Digital Marketing: What is it?

If you closely observe the world around you, you will definitely find that the current world is certainly divided in to two sectors. One is the real world which you can see, touch and feel with all your sense and the other one is the virtual world that contains spaces which you will never see you can only touch by the help of touch screen and you will definitely feel it by the likes and comment on your new Facebook profile picture. Now after the most notorious thing namely “internet” has arrived the world become a village again. If you have a company or you are working in any company that need to sell their products or services it is the fastest way to reach people through the digital world via internet. And here comes digital marketing.

The Digital Marketing as a term means the use of digital technologies to create an integrated, targeted and measurable communications which help to acquire and retain customers while building deeper relationships with them.

For the reason that it is digital, a reporting engine can be coated within a movement allowing the organization see in real time how that campaign is performing? What is being viewed? How often it is viewed? How long it is being viewed? Not only that it also has other features such as responses rates and purchases made. Please note that each digital marketing technology is different and they cannot all provide the same types of reports. Also, digital marketing is constantly evolving and new technologies are being created all of the time.

So in summery we can say in a broader sense that , Digital Marketing as the practice of promoting products and services using digital distribution channels, reaching targeted consumers, building iterative relationship with those consumers, and having the ability to produce measurable results. Digital Marketing must be targeted, it must be measurable, and it must involve building strong relationships.

Different Types of Digital Marketing Tools

Search Engine Marketing: This involves search engine optimization of your website design and content. Search engine use their algorithm to rank websites and when people search for something, these websites are displayed as the search engines would rank them. Search engine optimization or SEO are the methods by which you try to build your site and content so that it may please the search engines. You either learn SEO or use the paid services.

Link Exchange: In this a website places a link for other website in exchange for its link on that site. Earlier it was also used for SEO purpose but a change in search engine algorithm has stripped that advantage. But it is still it is a powerful method for traffic generation.

Link Purchase: You can purchase placement of your website link on other website. This is very commonly done for SEO as one way incoming backlinks are used to rank your website by search engines. This method also brings in traffic if the site that you purchased link placement from is heavily visited website.

Social Media Marketing: Social media has become ever more important as Google and company cracks down on black-hat marketing tactics. Search engines have also begun using activity on these websites as a metric for popularity and usefulness. Shares on Facebook, Twitter retweets and +1s on Google all help your position on the search engine results pages; however, social media marketing is about more than that. With this type of marketing, your company can more directly connect with consumers to highlight your brand’s values and strengthen your reputation. You have the opportunity to turn around negative experiences in a public forum, to provide updates from your website and encourage discussion among your fans. Social networking on Facebook and similar sites allows you to track what people are really saying about your company, even if they’re not saying it directly to you.

Forum Marketing: Forum is a place where people gather and discuss their problems, strategies etc. There are many forums on the web that you can join and participate in discussion. Most of the blogs and forums allow a link back to your website in your signature text which would appear below the post you make. Again a good traffic builder.

Pay Per Click Advertising: This is a paid service where you pay the service provider every time your link is clicked. This kind of marketing is quite popular with internet marketers. Apart from Google and Yahoo there are many other pay per click services available

Email Newsletters : If you think e-mail marketing is a thing of the past, think again. Not only does it provide you with another place to link to your website and products, but you can entice consumers with special deals or sales. If you gather enough user data when someone subscribes, you can funnel relevant information to certain segments, which helps to increase conversions. Of course, other modes of online marketing do exist. Networking, whether in person or over business sites like LinkedIn, provides you with contacts that can pass on customers who might need your products or services. Direct advertising on websites still exists, too; although, it’s less common now that Google has come out against buying links to influence search position. A healthy balance of all these marketing methods enables your website to become more visible in an era when every business is online.

Classified Advertising: You can advertise your website on Classifieds websites on the web like Craigslist.com and USfreeads.com, facebook.com, bdjobs.com,prothomalo.com and etc. Both paid and free services are available.

Ezine Marketing: This refers to email marketing. You can start your own newsletter or ezine or electronic magazine which your subscribers can choose to receive. Creating an ezine is an integral part of your internet business. You can also choose to purchase an advertising space in the ezines that are already running successfully. your website gets exposed to targeted readers who may like to become your customers.

List Building: This refers to building a subscribers database, which are entered into the list of that database when they opt in for your ezine or agree to a free download against providing you their email address. You can contact these subscribers with your offers and promos.

Lead Purchase: There are some paid services which will provide you with the names and email addresses of the people or leads against a payment. This method is called lead generation. This is done by them by placing your opt-in form (Form which a visitor fills in order to subscribe) on heavily visited websites, a process that you can do on your site also. Normally you are charged per lead.

Viral Marketing: Here, you make a useful product like ebook or software and allow people to pass it on freely. This helps in spreading your website links and branding your site. Apart from ebook or software, you can also build some humorous video or funny email or games. Build anything that people would like to pass on and share.

Press Releases: Here, you build a press release for your website and submit it to one or more press release sites like prweb.com. Press releases are done to create awareness among the web visitors and are displayed on various news channels or sites on the net. Also builds increased back links. Both free and paid submissions are available.

Resell Rights Marketing: You can offer resell rights to your product where people would be able to sell it and keep all the money. It increases your product value and helps in building in name because more sales are made than when you sell it just on your own. Helps in branding too.

RSS Marketing: RSS stands for Really simple Syndication and it may be difficult to conceptualize in the beginning. RSS works by RSS feeds which needs to be generated by website. People can subscribe to these RSS feeds and can view the content of the website via their RSS reader. By this people are enabled to receive the content directly on their desktop. This method is quite new as compared to others and has become really popular following spam issues in email marketing.

Blog Marketing: Blog is an online journal which you can update on regular basis. You need a blogging platform like WordPress or Blogger etc. and you can publish at their site or host on your own. Blogs are immensely popular with marketers and are very much loved by search engines. A must for your business.

Social Bookmarking: This is latest marketing buzz. There are online bookmarking sites available which people can use to bookmark the places on the web they like. You can display these bookmarking buttons on your site or blog and people may submit the link for bookmarking if they like your site. Generates good traffic.

Video Marketing: This is even newer. You can upload a video on the sites that allow. People would watch and then visit your site. Theory is similar to article marketing but media used is different. A popular website that allows video upload is Youtube.com.

Smart Phone Marketing: everyone now have a smart phone thanks to china. People are very used to having internet in their smart phones so there is different way to reach direct toward the customer through their cell phone via internet social media or SMS. This is a very direct way of marketing to your clients or customers. it can also become very expensive. If you have a last minute message to get out to everyone on your SMS list then this is the fastest and most direct way to get to all of them.

Why is Digital Marketing so Important

Efficiency – The fastest and less time and money consuming way to reach the targeted market.

Interactivity – Not solely a push medium (e-mail), but also pull (customers search for information) Information can be collected from customers via web pages (direct response).

Intelligence – Can monitor customers’ interests and profile them.

Individualization – It is possible to tailor e-mail and web communications (personalization)

Integration – Both offline and online channels

Intermediation – New intermediaries can be used as a route to market and there is also the opportunity to sell direct

Independence of Location – Possible to reach a wider market place.