Digital Marketing - Understanding the basics
Digital & Marketing: where did those fancy words came from?
Let’s start with some history ⏪
We can trace the origin of Dital back to the mid-15c., from Latin digitalis, which is derivate from digitus “finger or toe”. While The sense of marketing can be related to how contents is promoted.
It’s said that the first experiment of “digital marketing” happened in 1910? Yeah more than a century ago. Don’t worry, we are not talking about so called ancient technology. In fact: The birth of public radio broadcasting is credited to Lee de Forest who transmitted the world’s first public broadcast in New York City on January 13, 1910. His goal was a first to promote musical programs.
Today, we can link the term digital and marketing mainly because of the fact that thanks to the develop of traditional computers who at first were only machines computing data in the form of digits. Yep it didn’t have anything to do with the internet, it was only related to the marketing through electronic devices…I mean back in the days.
Digital marketing 101: How does it work?
Nobody wants to spend money, time and energy without getting results. Digital marketing can be quite costly even if you do everything by yourself. That’s why you should focus on creating value for your customers, at least thanks to their feedback, you will be able to rethink your business processes. The reason why digital marketing is trendy right now is because most of the times, it tools have the means to show some sorts of analytics. Don’t worry, the range of digital marketing tools you can use is wiiide but we’ll list sort them into 2 groups: offline digital marketing tools and online digital marketing tools.
Offline digital marketing tools
Electronic billboards – vivid contents
SMS - reach your customers where they spend most of their time
Cold Call – direct voice call to create contact
Networking - Create a deeper sense of brand loyalty among your buyers with an old-fashioned handshake
TV Marketing – People still use TV so, why should you neglect being invested in a shopping or any form of informative TV program?
Online digital marketing tools
Search engine optimization/advertisement (SEO/SEM) – SEO and SEM is a way of optimizing and promoting your content so that it ranks higher in search engine results pages in order to you drive traffic to your website.
Content marketing – Content marketing involves content creation and distribution across all your online channels such as your blog, website, or social media. The content you create is not meant to be promotional but instead, stimulate interest and ultimately, improve brand awareness.
Social Media – Creating a community around your brands, products or ideas is a powerful way to build loyal audience. The most used social media in 2020 to look for are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn.
Affiliate marketing – As it is said in French “les amis de mes amis sont me amis” (the friends of my friends are my friends). The purpose is to generate traffic and sales through referrals.
Email – It is a type of direct marketing that uses emails to deliver marketing messages to its audience.
Website – This is your online office, it’s more powerful than social media because access is not limited to a specific platform and according to ITU, more than 4 billion people spend 25 hours/week online.
Digital marketing strategies that work!
Step 1: how to know if your digital marketing strategy works?
It is cost-effective
If you use online digital marketing, to advertise online, whether on social media, websites, or search engines, you set your budget and bid for ad space. After that, the tools you use generally offer you the possibility to receive reports showing your reach and how many people interacted with your contents.
Market-oriented: tailored solution
It is soooooooo easy to create personalized contents when you are able to collect customers’ data such as:
Name
Age
Location
Interests
Marital status
Hobbies
Device
For real, did you remember how it felt good when you received a special discount either by email or sms the day of your birthday? Mobile phones providers are even using this strategy more than ever. Creating a personalized experience for users, whether via your email marketing campaign or website, can lead to better marketing results. An email that recommends products based on a subscriber’s past purchase behavior, for example, can lead to another sale and even a word-of-mouth recommendation.
Tracking and measure success
The time when companies printed billions of flyers that they could not even distribute properly is almost over. Why? Because people look for more transparency when they spend money, it created incentives to develop success tracking records. When you can’t track your marketing efforts, you can’t measure their performance, which makes it challenging to prove marketing’s worth. Tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Ads make monitoring your strategy easy. With Google Analytics, for example, you can track website traffic, user behavior, and website conversions. Wonderful right? How about the new app like Google Data Studio to compile all your digital marketing data into easy-to-read and easy-to-share reports.
Step 2: How to create digital marketing strategies that work?
Ok, now you know the definition of digital marketing, but how does digital marketing work on the field? Online marketing works by developing a coordinated, omni-channel strategy that supports your target audience’s unique buying journey. That means your business uses multiple channels, like social, email, and search, to support an overarching strategy, like generating brand awareness, leads, or sales.
Let’s make it simple ok? We’ll help you organize your data and turn them into business insights. Don’t worry it’s fine even if you only have an idea and not a real business. It’s free and pretty easy if you just fill the form below:
2 Wonderful digital marketing strategies
Content marketing
Have you ever come across people who says “I’ll do it by myself even if I don’t have expertise” or those who says “it’s too expensive, I don’t know what you do but Ill handle it myself.” The common ground of those 2 categories or person is that they prefer to do it themselves so it’s diiiiiiiifficult to sell them your expertise even if you have the best credentials. That’s usually because they did not have enough exposure with the real benefits of the products you’re developing (by the way, what you are doing, someone else is doing it…so you are in an industry, even if you are innovating in your own way).
Content marketing should fit your need. Because its focus is the way brands used content developed by them to market to consumers. Rather than traditional methods like commercials, print advertising, or billboards, content marketing relied on magazines, blogs, and books to introduce customers to companies.
Inbound marketing
Here we’ll take another example: “we are so bombarded of information that we either get numbed by some and choose to receive other information or even information sources”. Yes! It doesn’t happen only to you, but also to your customers.
Inbound marketing helps you break the ice to create and nurture a relationship with your audience. During your relation with your customers, your ultimate goal is to get them from A to Z by turning them from occasional audience to brand ambassador. As WebFX perfectly sums it: “Many methods are utilized as a part of inbound marketing, including blogging, whitepapers, guides, and videos. Essentially, instead of blindly marketing for clicks and views, inbound focuses on making the right kind of content available for anyone who decides they want or need it.”
Using digital marketing for your business
A digital marketing strategy can boost your chances of digital success, helping you to define clear goals and focus your online activity. Never forget that a manager takes decision based on data, so it's important to use the data and metrics available to evaluate how your digital marketing activities are performing. The Internet connects businesses and customers worldwide. But if you’re a local business, you’ll want to reach people nearby; in both cases make the best use of digital marketing strategies.
Going digital: an imperative for businesses in the 21st Century
Do you remember the last time you were looking for a restaurant? You probably began by searching the Internet to learn more about available solutions, who provided them, and what your best options were. Your ultimate buying decision was then based on the reviews you received from people who shared pictures or who any other electronic means available.
Indeed, most purchasing decisions begin online. That being the case, an online presence is absolutely necessary—regardless of what you sell. The key is to develop a digital marketing strategy that puts you in all the places your followers are already hanging out, then using a variety of digital channels to connect with them in a multitude of ways...
Credit Sources:
WebFX: Digital Marketing That Drive Results: https://www.webfx.com/content-marketing-vs-inbound-marketing.html#:~:text=Inbound%20marketing%20refers%20to%20the,of%20content%20creation%20and%20distribution.
https://www.mmmatters.com/blog/digital-marketing-online-offine
B2C (Business 2 Community): https://www.business2community.com/marketing/7-offline-marketing-strategies-support-online-brand-01191059
Disruptive Advertisement: https://www.disruptiveadvertising.com/marketing/digital-marketing/