What is digital marketing?

What is digital marketing is the very first question that comes to mind
when we think about promoting business online.

Digital marketing is the name of marketing practices used for

promotion of business, product or services using the Internet and
digital devices like mobiles, laptops, computers etc.

Digital marketing is a concept where brands and businesses use

combination or SEO, Social media, search and display ads, email
marketing and other marketing and advertising methods to grow business
by acquiring customers via digital channels.

Digital marketing helps businesses expand beyond their geography, allows

them to reach more people using the Internet.

If you are a business owner, you will try to understand digital marketing
from business benefits and if you are a student you will try to understand
digital marketing from a career perspective.

What is not digital marketing?

Blogging, affiliate marketing, SMS marketing and earning money from
YouTube and blog is not digital marketing.

Selling on Amazon and Flipkart is not digital marketing.

Recently I have seen many bloggers and many online marketers were
promoting their courses to make money from blogging as digital
marketing.

How digital marketing is different than traditional

marketing?
Let’s first understand traditional marketing.

Traditional marketing is also known as offline marketing where marketing

is done via newspaper, TV, radio or banners and hoarding ads.
History of digital marketing
Digital marketing allows brands and businesses to connect with their
audience and potential customers using digital channels.

In this article, we will learn digital marketing basics and fundamentals.

This article will help you understand fundamentals and will answer any
questions about digital marketing.

In this article, we will also learn popular digital marketing terms, which
every digital marketer must know.

Summary

Over the past few years digital marketing in India has witnesses
exponential growth. Digital marketing has become one of the most
popular buzzword in India and everybody is talking about digital
marketing, online marketing, social media and using digital marketing for
business.

Colleges and private institutes have started offering digital marketing

courses for students, working professionals and also for business owners.

Due to increasing popularity of digital marketing, SEO and social media

marketing, everybody wants to learn digital marketing, know more about
digital marketing.

In this article, we will learn about the basics and fundamentals of digital
marketing, history of digital marketing, how digital marketing works,
benefits and advantages of digital marketing for business, various digital
marketing channels and how to get started with digital marketing.

So, what is digital marketing? Digital marketing is like any other type of
marketing—it’s a way to connect with and influence your potential
customers. The real difference is, you connect with and influence those
customers online.

What is Digital Marketing?

Basically, digital marketing refers to any online marketing efforts or
assets. Email marketing, pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing
and even blogging are all great examples of digital marketing—they help
introduce people to your company and convince them to buy.

Here are some of the most common digital marketing assets and strategies
businesses use to reach people online:

Digital Marketing Assets

Almost anything can be a digital marketing asset. It simply needs to be a
marketing tool you use online. That being said, many people don’t realise
how many digital marketing assets they have at their disposal. Here are
just a few examples:

 Your website
 Branded assets (logos, icons, acronyms, etc)
 Video content (video ads, product demos, etc)
 Images (infographics, product shots, company photos, etc)
 Written content (blog posts, eBooks, product descriptions,
testimonials, etc)
 Online products or tools (SaaS, calculators, interactive content, etc)
 Reviews
 Social media pages

As you can probably imagine, this list just scratches the surface. Most
digital marketing assets will fall into one of these categories, but clever
marketers are constantly coming up with new ways to reach customers
online, so the list keeps growing!

Digital Marketing Strategies

The list of digital marketing strategies is also constantly evolving, but here
are some of the strategies most businesses are using:

Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is actually a broad term that covers any
type of digital marketing where you pay for every user who clicks on an
ad. For example, Google AdWords is a form of PPC advertising called
“paid search advertising” (which we’ll go over in a second). Facebook Ads
are another form of PPC advertising called “paid social media advertising”
(again, we’ll get into that shortly).
Paid Search Advertising
Google, Bing and Yahoo all allow you to run text ads on their Search
Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Paid search advertising is one of the best
ways to target potential customers who are actively searching for a product
or service like yours.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If you don’t want to pay to show up in the SERPs, you can also use search
engine optimization (SEO) to try and rank pages or blog posts on your site
organically. You don’t have to pay directly for every click, but getting a
page to rank usually takes quite a bit of time and effort (for a more in-
depth comparison of paid search and SEO, check out this article).

Paid Social Media Advertising

Most social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn,
Pinterest and Snapchat will allow you to run ads on their site. Paid social
media advertising is great for building awareness with audiences that
might not be aware that your business, product or service exists.

Social Media Marketing

Like SEO, social media marketing is the free, organic way to use social
media platforms like Facebook or Twitter to market your business. And,
just like SEO, organically marketing your business on social media takes a
lot more time and effort, but in the long run, it can deliver much cheaper
results.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the art and science of improving
your online user experience. Most of the time, businesses use CRO to get
more conversions (leads, chats, calls, sales, etc) out of their existing
website traffic.

Content Marketing
Content marketing is another fairly broad digital marketing term. Content
marketing covers any digital marketing effort that uses content assets (blog
posts, infographics, eBooks, videos, etc) to build brand awareness or drive
clicks, leads or sales.

Native Advertising
Ever get to the bottom of an article and see a list of suggested articles?
That’s native advertising. Most native advertising falls under content
marketing because it uses content to attract clicks (“you’ll never believe
what happens next!”). Often, native advertising can be a bit hard to spot,
since it is usually mixed in with non-paid content recommendations…but
that’s kind of the point.

Email Marketing
Email marketing is the oldest form of online marketing and it’s still going
strong. Most digital marketers use email marketing to advertise special
deals, highlight content (often as part of content marketing) or promote an
event.

Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is essentially paying someone else (a person or a
business) to promote your products and services on their website.

As you can see from the list above, there are a lot of different ways to
market your business online, which is why many businesses either hire an
agency to manage their digital marketing efforts or pay for an in-house
marketing team and marketing automation software to cover their
marketing needs (for an in-depth comparison of these options, check out
this article).

Does Digital Marketing Work?

Digital marketing is a great option for any business. At Disruptive, we’ve
used digital marketing to help all kinds of businesses grow—from mom-
and-pop shops to internationally recongnized universities and beyond.
That’s the beauty of advertising online. If you know who you want to
target, you can use digital marketing to target anyone, anywhere.

However, that being said, certain types of businesses will benefit more
from certain types of digital advertising. As a quick overview, let’s take a
look at which strategies tend to work best for business-to-consumer (B2C)
companies and business-to-business (B2B) companies:

B2C Companies
Generally speaking, B2C companies have much lower price points than
their B2B counterparts. After all, it can be a little hard to sell a $150,000
drill bit (believe me, they exist) to a harried mom. But a $10 pair of kids
pants? That’s a fairly straightforward sell.

The good news is, because B2C companies aren’t trying to sell incredibly
expensive products or services, they don’t need big sales teams or
complicated marketing funnels. All they have to do is get their products or
services in front of the right audience with the right messaging and the rest
should take care of itself.

As a result, the primary goal of most B2C companies is to get people into
and through their marketing funnel. For example, if you can get that
harried mom onto your kids clothing website and offer her an exciting
deal, there’s a good chance that she’ll buy today. You don’t need to build a
ton of brand awareness or trust before you can close a sale.

With that in mind, B2C companies often see great results from higher-
funnel marketing channels like social media marketing or paid social
advertising. These channels do a great job of getting your business in front
of potential customers who might not otherwise know that you exist.

Now, supplementing with other digital marketing strategies like paid

search or SEO is always a good idea, but if you have to pick one channel
to start with, paid social advertising or social media marketing are great
options for B2C.

B2B Companies
In contrast, paid search is a great option for B2B companies. Most B2B
companies have very specific niche audiences that can be hard to target
using social media. However, if you sell $150,000 drill bits and someone
searches for “diamond-tipped oil drilling bit manufacturer”, you want to be
the first result they see. Yes, you might pay more for your click than you
would with paid social advertising, but with a $150,000 price tag, it’s
money well spent.

In addition, most B2B companies have a much longer and more involved
sales cycle than B2C companies. If you’re selling a $150,000 drill bit,
most people probably don’t come to your site, give you a call and say “I
want one.” As a result, longer-term strategies like content marketing or
email marketing are often necessary to close a deal.

Of course, the right blend of digital marketing tactics will vary from
industry-to-industry and business-to-business, but simply comparing B2C
to B2B should help give you a sense for how different strategies can be
better for certain businesses. Not every strategy is right for every business,
but with a little trial and error, you should be able to identify the most
profitable approach for your company.

5Ds of Digital Marketing:

• Digital devices – audiences experience brands as they interact with

business websites and mobile apps typically through a combination
of connected devices including smartphones, tablets, desktop
computers, TVs and gaming devices.
• Digital platforms – most interactions on these devices are through a
browser or apps from the major platforms or services, that’s
Facebook (and Instagram), Google (and YouTube), Twitter and
LinkedIn.
• Digital media – different paid, owned and earned communications
channels for reaching and engaging audiences including advertising,
email and messaging, search engines and social networks.
• Digital data – the insight businesses collect about their audience
profiles and their interactions with businesses, which now need to be
protected by law in most countries.
• Digital technology – the marketing technology or market stack that
businesses use to create interactive experiences from websites and
mobile apps to in-store kiosks and email campaigns.

Principles of Digital Marketing:

The Digital Marketing Institute has developed a methodology that helps to
guide digital marketers towards achieving their goals. This methodology,
which is central to the key components of digital marketing, comprises three
principles: initiate, integrate, and iterate.

Initiate
The initiate principle of digital marketing states that the customer is the
starting and finishing point for all digital activities. The core of this principle
can be summed up as: ‘Let the customer decide’.

Iterate
Iterate emphasizes the importance of tweaking a digital marketing campaign
in response to user interaction. In short, the more iterations undertaken, the
more effective the campaign becomes as you seek to adjust and scale based
on feedback, customer engagement, and data.

Integrate
The integrate principle is about taking your efforts across digital channels
to drive an outcome that is greater than the individual channels on their own.
This also involves integrating both digital and any traditional marketing
efforts in a unified way into your overall marketing campaign strategy.

4Ps of digital will transform your marketing: -

The new 4Ps of digital—process, people, platform, and performance—
offer new ways to meet consumers’ needs and customize messaging for
audiences that expect personalization.
Process
In recent years, marketing leaders have increasingly come under pressure to deliver
on organizational strategy and brand engagement. They are also responsible for the
critical operational processes and marketing technology stack to support revenue
goals and other business objectives.

The head of any marketing department must juggle strategy, internal processes,
and personnel while coordinating technologies to profitably execute and prove
ROI. However, the truth is that many marketers simply feel unprepared for
these challenges. In fact, a survey by Deloitte recently found that 32.2% of CMOs
feel they lack adequate tools and processes to measure success.

Streamlining your process to improve consumer relationships starts with a few key
questions:

 Is your brand ready for today’s marketing environment? Do you have all the
pieces in place?
 What tools would help you market to the correct audiences, stay relevant,
personalize messaging at greater scale, and respond to interest immediately?
 How can you translate your company’s needs and goals into an operational
marketing strategy?
 Can you justify the budget and quantify return?
 Will this solution fit with the company’s data governance or Master Data
Management (MDM) strategy?
 Do you have the right stakeholders, bandwidth, competency, and partners to
put all this in place?
Price, product, promotion, and place are just as important as they ever were, but
each of the original Ps is dependent on adapting to new technologies and processes
that deliver results. Effectively organizing your marketing strategy with the
right CRM can go a long way toward solving many modern day marketing woes.
People

The key to communication in the digital age is personalization. Gone are the days
when one mass message would work for every consumer.

Studies show that consumers are 80% more likely to make a purchase when brands
offer a personalized experience. And as consumers demand more personalization,
the people, internally and externally, who market your product become the bridge
between the traditional Ps and the new Ps.

At its core, CRM is about people and building relationships. Adopting a functional
CRM program can actually improve teamwork, communication, and consumer
relationships by providing data to segment audiences and mapping out
consumer touchpoints with your organization. Price, product, and promotion still
matter to consumers—but without personalization and the people which enable
those connections, audiences may never find your product or bond with the brand.

Platforms
Business is built around forming loyal relationships, and one of the most important
parts of fostering those relationships is choosing the right tool to manage consumer
data and help you get the right message out at the right time to the right consumer
segment.

Choosing the most effective platform for your business is critical. According
to Gartner Group, 55% of all CRM projects don’t produce results. A bad fit
platform could be a costly mistake. Make sure you’re choosing platforms that fit
the size of your business with a relatively painfree onboarding process that’s easy
for the entire team to use.
Performance
The best platforms in the world won’t mean much unless you’re collecting data
around the success of your organization. Some of the essential key performance
indicators (KPIs) for measuring the success of your CRM are customer service,
engagement, response time, conversion, loyalty, and advocacy.

Developing a solid CRM solution means bucketing and organizing the business
processes and technology that support targeting, audience insights, consumer
acquisition and retention, and, most importantly, conversion and loyalty. Then, and
only then, can an organization map all of that to the consumer lifecycle and
lifetime value for effective performance measurement.

While technology has changed and evolved since the introduction of the original
4Ps, consumers’ main needs haven’t. They want to both feel valued and buy
products that provide value. As the accelerating pace of technology and big data
makes it necessary for CMOs to prove they are providing that value to consumers
across all touchpoints, they must also directly link success to business objectives
such as revenue and market share. The New 4Ps of Digital and CRM provide the
roadmap and bridge between the original 4Ps and the modern era of dynamic
marketing.