The consumer is the King. Yes, you heard it right. It doesn’t matter if you are a small startup or a big corporate, the one box that we you all want to check is ‘Customer Satisfaction. And this can be best achieved when you engage in two-way effective communication with your customers and receive feedback or suggestions from them too.
But how do you make the customer buy the products in the very first place? With such intense competition in the market, it gets a Herculean task to create brand awareness and maintain a loyal customer base for your products or services.
The solution to both these problems is one: Digital marketing.
The phenomenon of marketing existed before the age of the Internet too. Marketing includes promotional activities for any products or services in order to increase their reach in the market so that their sales are subsequently increased. But today the age of the Internet has dawned upon us. Every aspect of our life, no matter how small or big, is touched by the Internet. A large chunk of the world population is using the Internet and the number keeps on increasing daily. So, it is entirely comprehensible if the businesses want to catch the attention of the consumer where he spends most of his time: Online.
Here comes the role of Digital marketing. Digital marketing is a component of marketing only. When you use electronic devices like mobiles and computers possibly with internet connectivity for promotional activities of a product or service, it is called Digital marketing. It can include a vast range of activities like YouTube videos, Instagram reels, google ad campaigns, Facebook ads, email marketing, search engine optimization, etc. While Traditional marketing methods included print ads in newspapers and magazines, ads run by radio and television, billboards and pamphlets, etc.
You may ask why not use our old Traditional marketing method? Let me tell you why:
- Access – Digital marketing is done using only a smartphone with internet connectivity and has much greater access to the potential customers than traditional marketing.
- Customized marketing – Say, you pay the cable operator, to run an ad for a Gillette Shaving cream during a cricket match in India. The ad will be viewed by everyone irrespective of gender or age. This means that your ad was shown to an audience who in no way could be your potential customers. But this issue can be resolved using social media ad campaigns. Using few software, the ad will be visible on the profile of males of suitable age only. This means you can decide where you want to display your ads most depending on the demography of an area.
- Effective engagement of the user there is multiple social media platforms nowadays. The digital history of all these platforms is often synchronized together. Consumers search for flight tickets on one app and the next moment, they get subtle advertisements for vacation packages on all other platforms. This feature of Digital marketing can actively seek out potential customers and increase the chances of selling.
- Cost-effective – Digital marketing is more cost-effective than traditional marketing. This has the simple connotation that even small startups who are strapped on budget issues can use digital mediums like websites, social media pages, blogs, etc. to interact with the crowd. Traditional marketing through ads in prominent newspapers can burn a big hole in your pockets. And we certainly don’t want that.
- Encourages upcoming businesses- India is a country that has the largest number of startups coming up each year. They are eager to captivate the markets with their products but they soon realize that the market is a monopoly of the few. An effective marketing strategy that targets potential customers can be routed through social media presence. It is a cheap but very result-oriented technique to hold the attention of the user. Digital marketing provides a leveling field for upcoming businesses like yours to compete with the giants like PnG, Dabur, etc.
- Improves the conversion rate for your leads generated-In by traditional marketing, what we do can be best called ‘A shot in the dark. For example, when you give an advertisement for a newspaper, you don’t know who is going to see the ad and who is going to show an interest in the product until a sale is made. But in digital marketing, there is various software that can give you real-time information about the people who click on your ads, visit your website and how often, which region they live in and any other personal information which they fill out voluntarily. Based on the amount of leads generated, we can refine our marketing strategies to reach the targeted buyers. Since the marketing becomes targeted, the chances of a sale coming through getting more assured.
- Digital marketing is flexible and can be changed easily- There are various mediums to market your products in the digital space. A content creator on Instagram can make reels and a blogger can write a blog to connect with the audience. The leads generated via each medium are the return on our investment. Based on the results you get, you can alter the funding going for different modes of digital marketing. It is a convenient, hassle-free, and flexible way to get the best out of the limited resources we have.
But the question that might boggle you as to what are the tools for Digital marketing and how to use them? Here is a list giving you a glimpse of the different tools used for Digital marketing:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization is the management of content on the website so as to increase the traffic to your website. The website should end up on the top of the search engine result page (SERP) whenever someone is searching for a product or service related to your business. For this, you need to identify the relevant keywords which would pull the traffic to your website, create good quality content which is optimized for users, the inclusion of links to websites that the user might need, and, in the end, calculate the result.
- Social Media Marketing
Today, social media platforms have a huge impact on the lives of users. And this is the reason that many business owners advertise their products ranging from fitness apps to scrunches (hair accessories for girls) on these social media platforms. The ‘Influencer culture’ on Instagram today is one aspect of social media marketing. The influencers/business owners advertise their products and the viewers are tempted to buy them. The far reach and strong influence of these platforms make it essential to have a very strong social media marketing strategy for all businesses to grow.
- Content Marketing
Content on any social media platform or simply a website is what grabs the eye of a user at the very first instant. So, automatically, the content should be very well written and easy to comprehend for the user. An attractive piece of content is what sells your goods and services in the market and also boosts your ranking on SERP.
- Email Marketing
Email services have been used by everyone for almost two decades now and we know that it is the fastest way to reach customers with a lot of information. But unlike social media marketing, email marketing campaigns do not easily grab the attention of the user. The emails written have to be very engaging for the user to notice them and then it should quickly provide all the relevant details to the user. Email marketing is used highly even today by many big firms to advertise their products.
- Mobile Marketing
We know that in today’s scenario, everyone from a child to an old man, is in possession of a mobile phone, whether it’s a smartphone or not. Mobile services like SMS, MMS, and in-app marketing can be used to reach the people not present on social media platforms. Most successful digital media campaigns maintain a balance between social media channels and mobile services.
- Marketing Automation
The only purpose of marketing a product or service is to gain revenue. Marketing automation software does exactly that. It calculates the return of investment on all the social media campaigns, mobile marketing, email marketing campaigns, etc. The result which is derived is analyzed with marketing automation tools so as to get a clear picture of which programs are working and which are not. Thus, cost optimization can also be done using marketing automation.
Now that you have through my entire blog, I hope all your queries are resolved. Digital marketing is an upcoming skill. People are learning it and businessmen are using it to grow their businesses. It is time for you to jump into the trend because this one is here to stay.