The World Market is under cut-throat competition these days as every field has got competitors that grow each day exponentially.
Every business seeks ways to promote their brand to the maximum audience in order to maximize their sales and get proper exposure to their business.
Traditional methods of business promotion were limited, costly and not that effective. Digital Marketing is gradually replacing traditional promotion methods because of its efficiency and proven results.
DIGITAL MARKETING
Digital Marketing has taken the world market by storm and has helped businesses transform. It is basically a way to promote your business using digital ways like the internet, mobiles, and online ads.
It helps in real-time analysis of the customer behaviour and needs so as to make promotion targeted and thus yield more profitable results. A maximum percentage of the audience in this whole world uses the internet to search and buy products or services. Digital Marketing helps to promote as well as establish your business roots globally.
Digital Marketing Strategy involves a number of different methodologies as its components to promote your business or products in their own specific way. These methodologies have evolved over the years and have been a boon to the digital promotion of your business.
INTERNET MARKETING
As the name suggests, internet marketing is the promotion of your business through electronic media, i.e. online sources. Internet Marketing has been in trend for years now, and its utilization is increasing each day because of its effectiveness.
Internet Marketing helps in bringing together the various technical and creative concepts of the web like web design, promotion, web development and sales. Internet Marketing helps in displaying your business ads all over the internet. There are many ways of doing internet marketing effectively.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
Search Engine Optimization has been in trend for years now as it helps in increasing the visibility of your website or products in search engine results. SEO helps in improving the search engine rankings, channel more traffic to your website and increase the number of leads.
SEO is not only about developing a website that is SEO-Friendly but also creating attractive & eye-catching websites and using the correct keywords in your website content.
SEO is required for your website because it helps to raise your website on top in search engine results of all big names like Google, Yahoo! and Bing. SEO helps to drive traffic to your website and drive sales as it works on a target traffic based way. SEO has helped businesses grow over the years and still stands strong in the market as a top-rated marketing technique.
2. Social Media Marketing (SMM):
Social Media Marketing is basically an internet marketing technique that utilizes various social media channels and websites to promote products and increase brand outreach.
SMM has become a new business promotion de facto as the number of social media users is exponentially each day globally. SMM basically involves advertising on social media platforms through content sharing, videos, images, as well as paid social media advertising.
Social Media Marketing is a very cost-friendly yet very effective method of business promotion. SMM helps to attract the traffic and attention of audiences using social media platforms.
Social Media is all about sharing with each other stuff or content that seems attractive. Thus if you display a product or service over social media, people who find it attractive & useful will share forward, and thus your business can gain popularity without boundaries. Social Media has helped in the promotion of business & to create brand awareness. Social networking websites allow individuals to interact with one another and build relationships
3. Email Marketing:
Email Marketing is a very efficient way to promote your business through electronic mails. Email Marketing has been in demand for years and still stands tall. Email Marketing is basically based on mining and targeting methods. Raw data is collected through research, and then emails are sent only to the potential customers. Email is the most checked thing on the internet today, and thus, if your business can reach the inbox of potential customers, it can be highly profitable for your business.
You can send the company’s product offers, newsletters, and invitations for reaching out to maximum users through email campaigning. Email Marketing can yield you very profitable results and save a lot of money as the expenses of email marketing are very less. It helps to create a heavy audience base for your business and expand its roots on a global scale.
4. Referral Marketing:
Referral Marketing is basically a business promotion technique based on referrals of products and services by people, like spreading a word among others. Referral Marketing is also called Word-Of-Mouth marketing.
This is a very effective way of marketing because humans always tend to share things and thoughts with others. To use this tendency for business promotion in a better way, businesses actually offer benefits to their customers for the referrals they do. So it becomes a win-win situation for everyone.
Everyone likes getting things at a lower cost, and thus, referral marketing is becoming quite popular these days. Referral Marketing can surely help your business grow, but it requires a bit of strategy to imply it perfectly. You can build a referral app to manage huge amounts of customers and spread the word about your business to the farthest corners of the world.
5. Content Marketing:
Content Marketing basically refers to a business or product promotion method to create and distribute significant & helpful content on websites and social media platforms.
The main motive of this content is to grab the attention of the users and engage them to stay longer on your website or visit your website, thus making them take profitable actions for your business (CTA). Content Marketing is basically aimed at a target audience online.
Content Marketing is basically done on mediums like websites, mobile web, and social media platforms, which can easily help in creating a strong audience base at any stage of business and can help create a loyal customer group. Content Marketing is very Cost effective and can help your business grow by increasing business sales, driving more traffic and build trust relations with customers.
6. Native Advertising:
Native Advertising is a marketing technique mostly used by content marketers. Native Advertising is basically a paid marketing technique in which ads are shown in such a way that they provide a proper visual feel of natural content and behave consistently with the native user experience and function just like natural content.
Native Advertising is quickly gaining popularity because of its efficiency and future profit vision.
Native Advertising is far better than traditional ads in terms of building trust among the audience and grabbing the attention of potential customers. Most of the biggest social media platforms make a hell lot of money through native advertisements on their websites.
Native ads help your business and products shown in the top search engine results in the form of ads to help your business grow its roots in the whole world.
SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING
Search Engine Marketing, also known as SEM, is one of the most effective ways of paid business promotion on the internet. SEM helps your business by showing paid advertisements on the search engine result pages in order to get maximum visibility for their business and thus get maximum amounts of traffic.
There are millions of businesses on the internet, and to stand apart from such a big competitive crowd, you need an effective way, and SEM is the answer as it can help channelize the audience to your website and help your business roots spread.
SEM uses ads to promote businesses, and these ads might be small, big, text-based, image-based or video-based ads. These ads can catch the sight of the customers and provoke them to take profitable actions for your business.
SEM is so powerful and effective than other online promotion methods and thus is very widely used. SEM involves things such as SEO, keyword research, competitive analysis, paid listings and other search engine services that will increase search traffic to your site. SEM has many methodologies to follow and achieve results.
1. Pay Per Click:
Pay-Per-Click, also known as PPC, is a very effective method of generating a huge amount of traffic to your website. It is basically a paid advertisement method that includes placing ads on top of web pages and let customers see and visit your websites for buying products or services.
You have to pay only for the number of times your ad or website link is clicked by the audience. A successful PPC campaign can get your business a boost in sales and profits.
Pay-Per-Click follows a research first approach for its success, i.e. collecting raw data and then displaying relevant ads to the most desired audience and potential customers. PPC can easily help to increase the return on investment (ROI), enhances business sales and help in lead conversion.
PPC is one of the most effective and cost-friendly ways of online business promotion as you can decide weekly or monthly budget and ads accordingly.
2. Cost Per Impression:
Cost per Impression is a very popular paid marketing method. Cost per Impression, also known as CPM, involves measuring the Cost for ads in such a way that you have to pay for the ad being shown per one thousand impressions.
CPM can be really helpful to calculate and keep a check on other ad parameters like Cost per click (CPC) and the click-through rate (CTR). This promotional method basically works on a bidding basis. This means that bidding is done before displaying the ad actually, and afterward, the highest bidder’s ad is shown at the top and others, respectively.
CPM can easily help you analyze the effectiveness of your ads. CPM helps to improve the return on investment and help in lead conversion. One can easily calculate CPM by dividing the Cost of one thousand ads by the number of impressions.
3. Search Analytics:
Search Analytics is basically a very effective analysis method that helps you to get a report of everything your users are searching for, the link they are clicking on & what content they are engaging in, all in real-time, i.e. while they are performing all the above tasks.
Audience searches for the stuff they actually are looking for, and thus it gives a quite clear impression as to what they actually want. Search Analytics help you to understand the behaviour and requirements of your audience, in real-time.
You can quickly have a proper report with you about all the search information so as to ensure and take action to convert visitors into customers and promoters. Traditional analytics was time-consuming and less accurate, but with search analytics, you can easily take your business to the road of success.
Search Analytics even helps in giving you a report as to how often your website is shown in Google Search results. One can easily filter and categorize the search queries to provide users with a personalized experience. You can even check the pages that had the highest and lowest CTR (Click-Through-Rate).
4. Web Analytics:
Another very useful method of Search Engine Marketing is Web Analytics. In Web Analytics, you can actually observe how your audience behaves on your website. Web Analytics can easily ensure an increased number of visitors, convert visitors in customers or promoters and hence, enhance your business sales exponentially.
Web Analytics is an essential component of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Analytics. Web Analytics helps in personalizing the experience for the audience according to their past purchase history and current searches.
It also helps in observing the geographic regions from which the most and the least customers visit the site and purchase specific products and predicting which products customers are most and least likely to buy in the future.
These results of the analysis can help you target the audience according to their needs and, thus, enhance the chances of sales by a great difference. It can also help you know as to which sites most customers arrive, and the results can be checked in the form of tables, charts, and graphs.
DISPLAY ADVERTISING
Display Advertising is one of the most effective ways of business promotion as it is a quite eye-catching and creative way of advertising. Display Advertising involves various methods like banner ads, rich media etc.
Display Advertising is basically done through the use of images, videos and audios in order to interact with the audience through promotional messages. Display Advertising has various sub-forms, like ad blocking, contextual advertising, and behavioural Targeting.
1. AD Blocking:
Adblocking or ad filtering is basically a software which can be used to remove or alter the ads being displayed on websites, web pages or mobile applications.
These software packages come in various forms suitable for desktops, laptops, tablet computers and smartphones. There are many ways to block ads available in the market. These software packages can help in blocking ads as well as in unblocking ads that are blocked by someone else.
Ad Blocking can enhance the web browsing experience. The use of various analytics, plug-ins and ads can slow down the performance of your website. Ad Blocking helps to prevent these components from getting loaded and enhances the web page loading speed.
2. Contextual Advertising:
Contextual Advertising is basically an online advertisement technique that can help in promoting the products and services to a target audience who has recently searched for a specific product or by analyzing their web browsing history.
These promotional banners of products are displayed on the websites contextually related to the website with services related to the product. For example, a website which provides information about the smartphones can be used to show banners of mobile selling websites. This type of advertising doesn’t require keywords search to show the ads; it automatically shows the ads whenever a specific page is opened.
The banner ads can be different each time a customer visits, but it is always great to have the same ad banner so as to provide the customer with a familiar look. Contextual ads have been proven by a survey to be a major revenue generator by Google. Contextual Advertising helps in raising the number of visitors, which ultimately leads to a higher rate of conversion and increased business sales.
3. Behavioral Targeting:
Behavioural Advertising is one of the most effective ways of online marketing. Behavioural Targeting is a technique used by businesses to analyze the previous behaviour of customers on the web, so as to customize the advertisements that will be displayed to them.
This promotional method is quite better as only the potential customers are shown with relevant ads rather than sending the same ads to everyone. In this advertisement method, everything is utilized like web analytics, browser cookies, browser search history, and IP addresses to customize the advertisements accordingly.
For example, if a person is reading an article about bikes, then that person will be shown with bike advertisements, making the ad more targeting and fruitful. Behavioural advertising is a very effective method and has been proven to increase the rate of conversion, attracting more audiences and enhance business sales.
AFFILIATE MARKETING
Affiliate Marketing is one of the most efficient ways of business promotion and a very old one too. In Affiliate Marketing involves the ‘refer and earn’ formula, which has been in use for decades.
This refers and earns process works in this way that when you refer someone to a merchant and the person buys something; then you earn referral money for this, i.e. commission. It is actually a win-win situation for you as well as the merchant.
Affiliate Marketing is a very widely used method of online business promotion. Affiliate marketing works on the basis of a program called Affiliate Program. In this program, three parties are involved, i.e. Merchant, Publisher, and Consumer.
Whenever there is a product available from the merchant, the publisher promotes that product online through advertisement. Whenever any consumer finds the product useful and buys the product from the merchant by clicking on the ad being displayed on the publisher’s website, the publisher earns a commission from the merchant.
This program also works on the basis of the number of signups or surveys completed by some visitors on the merchant’s website. Here also the publisher is awarded the commission.
This not only helps in just promotion but also leads conversion, and ultimately profit can be made by both the publisher and merchant. For example, E-Commerce websites have products and other websites that provide discount coupon codes display ads. Whenever a customer clicks on one of these ads and buys a product, these discount coupons providing websites earn money.
This method can be very helpful in the online promotion of your business as you can hire a few publishers and pay them only when a customer buys any product or service from you. Thus, it is quite beneficial.
1. Cost Per Action:
Cost per action is one very prominent promotion method these days. In Cost per action, you are only charged when a user clicks on your displayed ad and signup for a free trial pack, register a file download for free or purchase any of your products or services.
When a customer signs up or registers for a service, it helps in generating leads and helps in the growth conversion rate. On the other hand, if a customer purchases anything, it can help you get money.
To use this promotion strategy, you just have to provide the search engine or web publisher a finalized amount of money. This method can be really helpful to drive your business sales and is also known as Cost per acquisition or performance-based advertisement service.
This advertisement technique is quite better than other techniques for you as you only have to pay when a customer takes an action that is profitable for your business. Thus, this method ensures that you only pay when you receive money.
2. Revenue Sharing:
Revenue Sharing is a marketing technique in which a partnership is made between the company and online marketer, who promotes the products and help in enhancing sales.
This is purely a percentage commission based method for referring new customers. This method is also used to just share the profits among the partners. Online Revenue Sharing is quite popular these days as this is quite effective for business success.
Revenue Sharing in digital marketing has also proven to be very useful as you just have to pay revenue amount according to the sales that were made through advertisement.
This method has proven to be more cost-effective and has provided more leads than many other traditional marketing efforts. Revenue sharing can easily drive the promoters as they will wish to earn high amounts of commission, which ultimately will lead to improved business sales and better lead generation.
Thus, all these are the essential components of Digital Marketing. Digital Marketing has proven to be a great blessing to businesses all around the world. Whether it is a small startup or an already established brand, digital marketing has helped it grow drastically, has improved its audience base, improved business sales and saved the extra Cost of traditional promotion methods.
One Thing more If you are start-up; You need to ask some questions before starting digital marketing campaign