Today in the business world, Digital marketing has become the most profitable source for growing the business. It connects you with potential customers for your brand’s services & marketing to your business. It was launched by Prime Minister Narender Modi in Delhi on 1 July 2015, PM Narendra Modi officially launched Digital India. Digital marketing is the best way to promote your business on online platforms. In pandemic due to  Covid-19 digital marketing is the most supportive medium for customer service or sales. Digital sales growth in 18% 2020 compared to 2019. Marketing technologies can help increase the effectiveness and efficiency of marketing activities

Introduction of Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is a marketing technique that involves the usage of digital mediums such as the internet & wireless for creating awareness, consideration, purchase & loyalty for a brand product or a service.

Digital Marketing is also known as online marketing or internet marketing as the internet is a major medium supporting these marketing activities

Need of Digital Marketing:

  1. More and more people are getting connected to digital mediums.
  2. Digital devices like smartphones, laptops, tabs, etc are an essential part of our life.
  3. We use these for our daily activities like shopping, pictures, entertainment, work, etc.
  4. Consciously/Unconsciously we are creating lots of data about us
  5. This data can be linked to our email ID & phone number telling brands about our personal preferences.
  6. Using Digital Marketing companies try to target people based on interest & preferred mediums

Digital Marketing v/s Traditional Marketing

Traditional Marketing involves presence on print ads, outdoors ads, newspaper ads, TV, Radio, etc. while Digital marketing involves presence on Social Media, Websites, Search Engines, Emails, etc. In Traditional Marketing there is lake specific targeting of prospects while in Digital Marketing there is can specifically target people based on location, age interests, etc. Static people can’t interact in Traditional Marketing, while in Digital Marketing dynamic people can interact, modify, respond & share it. It’s costlier, you pay to reach out to people who might not be prospects at all in Traditional Marketing, while Digital Marketing is cost-effective, you online pay when the audience actually views or interacts. Traditional Marketing reach is local. Only bigger brands can afford global reach while digital marketing is wide-reaching. Almost anyone presents anywhere in the world can be reached at a standard budget. In traditional marketing, direct results are not measurable while in digital marketing results are easily measurable as clicks, impressions, visits & sales

Why Digital Marketing Is Preferred Today:

  1. Today the market is flooded with products & still, people seek more.
  2. From mobile plans, birthday cakes to travel plans, everything is custom.
  3. We use digital devices to find personalized solutions.
  4. This has led to a great reduction in consumption of mass products
  5. There is nothing like an ideal product or service on the market today
  6. Each product & service has its specific market & audience
  7. Hence, brands are looking for personalized marketing solutions rather than mass marketing.

Plan Your Online Business Strategy

An online business strategy can boost your chances of digital success, helping you to define clear goals & focus your online activity. You need to identify your Unique Selling Point (USP). If customer services are what set you apart from your competition, this is your (USP). Understanding what you want to achieve, can help you make the right decisions at the right time.

3 Steps Create Your Own Business Strategy

  1. Define Business Goals?
  2. Write a Mission Statement?
  3. Identify USP

When taking the business online, understanding how customers browse on the web is an important factor in ensuring your online efforts are rewarded

Identify the Audience Segmentation

To choose the right channels, & find out who you’re talking to when you should talk to them, & what should talk about. This is called audience segmentation. You can segment customers in many ways from basic demographics like Age, Gender to specific interests or segment customers by location may benefit an e-commerce store for specific areas. Segmentation can also help with your online advertising for channels allowing you to target paid advertising to a specific audience based on information like what an audience likes or dislikes.

Understanding Customers Behaviour

Create the best possible online experience for customers by understanding how to make the most of the moments when they interact with the brand:

  1. What customers touchpoints are
  2. How to map common online customers journeys
  3. How to identify customers' touchpoints that generate business goals.

Online, they can be a valuable way for businesses to build brand loyalty & trust. When a customer encounters touchpoints multiple times, such as:

  1. Online Ads: This provides consists value & creates ongoing positive associations with a brand
  2. Social Media: Social media is another great tool to develop touchpoints & can help give a business character & a personal feel
  3. Reviews: Once your touchpoints are set up, remember to regularly review how they’re performing.

Digital Marketing Channels & Tools

Digital Marketing involves the usage of the following channels:

Search Engine

Search is the first step of every buying cycle, whether we are buying a mobile phone or a home, we go to GOOGLE and search for available options: price, vendors & other related details. We shortlist a few options & compare them over the next few hours or days before we purchase one. Although search engines are not the only option we use for buying research it’s one of the most used ones. 80% of interested users agreed that they prefer to use search engines before making a purchase. Hence, for companies, it’s important to have their presence on search engines when their prospects are looking for solutions.

Social Media

Social media involves the social interaction among people in which they create, share or exchange information, ideas & media in virtual communities & networks. The real power of social media is socializing i.e, Getting people into the conversation. & also social media is to leverage these connections & start a conversation about your brand. 4 websites out  of the top 1o most visited are social media sites On average, internet users spend about 10+ hours per week on social media

Email Marketing

Email Marketing is directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using email. Every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It usually involves using email to send conversations, requests business and is meant to build relationships. One is the best tool for lead generation is MailChimp, with a Free plan that includes up to 2,000 contacts across all audiences in your account, and it’s easy to use to grow your business

Display Advertising

Display advertising involves creating & running banner ads across different websites. It’s the best channel for those who want to generate higher visibility resulting in greater audience reach & brand building. Also, these ads are highly visible to the audience creating greater branding for companies. In these ads, you can choose their position based on user interest, topic, demography, etc.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliates promote products, services, or websites of other businesses & make commissions out of them by sending traffic & buyers to them. In affiliate marketing, you can find good affiliates to meet monthly conversion targets. It’s important to realize that affiliates are independent marketers, who choose which affiliate programs to promote & what program to drop.

Mobile Marketing

Mobile phones today are much more than just communication devices. Mobile has been used largely today for buying & finding products/businesses & solutions online. Since mobiles are the devices that remain with us 24* it gives marketers one of the most advanced & essential channels for marketing.

Website

A website is a set of related web pages typically served from a single web domain. There are many categories under which a website could come such as corporate, eCommerce, social media, personal, informative, etc. each created for serving a different purpose

Analytics

Web analytics in itself is not a direct marketing channel but a supporting channel that helps marketers to plan & execute their campaigns better. Analytics can help us to track the demography, device, browser, and performance details of website visitors.

 

Digital Marketing Objectives

As per the definition of digital marketing discussed at the beginning, it involves the fulfillment of the following 4 objectives.

Awareness

The first & most important objective of digital marketing is to create awareness for your business by building the right visibility. This phase is essential to plan what mediums you will use to acquire traffic to your website, it leads to converting an unaware prospect into an aware prospect.

Consideration

If there are people who are already aware of you or who are looking for solutions similar to what you provide, this phase will help you in creating consideration for your brand. The consideration phase will lead to converting an aware prospect into an interesting prospect by regular engagement

Purchase

It’s focused on generating revenue from people who have shown interest in your product & services by converting them into a buyer.

Loyalty

Its focus is on creating content & campaigns for current customers & offering them a great after-sales experience so that they can be turned into a brand active All the channels of digital marketing work according to meet these four objectives.

Did you know: Sapphire Technologies is a highly recognized and leading digital marketing service provider among global clients that focuses on enhancing the business reach through digital marketing services

Final Thought

To set yourself up for success online business, you need to take a look before your leap.

A good plan will consider 3 things

  1. Know your online goal
  2. Set yourself realistic expectations
  3. Use analytics to track & measure
  4. Always keep up to date

To go digital marketing & do it the right way, you need a well-thought-out & flexible plan.