What the heck is Digital Marketing and What 4 Types You should be using in your marketing strategy

Digital Marketing is a measurable medium of brand communication that encompasses all the digital devices existing in the modern world.
It is primarily used for increasing brand recognition and awareness but has the ultimate intent of driving a brand’s sales.
With the advent of the internet, everything about the world changed, this having a maximum impact on consumer behavior.
Since after the internet, people preferred to spend more of their time in the digital space, marketers took notice and shifted their focus from employing the traditional form of marketing to resorting to digital marketing tactics.
Even today based on a report of Pew Research Center there is a steady increase in the usage of internet by people.
Accounting for a 5% rise in spending more time in the digital space in the last 3 years.
The quality of being measurable besides being thousand times more effective as compared to the traditional marketing practices is what made digital marketing, the favorite form of marketing for the marketers.
If you are still feeling cynical about the extent of impact digital marketing has today just go through the following interesting facts:

• Businesses make $2 dollars for every $1 dollar spent on ads.
• After watching a video advertisement 46% of people take some action.
• Quality content can draw 2000% more traffic to a blog.
• Digital ads that are location specific are 20 times more effective than simple banner ads.
• More than half of the worldwide population ended up knowing about new brands while surfing the internet on the mobile.

These amazing figures are also what are prompting marketers to increase their digital marketing budget.
According to Statista, the total spends on the digital Ad across the globe is expected to hit a staggering $335 billion by the year 2020.
Now, that you have an idea about what digital marketing is and the extent to which it has become a key ingredient in deciding a brands’ success, let’s straight away dive into its various types so that you get a lucid picture on how digital marketing actually is able to achieve its great feats.

Types of Digital Marketing

1. Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the most popular form of digital marketing practice with whom most people are familiar with. SEO, as the name suggests, involves practices that optimize the ability of a website to be ranked higher on the search engine page results. Unlike the paid form of featuring a website, it strives to achieve the said result in the organic list of search engine pages. This, in turn, translates to having an improved reach, visibility, and Alexa scores. Further, the reason that makes ranking higher in the search result list essential is the fact that website links shown in the first page itself capture most of the internet traffic. This again means more awareness, activity, lead generation and ultimately conversion.

Some of the SEO practices that enhance a website’s authority and recognition are:

• A website domain that is SEO friendly.
• High-quality content that provides a better idea through images and videos.
• Employing white hat techniques.
• Keyword optimization in the page title, content, and Meta tags.
• Focusing on website designs and layout that are SEO optimized.
• Keeping oneself updated with the latest changes in the search engine algorithms and keeping knowledge about crawling, processing, and indexing activities of the search engines.
• Using high-quality backlinks.

2. Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is the latest form of digital marketing that is delivering promising results.
It mainly involves utilization of the power of social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitter, and YouTube, etc along with some popular discussion forums, niche networks, and dynamic blogs that can influence consumer perception about brands.

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Some effective ways in which SMM can be carried out are:

• Facebook ads involving photo ads, video ads, slideshows, and canvas.
• Display ads, Sponsored InMail, and Sponsored content on LinkedIn.
• Promoted twitter accounts, trends, and tweets that brings forth the brand message.
• Instagram ads in the form of Photo, Video, and Carousel.

In SMM the main points that can have a huge hand in determining the success of the digital campaign are having a thorough knowledge about the target audience and choosing the right platform to carry-out the SMM campaign.
When these main points are sorted out the next steps involve choosing the suitable KPIs to measure the campaign progress, posting relevant content, scheduling posts, and finally analyzing the results achieved to implement or withdraw some actions.

3. Search Engine Marketing and Pay Per Click

Search Engine Marketing is one of the popular forms of digital marketing that can be thought of as buying web traffic to a particular website.
Similar to SEO, SEM also increases the reach, visibility, and conversion rate of a brand.
However, the difference in both lies in the fact that SEO is an unpaid form of achieving the said objectives and SEM mainly involves the paid forms.

SEM is the primary type of digital marketing which is known by many names such as Paid search advertising, Paid search ads, pay-per-call (PPC), pay-per-click (PPC), cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM), and cost-per-click (CPC).
SEM which is also synonymous to PPC is the fastest way of ensuring a huge volume of traffic to one’s website and highlighting one’s products and services.
The formula by which the PPC can be determined is:
Pay per click ($) = Advertising cost ($) / Number of clicks on ads

4. Content Marketing

Content marketing can be defined as a digital marketing strategy that possesses the potential to convert the traffic into valued customers by means of relevant content in the form of posts, blogs, videos, infographics, e-books, and others.

Some of the main points that content marketing focuses on are attracting, engaging, and informing the audience about the brand and persuading them to take the desired action.
This form of digital marketing involves several steps that start from crafting, designing and publishing the content to later also proceeding to include distribution and promotion.
Some of the important points that can decide the level of impact a content marketing strategy has:

• Knowing and understanding the needs of one’s target audience.
• The objective that the marketer desires to achieve through the content.
• Choosing relevant formats for the content marketing campaign.
• Determining which is the most suitable platform for sharing the content.
• Paying close attention to content curation, publication, and different Content Management Systems.
• Choosing the content according to the brand’s personality and USP.

Identification of a brand’s goals marks the first step in performing content marketing.
The second step involves carrying out persona research so that it becomes easy to define the lines in which the content is supposed to be.
Then zero in on the best type of the Content Management System and determine the best form of content that delivers the brand’s message.
Starting a blog and regularly posting in it is a great way to draw traffic and build a loyal base of audience.
Lastly, interact with the audience through answering queries and posting comments.