INTODUCTION TO DIGITAL MARKETING

Introduction to Digital Marketing

Today’s time of Internet has opened the gateway of tremendous digital marketing opportunities for businesses. By utilizing different channels of digital marketing, businesses cannot just share their product and services online; additionally they can gain clients for their business, entice them and can convert them to boost their ROI. The speed and straightforwardness with which the digital media transmits data and support a business is astonishing.  In this Introduction to Digital Marketing E-Guide, every single aspect of Digital Marketing will be discussed to help marketers understand what Digital Marketing is, how it functions, and how it can help them optimize their marketing campaign.

The world is super-connected nowadays and all things considered, marketing and advertising are no more the same as they once were. This is particularly valid because of the ascent of online networking, which has changed how organizations speak with potential and existing customers.

So, before jump onto the introduction to Digital Marketing, let’s know what precisely Digital Marketing is and what does it incorporate? Essentially, it is an aggregate term, which is utilized where advertising and marketing meet web innovation and different types of online media platforms. Let’s firstly throw some light on the basics of Digital Marketing via the definition given below, this is the first step when we talk about the introduction to Digital Marketing-

Digital Marketing| Definition

Digital Marketing can be understood as a well-targeted, conversion-oriented, quantifiable, and interactive marketing of products or services by utilizing digital innovation to achieve the customers, and transform them into clients in a sustainable fashion. The whole concept and functionalities of Digital Marketing are more competent, effective, result-oriented and measurable, which make it very different from traditional marketing.

The traditional way of marketing lets businesses market their products or administrations on print media, radio and TV commercials, bill boards, business cards, and in numerous other comparable ways where Internet or web-based social networking sites were not utilized for promoting.

However, traditional promoting approaches had constrained client reachability and extent of driving clients’ purchasing conduct. In addition, traditional marketing methods were not quantifiable too. Let us understand noticeable difference between Traditional Marketing & Digital Marketing-

Difference b/w Traditional Marketing & Digital Marketing

Traditional Marketing

1. Communication is unidirectional in traditional marketing, which means, an organization communicates about its services with its audiences.
2. Medium of communication in traditional marketing is generally phone calls, emails, and letters.
3. Campaign in Traditional marketing takes more time as designing, preparing, and launching are involved.
4. It is best for reaching local audience.
5. It is almost impossible to measure the effectiveness of a traditional marketing campaign.

Digital Marketing

1. Communication is bidirectional in Digital Marketing as businesses can communicate with customers and customers can ask queries or make suggestions to businesses as well.
2. Medium of communication is more powerful and involves social media websites, chats, apps and Email.
3. Digital marketing campaigns can be developed quite rapidly and with digital tools, channelizing Digital Marketing campaigns is easier.
4. It is very effective for reaching global audiences.
5. Digital Marketing lets you measure the effectiveness of a digital marketing campaign through analytics.

Digital Marketing accomplishes targets of marketing of a business through various Digital Marketing Channels.

Now, in this Introduction to Digital marketing guide, we will go through different digital marketing channels and understand their roles-

Digital Marketing Channels included in Digital Marketing PDF

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO can be understood as the process of optimizing the structure, design, and content of your website so the Search engines can index them accurately and position sites in the top results of SERPs. SEO also incorporates different promotional activities that boost search engine ranking of your site.

How does Search Engine Work?

Generally, most of the Search engine does- Spiders or Web Crawling, Indexing & Displaying.

• Spiders & Crawlers: In this, spiders crawl over the web for searching the content. Once spiders finish the scanning process, they copy the searched content to store that in a search engines database. Web crawlers collect following information from webpage-

web crawlers information

1. Website URL
2. Website Title
3. Meta Tag Information
4. Web Page Content
5. Link on the page and where they go

• Indexing: Search engines crawl and index the content of different web pages and additionally, they keep track of all those relevant pages in keyword-based indices. To determine ranking, search engine looks into the content of the page, Page URL, Page Title, Domain Age, Topicality, Domain Trust, Social Signals, Number and relevance of external pointing links to the page and other factor
• Displaying: This is the last step in how search engine works and it involves retrieving of the best-matched results for the search queries and then displaying of the search result to the visitor.

Role of Keywords in SEO

Introduction to digital marketing PDF emphasizes that keywords play the most important role in SEO, as its right use is the key to successful SEO. It is what a user enters on the search bar to find specific information. Different important terms associated with Keywords are-

• Keyword Density- More keywords can even get you penalized for “spamming “or keyword stuffing and that is why having keyword density from SEO point of view becomes mandatory. For best result, you need to have keyword density around 3-7% for the major and 1-2 % for minor keywords.
• Keywords in URL- You need to know that first word is best position for keyword in URL
• Keywords in Title tag- Keywords should be in beginning of title tags, 10- 60 characters, no special characters
• Keywords in description meta tag- Show theme less than 200 characters
• Keywords in Keyword meta-tag- Show theme less than 10 words
• Keywords in Headlines- Use Hx font style tags appropriately

Link Building in SEO- It involves Off-page and On-page optimization-

Off-Page Optimization

It is the process of boosting search engine rankings of your website by getting external links pointing back to your site. The more effective quality links you can get to your webpage, your site will have better chance to rank in SERPs. A quality Backlink has following qualities-

1. Incoming links from high page rank webpage
2. Use of different anchor text
3. Use of Do-follow or No-follow links
4. Having Backlink from similar niche blog or website
5. Avoiding black hat SEO
6. High Trust
7. Good Domain Authority
8. High Relevance in the subject matter of the linking and destination domains
9. Site Age that shows site stability

On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization is directly related to the content and structure of the website and it focuses on-

1. Unique title tags and Headlines
2. Keyword frequency in the URL, Body Text and Headings
3. Synonyms
4. Copywriting
5. Adding description to images
6. Good Internal Navigation

2. Social Media Marketing

Social Network Marketing incorporates marketing strategies that use social media channels as marketing tools for optimizing exposure of a brand, targeting audiences, conversions and returns. Social Media marketing can be done by adding social media links to the site content e.g. RSS feeds and sharing buttons. It can also be done by promoting sites through social media channels by updating tweets, statuses, blog posts, photos and so on. Most of the Digital Marketing PDF considers SMM as the second most important digital marketing channels.

• Social Media Marketing aids an online business get direct feedback from their customer on different social websites like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Instagram, YouTube, etc.
• The success of a social media marketing campaign is based on “Personal” interactions between the user and business.

Different social media marketing channels considered as important by Digital Marketing PDF are-

Facebook Marketing

Digital Vidya facebook page

• Facebook includes most powerful social media marketing features that allow marketers provide videos, photos, longer description option and testimonials on their Facebook page for others to see.
• Marketers can make a group or join a group of their liking on Fb and ask questions or give answers related to topics associated with your kinds of businesses.
• There are automated scheduling tools available to automate Facebook Marketing, which makes it one of the most quantifiable SMM channels incorporated in most of the basics of digital marketing e-guides. 

Twitter Marketing

• Twitter marketing is one of the best ways to reach out new customers without invading their privacy.
• Twitter is actually a micro blogging service that lets marketers send and receive messages.
• It helps businesses contact and communicate with their customers.
• You can also create your personal page in twitter, upload your site and share information regarding your business on Twitter.

LinkedIn Marketing

• As one of the most preferred SMM channels of ‘Introduction to Digital Marketing PDF’, LinkedIn connects professionals from various backgrounds.
• It provides professionals an opportunity to expand their businesses by connecting with other business professionals.
• By using widgets, LinkedIn members can promote their company directly to their clients.
• “Company Page” can also be created on LinkedIn that acts like a business resume for your client to have a quick overview of your business.

Google+ Marketing

Google Plus offers a variety of social media marketing features that are considered essential to know while going through the basics of Digital Marketing

1. Circles: Helps marketers create groups or join circles of their likings
2. Stream: Offers instant updates on selected contacts or groups
3. Photos: Helps marketers upload photos
4. Sparks: Lets marketers specify their area of interest every time they logged in
5. Plus One: It is similar to Facebook’s ‘like button’ through which you can express your opinion about any particular product or service
6. Video Chat and Huddles: Helps you solve all the queries by using video chat facility that can be used to channelize live customer interactions while huddles allow marketers to conduct group chats.

Video Promotion    

• Video promotions are amongst the quickest ways to reach your prospects. Visual effect creates more powerful impact on customer than print or digital text.
• Video promotion enables marketers explain the product more convincingly compared to any other medium.
• Social Media Marketing on “YouTube” help marketers turn their viewers into fans then fans into customers.
• Video promotion also aids in getting a good rating because there is very less competition for video promotion pages.
• Attaching script with your video helps you gain maximum viewers. In addition, you can repurpose your video content into a presentation, transcription, screenshots as podcasts and images, and digital marketing PDF downloads.

3. Online Paid Advertising

PPC Ads

Online Paid Advertising, Pay per click advertising or PPC is another important digital marketing channel that you need to understand while going through introduction to digital marketing. In paid advertising, you need to pay each time a user clicks on your Ad. You need to pay according to your bid amount and one of the most popular pay per click programs is Google AdWords.

Google AdWords

• Understanding purpose of your PPC campaign
• Researching on target audiences
• Proper Keyword Research and conduction of A/B Testing
• Learning from your competitors’ Ad copy before you make your own AdWords campaign
• Keyword grouping and Organization along with Ad groups creation and Management, etc.
• Click here to learn Google AdWords in 10 Steps.

Facebook Ads

• Facebook offers its users the unique facility of paid advertising to advertise their product or services on Facebook.
• Facebook offers different options like Click to Website, Page Post Engagement, Website Conversion, Page Likes kinds of Paid Advertising options

Twitter Ads

• Marketers can directly implement Twitter ads right into the timeline of Twitter that lets ads inherently fit in, and hence do not distract the viewer’s experience.
• Twitter is considered incredibly competent through its promoting Ads and product. Some of the noticeable Twitter Ads are-
• Twitter new Ads arrival with Download options
• Ads with click to call button
• Promoted hashtags, promoted account, promoted tweet
• Twitter Cards

4. Email Marketing, Mobile App Marketing & Web Analytics

Email Marketing

Email Marketing Process

Email marketing is one of the most pervasive and effective strategies to reach optimum users with least expenses. It is a type of direct marketing that utilizes email as a method for correspondence. Email marketing is a proficient approach to remain associated with the customers and in the meantime advancing your business and services. With email marketing, marketers can likewise track how much percentage of individuals has demonstrated enthusiasm for your item or administration. Proficient email marketing is considered as a superior approach for well-organized digital marketing campaigns. Here are a few advantages for email marketing-

• Permission-based list building, which is a making of an email list by giving a sign box to imminent email contacts and affirming their endorsement with a subsequent email.
• Campaign creation that is understood as the capability to organize and structure extensive volumes of e-mails by branding, subject and schedule
• Online reporting that offers the ability to track the sending of individual email campaigns, their bouncing rates and other related details.
• Rich content Integration that provides features like addition of graphics, audio, video, and test using templates along with drag and drop editor.
• List Management that offers the ability to organize, edit, segment, grow and manage a database of client e-mail contact details.

Mobile App Marketing

Mobile App Marketing Strategy

Growing prevalence of smart-phones makes mobile app one of the most important parts of ‘digital marketing PDF’. While building your mobile App, below given are the important things you need to pay heed upon-

• You need to optimize social media presence of your App by improving a steady social media following on different social networks like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, etc.
• You should drive engagement across your mobile app by focusing your efforts on boosting ongoing engagement and keep updating fresh content to influence users have interest in your app.
• Another important factor is to increasing app store ratings that you ought to try, as this will drive a lot of traffic to your app.
• Ensuring a steady rise in app downloads is one of the important things you need to consider in mobile marketing. However, if your product is valuable, its download rate will automatically increase.

Web Analytics

Web Analytics Process

Web Analytics is the review, examinations, and reporting of a web information and data for motivations behind comprehension and enhancing web utilization. This strategy is helpful to quantify what numbers of individuals have gone by a site, and how frequent they have used the site or what course they have selected to reach your site. It is exceptionally helpful for marketers as they can make sense of it, which digital marketing strategy is effective, and which is most certainly not. This is thoroughly covered during introduction to Digital Marketing.

• Different Web analytics tools can be used to measure whether your site page is working effectively or not.
• Some of the most common Web Analytics tools are Google Analytics, IBM Coremetrics web analytics, Adobe site catalyst, IBM’s Unica Netsight, Piwik, Yahoo marketing dashboard, Moz, etc.

Conclusion

SEO, Social Media, Paid Advertising, Email Marketing along with Mobile Marketing and Web Analytics are the pillars while making an introduction to digital marketing. In this introduction to online marketing, we tried to explain all these digital marketing channels in the most elaborative manner possible.

However, in case you want to know more about Digital Marketing- you may go through our blog- 10 Must-Read Digital Marketing Books in 2017.

If you have any doubts about this digital marketing introduction, feel free to ask me in comments.