Digital marketing is the promotion of goods or services using digital technologies. At the same time, advertising strategies do not differ much from traditional ones; only channels and promotion tools change. Where television, radio, print media and billboards are used in conventional advertising, in digital advertising, they prefer websites, social networks, SMS mailings and other channels, one way or another, connected with modern technologies. Let’s explain with an example: if on the street they give you a flyer with a discount on a service, this is ordinary marketing. But if a promotional code on the leaflet needs to be activated on the website or in the application, this is already digital.
Are digital marketing and online marketing the same thing?
Not really. Internet marketing is the promotion of goods and digital marketing services on the Internet. It includes SEO, SMM, contextual and targeted advertising, etc. Such tools work only online. Digital marketing operates more widely and can use not only but also offline channels: promo and QR codes, SMS mailings and even interactive screens. In other words, any Internet marketing can be considered digital, but not vice versa.
Popular digital marketing tools
SEO. Searching for the right product or service almost always starts with Yandex or Google. Studies show that the higher the resource is in issuing these systems, the more likely users will choose it to answer their requests. Meanwhile, the site’s position in the search is far from accidental. Some algorithms check the resources for compliance with the request and select the most suitable ones.
SEO, or search engine optimization, allows you to adjust your position in the search, promoting it above the rest. As a result, you get a whole stream of potential customers that you can turn into leads. A careful selection of key phrases, the correct structure and site map, and, most importantly, useful content that will meet people’s needs will help to adapt the resource to the digital algorithms of search engines.
The only thing not to do in SEO is to rush. A noticeable increase in traffic will begin only 6–12 months after the start of work, and this is normal.
Content marketing. The competition in digital marketing consultant is very high, so today, it is important to tell people about the product and inspire them to use it. This problem is solved by another digital tool – content. It helps brands build reputation, so it can include website work, corporate blog posts, podcasts, videos, and even virtual tours. There is only one rule here – relevance. No matter how bright and inventive your content is, its main goal is to solve the user’s problem. This approach increases brand awareness and convinces people of its value. As a result, the product has a loyal audience, some of which can easily become your customers.
SMM. Social networks are now used by almost half of the world’s population, so you can search for your audience and communicate with it, including through SMM. This is how digital marketing calls for product promotion on social networks (VK, Telegram, YouTube and others). It allows you to attract additional traffic and expand the brand’s presence through mentions and comments. The advantage of such a tool is its flexibility – SMM can be used for direct sales and dialogue with the audience. The latter will come in handy if your product is unsuitable for impulsive purchases.
Thanks, social networks are also for transparent analytics. Likes, shares, comments and other built-in metrics will help you evaluate the strategy’s effectiveness and determine how well you understand your audience.
If you want to manage several accounts on social networks at once, we advise you to study aggregators and services for the delayed posting. They will facilitate the content publication and help you quickly collect statistics from different platforms.
Contextual advertising. So in digital, they call paid ads broadcast on search engine sites, their services (for example, Yandex. Maps and Google Maps) and partner sites (Avito, GisMeteo). Contextual advertising is displayed in response to a query that the user enters into the search box, so the chances of a potential client being interested are very high. By experimenting with the content of your ads and the maximum bid per click, you can find a profitable strategy for attracting traffic. Such a marketing tool will be especially useful if you are launching a new product or need a quick increase in sales.
Targeted advertising. This includes social media lead generation ads. For maximum efficiency, the display of advertising banners is configured by considering gender, age, region of residence and other characteristics of the potential audience. You can even form a base of those who have already shown interest in the product and show ads only to them. The main advantages of this tool are customization flexibility and low costs compared to regular advertising.
Affiliate Marketing. Partners can promote the product and ensure the influx of new customers. Most often, these are bloggers or opinion leaders. Affiliates post a guest post or promotional video on their site or a personal blog and receive a commission for every sale made through their referral. The success of such advertising depends on the right choice of the artist, platform and even the content itself.
For example, the recent collaboration of Siberian Pelmeni with Olga Buzova turned into massive trolling on social networks: the TV presenter forgot to cook the semi-finished product before taking a photo with it.
Native advertising. Distrust and skepticism of users force them to choose roundabout ways to promote the product. One of them is native advertising. It reduces the marketing aspect by offering people information or entertainment before they move on to showcasing the product.
It is important to mask the advertising message and not mislead the audience. If people spend too much time researching the content and realize it’s an ad, their interest can become annoying.
E-mail marketing. E-mail is still one of the main ways to convey important information to the client. In marketing, it is used to announce discounts and events, announce new products, and share useful content. Therefore, it needs to be relevant and creative to keep your letter from getting lost in the mailbox. Burger King demonstrated such a successful example of e-mail newsletters.
What are the benefits of digital marketing
So, we figured out the main tools of digital marketing. Now let’s talk about its advantages.
It is tuned to the right audience. When advertising in a magazine or TV, it is difficult to predict who will see it. Another thing is digital marketing. Here you can set up targeted ads based on gender, age, interests and other characteristics of potential customers, as well as use contextual ads or SEO to reach people who have already shown interest in the product. Your efforts will be directed to a narrow category of people, so you will reach your goal faster.
It allows you to compete with big brands. If budget is everything in traditional advertising, then in digital marketing, you can outperform other players with the right strategy or creative idea. Search engines will evaluate not the size of your brand but the relevance and usefulness of the content.
It is measurable. To calculate the effectiveness of advertising, you need to understand how many customers it brings and how much income it brings. With conventional marketing channels, this is not easy. The question “How did you find us?” does not work in all areas. Digital marketing allows you to follow a customer’s entire journey from the product’s introduction to the actual purchase and then use this information to refine the strategy or sales cycle.
It easily adapts to your needs. If in the middle of an advertising campaign you suddenly want to adjust it, digital marketing does this without much difficulty. For example, you can easily forgo context in favor of quality content or focus on SEO instead of native cases. Here you can pause your ads, reallocate your budget across channels, refine your target audience, or change the tone of your content to achieve optimal results.
What can be achieved with digital marketing?
- Increase brand awareness. Before buying something, people need to learn about your MavenUp company and its products and benefits. Digital marketing tools do a great job of raising audience awareness.
- Get leads. Digital marketing helps to quickly establish contact with users and put them in the hands of managers for further work.
- Increase sales. The strategy can be customized with a call to action if your business involves instant purchases. In this case, the task of digital advertising will be to attract customers and keep them for repeated cooperation.
- Bring traffic. The goal of an advertising strategy is not always sales. If a business is built primarily around content, it needs traffic in the form of readers or viewers, and in this case, digital tools will also be useful.
- Educate the audience. Startups and new companies need to prepare users for the appearance of the product and create demand. Here again, digital channels that can distribute informational and educational content will come in handy.
How to work with digital marketing
Step 1. Know your audience. Personalization is the key to a successful advertising strategy. That is why you first need to draw a portrait of your client as accurately as possible and determine their gender, age, interests, problems, and pain points. If there are several promotion channels, each may have its audience. For example, VK users prefer memes and funny videos, while, for example, on vc.ru, nativeness and personal experience are more important.
Step 2. Define goals. The choice of channels and strategies for promotion will depend on them. For example, if your goal is to increase reach, you should pay more attention to social networks, and you can increase sales with the help of paid advertising and SEO. Once your goals are set, it will be easier for you to formulate a marketing strategy.
Step 3. Set a budget for each channel. If you intend to use SEO, social networks or fill the content of a corporate blog, it is worth considering outsourcing costs. Contextual or targeted advertising will also require costs, especially when high keyword competition. To calculate an approximate budget, analyze the strategies of your closest competitors.
Step 4. Build a balance between paid and free channels. Of course, paid advertising will allow you to achieve results faster, but competent SEO, content management and promotion in social networks can bring more organic traffic in the long run. If you doubt the usefulness of certain marketing channels, try combining them in your strategy and see which ones will be more successful in the long run.
Step 5. Come up with relevant content. It refers to social media posts, corporate blog publications, videos, e-mail and SMS mailing lists, and other materials designed to attract an audience. At first, you can create them yourself, but in the future, it is better to enlist the support of professional marketers. They will be able not only to “pack” the value of your product into useful content but also to track the audience’s reaction.
Step 6: Optimize your digital tools for mobile. More than half of users search and view information on the Internet using a smartphone. As a result, your website, social networks and other promotion channels must be adapted for mobile devices. At a minimum, content should be easy to load and read on the go, and in the long run, it’s worth considering developing a branded app.
Step 7. Practice drawing conclusions based on analytics. For success, your team must be able to measure progress and adjust the promotion strategy only based on real data. The main indicators can be obtained from the Yandex and Google advertising cabinets, and the rest of the information can be collected using counters and audience monitoring.
Digital Marketing Trends
One of the features of digital marketing is the rapid change in trends. To remain competitive in this area, it is important not to limit yourself to traditional tools but to gradually try new ones. Today they include:
- Chatbots. They can close most standard user requests and are available 24/7. This means that customers will receive instant feedback, and staff will be able to switch to solving more important issues;
- Shoppable-content. This engaging content allows you to move quickly on to a purchase. To test this format, add product links to your social networks. So the user will be able to immediately find out the price and place an order;
- AR and VR – augmented and virtual reality. These technologies give the customer an interesting experience, helping to evaluate the product from all sides before buying. One of the first cases in this area belongs to US. They have developed an AR application that allows you to understand how new furniture will look in a specific setting;
- interactive content. Tests, contests, surveys and other ways to communicate with the audience will make the buying process more fun and let you learn more about potential customers;
- video marketing. TikTok is now breaking all records of popularity, and 66% of people admit that they would rather watch a short product video than an advertising description. If you haven’t incorporated video content into your strategy, now is the time to do so.
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