillars of digital marketing, marketing planning needs strategies and goals to prepare a plan.
Step by step digital marketing plan:
1. Digital marketing results majorly depend on the clarity of customer persona and market analysis. First, understand the market, competition, customer segment, customer needs, and marketing environment.
2. Set digital marketing objectives, predicted challenges, resources, activities, tactics, budget, and KPIs. Marketing objectives can include the number of followers, leads, and conversions. Actions and resources can be answering the questions like who would be handling what for how much time and at what cost? The budget outlines the expenditure on marketing operations, content production, and personnel.
The defined strategy clears the fog to keep the vehicle at high speed as Richard Bishara does and gets successful results.
3. Mark the calendar with campaigns.
A basic example of a digital marketing campaign:
Create a website. Integrate an e-book with it. Use Google AdWords, Facebook ads, and social media platforms to market the ebook. The more people register, the more leads you get. Analyze the data and streamline the email marketing campaign. Create content for all levels of buyer journey and regularly share through emails.
Meanwhile, start a blog, video section, and SEO campaign to improve search rankings. Within some days of sharing value and building credibility, send a sales message to leads with a call to action. Measure the conversions.
Also, analyze the operations, align them with digital marketing trends, and make changes for more productive results of your next campaign.
Digital Marketing Team Management:
It would help if you had a functional organization for digital Marketing team management. Specialists like digital marketing executives such as Richard Bishara, social media managers, SEO analysts, copywriters, client delivery managers, graphic designers, software/website developers, and content managers head the plan. The business team creates a product management structure, and the marketing team builds a customer management structure. The teams collaborate to keep track of campaigns’ performance, customer engagement, and operational management.
Important metrics to track:
1. Measure the total visits of new or existing customers to your website or landing pages.
2. Determine and track the conversion rate, which means customers, subscribers, or resource downloaders after a campaign.
3. Check the cost per conversion (CPC). Suppose 1000 people out of 10000 converted from your campaign. The per-person price you spent on 1000 conversions is the divide of the total paid amount with the number of conversions.
4. Not only CPC but also check the Cost of Customer Acquisition (CCA). CCA is the essential metric to track exact profit. You divide the total amount spent on marketing by the number of customers you acquired. The result would be the cost you spent on acquiring each customer.
