Digital Marketing

Module-1

Introduction to Digital Marketing:

Digital Marketing is a term defined to achieve your business objectives and goals using the
online channels that include but are not limited to search engines, social media platforms,
content creation & advertising in order to educate, engage & market your product or service to
potential buyers.

Just a decade ago, if a business wanted to reach out to target customers they would promote
using traditional marketing mediums such as TV, radio, print. Simply because that’s where the
potential customers’ used to spend their time. However as humans evolved our technology
advanced giving rise to a digital revolution. To simply state, people started spending more
time on online platforms such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube etc to stay
acquainted with news, entertainment and commerce. Hence, today our lives run on a click.

But does that mean TV, print, radio don’t work any more? No, not at all! We cannot say that
traditional marketing efforts do not have any impact. Rather, it goes hand in hand with digital
marketing and the distribution has evened out.

Digital has become a part of our existence. From shopping apparel to groceries, furniture &
getting laundry delivered everything is online. With this new shift, marketers did not waste
anytime and quickly adapted to use social media & other digital tools to push & pull the
consumer which gave birth to Digital marketing.

Definition of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is the act of promoting products and services through digital channels,
such as social media, SEO, email, and mobile apps. Any form of marketing that involves
electronic devices is considered digital marketing.

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BENEFITS OF DIGITAL MARKETING

1. Digital marketing is cost-effective

One of the biggest benefits of online marketing is that it is cost-effective. Digital marketing helps
you save money and obtain more leads. With traditional marketing methods, it’s difficult for
small-to-mid-size businesses to compete with larger companies. Big businesses have the money
to allocate for TV ads, radio spots, and more. This makes it hard for small businesses to compete
with these larger companies.

Digital marketing, however, puts businesses on the same playing field. It is an affordable way to
market your business to interested consumers. Many digital marketing and advertising methods
are budget-friendly. With this method, however, the amount you spend will affect your
campaign’s success.

The most significant cost of digital marketing is time.

It can take time to implement strategies and develop results from those strategies. The results,
however, are well worth the investment of your time. When you invest in a strategy like PPC,
you’ll reap this advantage of digital marketing.

2. Digital marketing is measurable

When you invest money into a marketing campaign, you want to track the results of the
campaign. It’s important to know if a strategy is driving results that help your business grow.
One of the most significant benefits of a digital marketing strategy is the ability to measure your
results. While traditional methods can be extremely effective, it’s hard to measure that
effectiveness. There is no clear way to track the origin of leads with traditional methods without
asking every person that visits your business. With digital marketing methods, you can
accurately track the results of your campaign. Each type of campaign has a tracking system.
From social media to search engine optimization (SEO), you’ll be able to track the results of
your campaigns. You can track various metrics with each campaign.

3.Digital marketing allows you to target ideal customers

To have an effective marketing campaign, you must reach the right people. You have to reach
people interested in your business and that want to hear from you. Out of all the perks, the most
significant advantage of online marketing is the ability to target people specifically.Targeting
people with traditional marketing methods is difficult.

Generally, your message goes to everyone in hopes of reaching people interested in your
business. It’s a challenge to obtain enough leads to justify your marketing costs.

With digital marketing, you reach people interested in your business. You can specifically target
consumers with interest in your company, services, or products.It’s a level of depth that
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traditional marketing can’t match.It allows you to spend your budget more effectively and obtain
more valuable leads for your company.

4. Digital marketing allows you to reach people at the start of the buying journey

When shoppers start looking for a product, it’s crucial that you make an impact early. You want
them to get familiar with your business and choose your company over the competition. The
benefits of digital marketing include being able to help you reach people at the start of
the buying journey.

People often turn to the Internet at the start of the buying journey.

They begin to research and look for a product or service that fits their needs. If you offer the
product or service they want, it’s the right time to make a positive impact.

Your audience is looking to learn more about products or services to educate themselves. By
utilizing online marketing, you can direct these users to your page to provide them with the
information they need.

In doing this, you build brand exposure.

These users find your profile and learn more about your business. Whether it’s through your
social account or content, you’ll expose people to your company and brand.

Even if leads don’t convert right away, they will remember your business. It will make an impact
on them early in the buyer’s journey.

When they get closer to the conversion stage, they will remember your company and choose
your business over the competition.

This advantage of online marketing can help businesses like yours compete with competitors and
grow.

5. Digital marketing enables you to make changes as you go

One of the biggest benefits of digital marketing is that you can make changes as you go. This is
unique to digital marketing.

With traditional methods, you can’t make changes once you’ve committed. Once your flyers or
your billboard is up, you can’t alter the ad until the end of your campaign.

This is hard on your budget because you can’t change your campaign when it’s live to drive
better results.

When you invest in online marketing, you have the power to make changes whenever.

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You can update your PPC campaigns, tweak your social media ads, optimize your SEO
compaigns, and update your content as you need. This means you can adapt your campaign to
drive the best results.

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Real Marketing Vs Digital Marketing:

Real Marketing Digital Marketing

Communication is unidirectional in Communication is bidirectional in Digital

traditional/real marketing, which means, an Marketing as businesses can communicate
organization communicates about its services with customers and customers can ask
with its audiences. queries or make suggestions to businesses
as well.
Medium of communication in traditional/real Medium of communication is more
marketing is generally phone calls, emails, and powerful and involves social media
letters. websites, chats, apps and Email.
Campaign in Traditional/real marketing takes Digital marketing campaigns can be
more time as designing, preparing, and developed quite rapidly and with digital
launching are involved. tools, channelizing Digital Marketing
campaigns is easier.
It is best for reaching local audience It is very effective for reaching global
audiences.
It is almost impossible to measure the Digital Marketing lets you measure the
effectiveness of a traditional/real marketing effectiveness of a digital marketing
campaign. campaign through analytics.

Often expensive Most cost effective

Non-Versatile Versatile
Lack of Realtime Results Instant Realtime results
Delayed Communication Instant Communication

Digital Marketing Channels

1)Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website
traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO is about making improvements to
your website’s structure and content so its pages can be discovered by people searching for what
you have to offer, through search engines. SEO is what you do to rank higher on Google and get
more traffic to your site.

People are searching for any manner of things both loosely and directly related to your business.
These are all opportunities to connect with these people, answer their questions, solve their
problems, and become a trusted resource for them.
Importance of SEO:
 More website traffic: When your site is optimized for search engines, it gets more
traffic which equates to increased brand awareness.
 More customers: To get your site optimized, it has to target keywords—the terms your
ideal customers/visitors are searching—meaning you’ll get more relevant traffic.

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 Better reputation: Ranking higher on Google builds instant credibility for your business.
If Google trusts you, then people trust you.
 Higher ROI: You put money into your website, and into the marketing campaigns that
lead back to your website pages. A top-performing site improves the fruits of those
campaigns, making your investment worth it.

2)Social Media Marketing:

In Social Media Marketing, we increase traffic, and thus ranking of sites through social media
sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. These sites offer an online platform to
interact with other people and build a social network throughout the world. Each of the social
media sites has different features and offers you lots of ways to drive traffic to your website and
promote your business and services. Let us know about some of the popular social media sites:
i) Facebook Marketing: Facebook marketing is a new form of marketing that allows you to
promote your business, product, services, etc., on Facebook. Facebook is an online social media
platform that offers you an online platform to invite and connect with other people, which can be
your family members, friends, colleagues, etc.
Facebook offers you plenty of ways to promote your business. Some of the commonly used
Facebook features for marketing are as follows: Facebook Business Page, Facebook Group
ii)Linkedln Marketing:
LinkedIn is a professional networking site that allows you to interact with professionals and
build a professional network. You can share industry news, your profession or job-related ideas,
and requirements like job openings. Today, it is widely used to promote businesses, products,
brands, which is called LinkedIn marketing.
iii) Pinterest:
Pinterest is a social media network that acts as a virtual online pinboard. It allows you to create
your own virtual online boards, where you can pin images, videos, and share them with other
users. The users interact through visuals, they can't share ideas, thoughts, etc., without using an
image or video. When you post visuals like images or videos to your own or other boards (a
collection of pins), it is called pinning on Pinterest.
iv) Twitter:
Twitter is another online media platform. It is a micro-blogging tool that allows users to read,
write, and share messages that are up to 140 characters long. These short messages are called
tweets. Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey in 2006. Today, it has become a popular social media
site with a huge user base.What is Twitter marketing: Twitter marketing refers to using twitter
to promote or advertise your business, product, services, and drive traffic to your website.

3) Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM is a digital marketing strategy that is different from SEO and SMO, as here you have to pay
the search engines like Google for the marketing of your products and services on Search Engine
Result Pages. The more you pay, the more are the chances of your ads to appear on the top of the
search engine listings. So, it is the practice of marketing a business through paid advertisements
such as Pay per Click ads (PPC) that appear on search engine result pages above the organic
results.

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In SEO, you don't pay Google for traffic and clicks; rather, you get a free slot in the search
results based on the quality and relevancy of your content for a given keyword search.
SEM is also known by many names based on the Search Engine you are using for marketing. For
example, Google ads.
What is Google Ads:
Google Ads, which was earlier known as Google Adwords, is a paid search engine marketing
platform of Google. It is also known as PPC advertising or pay-per-click advertising. It offers
PPC advertising, including banner, text, and rich media ads.
It allows advertisers to bid on certain keywords for their clickable ads to appear in Google's
search results. Advertisers pay for these clicks, and this is how Google makes money. It is called
PPC (Pay per Click) as you only pay once when someone clicks on your ad.

4)Affiliate Marketing:

Affiliate marketing is a type of digital marketing in which an affiliate earns a commission for
marketing the products or services of a company or a seller, etc. The affiliate gets a part of the
profit from each sale. So, the company compensates the third-party publishers, the affiliates, to
generate traffic to company products and services.

It is a relationship between three parties: Advertiser, Publisher, and Consumer. Affiliate

marketers join affiliate programs that relate to their websites or blogs and have reputable
promotes to promote. The affiliate shares these products with their audiences and earns a
commission when a product is purchased.

5)Email Marketing:
Email marketing is also one of the most profitable means of marketing, like SMO, PPC, etc. It
refers to sending a commercial message to a group of people, usually potential customers using
mail. In simple words, it is the use of emails for promoting products or services as well as
developing and maintaining relationships with the clients.
Common Goals of an Email Marketing:
o To increase new signups for your product and services
o To generate new leads for the sales department
o To reach to maximum attendees for your event, to attend the event
o To get donations for your cause
Benefits of Email Marketing:
o It helps increase Brand Awareness.
o It is a cost-efficient way of digital marketing.
o It allows you to create highly personalized messages or ads based on previous sales and
purchases.
o It also provides you metrics to evaluate the performance of your Email Campaign.
o It has a larger reach.

Creating Digital Marketing Plan

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1.Preparing for digital marketing

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No matter if your company is B2B or B2C, big or small, selling locally or nationally, the next
few steps are crucial to establishing a strong digital marketing foundation and solid online
presence.
SET GOALS
Start by asking yourself, “What problem am I trying to solve?” This will help you determine the
most effective digital marketing strategy for your needs. Some examples of problems could be:
 Lack of connections to or relationships with customers or others in the community.
 Not enough people know about your brand. Your goal might be to build brand awareness.
 Not attracting enough new customers. Your goal might be to aim for acquisition and lead
generation.

Make your goals SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. For
example, if you currently get five new leads a month, setting a goal of obtaining 100 new leads
in the next 12 months is more realistic than setting a goal of 2,000 new leads during the same
time period.

Develop buyer personas

Clearly define your digital target by getting to know your audience. If you don’t understand
enough about who you’re trying to reach, you’ll struggle to deliver a message that’s relevant
enough to cut through. The good news is that you don’t have to have a customer research agency
on retainer to select your target market(s). The easiest way to make sure you do not come up
with a watery “general” campaign is to make your own buyer personas, also called avatars,
which are fictionalized, general descriptions of your key customer groups.

 What types of articles, facts, and/or experiences that are relevant to your industry will
your avatar find interesting?
 What content will entice your personas to keep visiting your website or to engage in
social media?
 What information will increase social media users’ awareness of your company?

WATCH YOUR COMPETITION

You have likely spent time researching your competitors, but now is the time to research what
they are up to digitally. Remember that your competitors are not just those who offer an identical
product or service. You can think of your competition as the brands who offer the same products
or services you do, brands that offer different products but compete with you in the mind of the
customer, or those that might have a brand with a similar look and feel. Get inspired by your
competitors’ wins and use your differences to highlight what is unique about what you offer or
your competitive advantage.

KNOW YOUR BRAND

Your brand is how and why your customers choose you over your competitors. You can think of
your brand as your company’s personality, and it is something worth clearly defining.

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2.Messaging
Like branding, messaging is what you are conveying to consumers about your entity. The way
you communicate to

the consumer regarding your company, services, and products can:

 Connect you and your company to a specific industry.

 Elicit emotion and build relationships with the members of your target market.
 Educate members of your target market about the benefits of your products/services.
 Serve as a call to action.

In regard to digital marketing, you can create and relay the messaging for your business
by developing original, relevant content and using strategically determined keywords.

Engage your employees

If employees are enthusiastic about your digital marketing efforts, your customers will more
quickly embrace your new strategies. Employees are the trendsetters in this case. Get your
employees engaged in thinking about ideas for blog and video topics and possibly writing
content.

KEYWORDS

What are keywords?

Keywords are topics and ideas that define what your online content is about. They are the words
and phrases that people enter into search engines such as Google when looking for a product,
service, or information. If you boil all of the content on your website—all the images, video,
copy, etc.—down to a few simple words and phrases, these are your primary keywords. Using
appropriate keywords in all of your content and on your website is a central element of effective
Search Engine Optimization (SEO). As Google and other search engines have evolved, the focus
of your keywords and phrases needs to be relevant to the content, answering the question of
“what are my potential customers searching for.”

As a content creator and website owner, you want the keywords on your pages, blogs, and videos
to be relevant to what people are searching for, so they have a better chance of finding your
content among the results.

3.Channels

After setting goals, making decisions to establish a brand, researching the industry and
competitive environment, and considering messaging to relay, you can determine which digital
marketing channels are likely to be the most effective for your company. This section provides a
brief overview of:

 Websites and search engine optimization (SEO).

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 Email marketing.
 Online business directories.
 Social media: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube.

4.Putting it all together MAKE A PLAN

Making a plan will help you begin to develop a successful digital marketing strategy. You want
to determine the amount of time and money that you can realistically commit to digital
marketing on a consistent basis. Mark time off on your calendar, even if it is only a few hours a
week to start with. You should determine a budget that includes specifics about how funds will
be allocated. Initially your budget might only include a few software tools to help you create and
post content; later it might grow to include paid ads or marketing campaigns. Remember to start
with a few action items and be consistent!

5.Measure, analyze, and revise

Digital marketing efforts do not end when campaigns begin. Another crucial part of
implementing a successful digital marketing strategy is analyzing your results. Initially, there
will be trial and error to fine-tune channel selection and strategy. By tracking leads, analyzing
results, and monitoring analytics, a company can decide what is working and what is not. This, in
turn, should result in heightened brand awareness, cost savings, and greater overall return
through increased sales.

The process of digital marketing is an ongoing process of testing, measuring to see which efforts
get results, and continuing to refine. Which messages are most effective with your target
audience? Which social media platform obtains the best results for your business? Are there
particular topics that drive more traffic than others?

SWOT Analysis

Digital Marketing is an ever-changing field. The speed at which technology is transforming calls
for a disciplined approach to tackling business challenges.

In order to get your business started and then stay ahead of the competition, conducting a SWOT
Analysis is absolutely necessary.

It is a method of structured planning that can be applied to a business, a product, industry, place
or even an individual for that matter.

In the field of Digital Marketing, applying SWOT analysis while starting your business or
assessing a product could help you understand where you stand and how to capitalize on the vast
amount of opportunities within your industry.

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SWOT analysis needs to be done even before you consider spending any money on a marketing
campaign.In fact SWOT analysis can be applied not only for Businesses or Digital Marketing
Agencies, but at an individual level as well.

SWOT analysis stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It is the
strategic planning of your company, product, business, or industry by listing down these four
characteristics.

These 4 characteristics are divided into two factors – Internal and External.

Internal Factors

Internal factors are the strengths and weaknesses of your business, product or service. It could
be the quality of your product, its unique selling proposition, the strength of your team, your
marketing strategy and so on.

You need to list down the strengths and weaknesses in those specific columns. It is up to you to
decide as to what you consider strengths and weaknesses during your analysis.

The internal factors are something that we have direct control over. These are things that can be
improved or changed as it applies internally to us.

External Factors

Opportunities and threats come under the external category of the SWOT analysis. These are
things that you may not have direct control over however by understanding the opportunities and
threats in your market, you could indirectly affect your business by making the necessary
changes in your approach.

Opportunities and threats could be the amount of competition that you have in the industry or the
need for services that no one is currently providing that you possess.

How to Conduct SWOT Analysis

Strengths

What is the USP of my business?

In which areas are we better than our competitors?

What have our success stories been so far that has made us stand out from the crowd?

Weaknesses

What are we lacking compared to our competition?

What resources do we require?

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What sort of skills do we need to work on?

Opportunities

Is there something that our target audience is looking for that we can provide?

Are there any potential market areas that we haven’t reached yet?

Threats

What are our competitors doing that we are not?

Are there any government regulations that could hamper our business?

Do we have all the technologies in place to keep up with the ever-changing market?

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