What is Digital Marketing?
By Aden Andrus
What the digital marketing can do for companies is dependent on the purpose for each kind of marketing content that includes increasing brand recognition and industry authority, increasing website traffic, and growing overall leads and revenues.
Similar to other kind or form of business, digital marketing is a method to reach out and influence potential customers. The distinction is that you can accomplish this on the internetthrough the combination of marketing channels for digital that include videos and social media posts. content marketing, internet and social media advertising as well as the search engine market.
Businesses achieve their goals using the methods above instead of traditional strategies for marketing, such as billboards, ads on television and promotional mail that is delivered to homes of consumers.
Common Digital Marketing Assets
Anything can be an asset for digital marketing that is, any tool for marketing you can use online. In reality it is possible that you don't realize how many options are available. Here are some examples:
Your site
Branded assets (logos and icons, acronyms)
Video content (video ads, product demos)
Images (infographics, corporate and product photographs)
Content written (blog posts eBooks, product descriptions, eBooks Help Sections "learning center-type" content or online courses)
Tools or online products (SaaS, calculators Interactive content)
Reviews
Pages on social media
As you could think, the list just barely scratches the surface. The majority of digital marketing tools will belong to any of the above categories. But, smart marketers are always developing new methods to engage with their customers via the internet and the list is expanding.
Common Digital Marketing Strategies
Although the number of digital marketing strategies is constantly changing but these are the most popular and efficient strategies employed by businesses:
PAY-PER-CLICK ADVERTISING
"Pay-per click" (PPC) marketing is broad term that refers to any form of online marketing where the advertiser pays every time a user clicks on an advertisement. For instance, Google AdWords is a type of PPC advertising that is known as "paid search advertising." Facebook Ads are yet another type of PPC advertising, which is also known as "paid social media advertising."
PAID SEARCH ADVERTISING
Paid search ads are one of the best methods to attract potential customers seeking products or services similar to yours. Google, Bing, and Yahoo allow you to display advertisements in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Based on Google, 91% of people are using smartphones. Every one aspects of your PPC or paid search marketing campaigns must be optimized for mobile devices so that your company doesn't miss out on those potential customers and clicks. If you're not getting the right results in this regard, you'll need to revise your digital marketing strategy immediately.
PAID SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Snapchat permit users to purchase advertising on their platforms. Social media advertising that is paid for is excellent for establishing awareness with people who may not even know that your company, product or service is even available.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Search Engine Optimization also called SEO is the method employed by digital media marketers to ensure that blogs and pages posts to appear naturally on SERPs. It requires more experience and expertise to make it to the first page of Google using SEO than paid search advertisements and can take a long time to complete.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
As with SEO like SEO, social media marketing is a free method to utilize platforms such as Facebook as well as Twitter to promote your business using digital methods. However, marketing your business through social media requires longer and requires more energy than paid advertising. However, it is extremely effective when you're working with a lower budget. The use of social media for marketing can be among the most effective digital marketing strategies you can implement even if you don't have to pay for it.
CONVERSION RATE OPTIMIZATION
Optimization of conversion rates (CRO) enhances the user experience on the internet to increase the amount of users who complete a desired task called changing. It's as easy as getting them click on a hyperlink and sign to your newsletter. Businesses typically use CRO to generate leads, chats or sales through their current web traffic, and to increase conversions.
CONTENT MARKETING
Content marketing is yet another broad term used in digital marketing. Content marketing refers to all digital marketing initiative which makes use of assets that contain content (blog posts ebooks, infographics, ebooks, videos, etc.) to promote brand awareness or generate leads, clicks or sales. In the end, when you mix these elements correctly to create a clear online marketing strategy for your company.
NATIVE ADVERTISING
Have you seen that on the bottom of the article you're reading frequently a list of recommended articles? This is called native advertising. The majority of it falls under the category of content marketing since it relies on content to drive viewers.
Marketing via email is among the oldest type of online marketing and it's still in use. Many digital marketers use it to advertise special offers and highlighting content, as well as to promote an event. It allows you to reach out to users who might not be on the most popular platforms for example, social media.
AFFILIATE MARKETING
Affiliate marketing allows you to pay another person -- such as a company or a personto advertise your products or services via their site.
There are a variety of ways to promote your business online. This is why so many companies outsourcing their online marketing activities or invest in an internal team and automated software to handle their marketing requirements. This is a situation in which spending a few dollars can certainly increase the ROI (ROI).
Does Digital Marketing Work?
Digital marketing is a great alternative for any company looking to make the most of the resources for marketing available to thrive in an increasingly digital world. It's easy to advertise online. If you are aware of the demographics you'd like to reach, digital media, you can reach anybody and everywhere.
But, certain kinds of businesses can benefit from certain kinds of digital advertising. To give a brief review, let's look at which strategies are most likely to work best for businesses-to-consumers (B2C) businesses and business-to-business (B2B) businesses:
B2C COMPANIES
The general rule is that B2C companies generally have cheaper prices in comparison to those of their B2B counterparts. In the end, it might be difficult to sell a drill bit worth $150,000 (believe me when I say that they're available) to a stressed mother. However, what about a pair of pants for your child? That's an affordable and easy sale.
The good thing is that since B2C businesses aren't trying to sell expensive goods and services, they do not require large sales teams or complex marketing funnels. All they need to do is put their product or service to the right people with the appropriate message and the rest will be handled by the company the rest.
In the end the main objective of the majority of B2C businesses is to direct the journey of the customer through their sales funnel. For instance, if you can lure that mom on your kids' clothing site and give her the best bargain, there's a great possibility that she'll be able to buy something in the near future. There's no need to create an enormous amount of brand recognition or build trust prior to closing the sale.
In this regard, B2C businesses often get great results from more profitable digital channels such as social media marketing and paid social ads. These channels do a fantastic job of putting your company visible to clients who may not even know you exist.
In addition to other strategies for digital marketing, such as the paid search and SEO are an ideal option. If you need to choose one of the online channels first paying social advertising through paid ads and social media marketing can be fantastic alternatives for B2C.
B2B COMPANIES
However, paid search is a fantastic alternative to use for online marketing for B2B. They tend to have narrow, targeted audience segments that are difficult to reach with social media. But, if you're selling drill bits worth $150,000 and someone searches for "diamond-tipped oil drilling bit manufacturer," you'll want to become the top result that they come across. Sure, you'll be paying more than you do with paid social media however with a price of $150,000 this is money well spent.
Additionally, B2B businesses have a longer and more complicated sales cycles as compared to B2C businesses. For example, if you're selling drill bit, most customers likely won't visit your website, make an email, or call then say "I want one." Therefore, more long-term strategies, such as email marketing or content marketing are usually required in order to close a deal. Each strategy may not be suitable for every company however, by a bit of testing and failure, you'll be able to determine the most effective strategy for your company.
How Do I Get Started?
The positive side is that getting started in digital media marketing can be relatively simple. The majority of online advertising platforms allow you to sign-up and launch the first marketing campaign with analytics and data resources to help you manage your campaign successfully. Here are some hyperlinks to guides for beginners on various digital marketing strategies:
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Pay-per-click social media ads
Optimization of conversion rates
The basis of every successful digital marketing strategy, however, isn't a set of rules. Whatever strategies you select to implement Here are four important questions you must answer before you begin to implement online marketing strategies:
1. HOW MUCH DO YOU NEED TO MAKE?
Figuring out how much you'll should spend on digital marketing requires you to first have to define your goals. The approach you take to digital marketing will differ significantly based on whether the ultimate objective is to increase leads, clicks, conversions or sales, or to achieve a certain return on investment.
The ultimate goal of any marketing strategy must be a return on investment. If your digital marketing efforts aren't generating profit for your business the digital marketing strategies don't resonate with the public. In this case it's a good idea to come up with a new strategy.
The benefits of conversions and clicks are fantastic however, your business can't earn money from clicks or conversions. Sales drive revenue.
In this regard The first thing to establish before deciding the amount your digital marketing budget will be is the amount of revenues you're hoping to generate. It is possible to use this information to determine the amount of ad spending you will need to achieve your revenue target.
2. TO WHOM ARE YOU MARKETING?
Next step involves to determine the audience to who you're marketing to through the use of digital channels. This is important because different buyer personas demand different strategies for marketing. In addition the different buyer personas transform into various types of buyers.
If your company has an in-house sales team soliciting their opinions is one of the most efficient methods of establishing a clear buyer profile while also collecting information to create the digital strategy for your marketing. Sales teams are usually those who communicate to buyers the most.
However, talking with your sales staff and conducting some research won't be enough to attain the level of detail required to develop a successful digital marketing strategy. For that it's necessary to pick up the phone and contact your clients. Although you might not get more information from your clients than "Your company came up on Google," this is still valuable information and provides insights into the possibility that your digital marketing efforts are effective to a certain degree.
Ask them how they discovered your company, the reason they changed and what enticed them to pay for your services. This data will give you an understanding of the sales and marketing process. Learn from it to improve your advertising as well as determine your budget for marketing.
3. WHAT ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS WORTH?
In general, people think of buyer personas as an effective strategy to create a powerful marketing strategy. Buyer personas are ideal for however, they are crucial in creating a successful digital marketing strategy.
As an example, suppose you're advertising for an SaaS company called SaaS A-Frass. The business offers this pricing model:
Small-scale business
Mid-market businesses
Enterprise business
Smaller businesses have less requirements and is simpler than the other two which is why it's likely to select the starter package. The mid-market market will likely need a more professional solution, and enterprises will probably require an enterprise-level package.
A good illustration to consider in determining how much you can charge your customers:
Lifetime value (LTV) of small businesses who purchase five $500 worth of services from you annually is more in comparison to the LTV of an enterprise that purchases one $1500 service every year. It's tempting to put your efforts on larger clients since they generate more revenues in a single. But, it's usually cheaper on advertising and generates greater revenue when you find and keep small-business customers instead of once-a-year enterprise customers.
If we assume that each buyer personas are around for the equivalent of 14 months, 4 years and nine years in turn, ( average lifetimes for an SaaS user) and that they purchase 5 20 and 100 licenses, according to and here's the life-time value for each one of these personas ( [licenses/month] x# of licenses] [average customer life span in months(in months) ):
Lifetime Value
Small: $1,750
Mid-market: $72,000
Enterprise: $1,590,000
These numbers are exciting However, the majority of the money is actually profit.
A SaaS company is charged around 22 percent for fulfillment, and 9percent to sales and has an overhead of 40 and has 29 percent from the LTV of every client to experiment with. This means that to make it profitable it is necessary to invest less than the following amount to get a new customer via Facebook:
MAXIMUM ACQUISITION COST (MAC)
Small: $507.50
Mid-market: $20,880
Enterprise: $461,100
If you are able to keep your cost of acquisition for customers (CAC) lower than this level and you'll earn money. If it is more expensive to attract these customers, you'll be losing cash.
It's also likely that the market is filled with large-scale customers, and you'll need an assortment of these deals to reach your revenue targets. This will affect the size of your Facebook budget. In many cases, companies find that their LTV of their small-business customers to be greater than the enterprise-level customers. As a result, they modify their marketing strategies for digital and redirect their advertising budgets to increase and keep larger portions of their small-business customers.
If you're prepared to invest $0.18 for digital marketing, to create $1.00 worth of LTV (for 11% gross profit) it is possible to pay for the following services for each persona of buyers:
CUSTOMER ACQUISITION COST (CAC)
Small: $315
Mid-market: $12,960
Enterprise: $286,200
If you aren't able to create money-making customers from specific buyer's persona at a that is less than this then you shouldn't be selling to this buyer.
However, suppose your online marketing efforts are currently generating customers from every persona that are in the range of these CAC. If that's the scenario, you could use this information to determine your budget for digital marketing.
4. HOW MUCH DO YOU NEED TO SPEND TO REACH YOUR GOALS?
Take your CAC, your average purchase order amount, and the average amount of purchases (if you are using an option for subscriptions it is possible to calculate the average life span of each buyer's persona here) and add them to these equations to calculate your digital marketing strategy. LTV and CAC ratio.
LTV= [Average Monthly revenues per client (in US dollars] x [Life length of the client in monthLTV = [Average monthly revenue per customer in US dollars] X [Life
CAC = [Total cost in dollars to gain customers in this buyer persona]/ (Number of new customers gathered through the digital marketing campaignCAC = [Total cost in dollars to acquire new customers from the digital marketing campaign]
The ideal LTV/CAC ratio is 3:1 per 12 months. This means that the value of the client is supposed to be three times greater than the cost of the acquisition of them as a customer. A ratio that is closer to 1:1 means that you're spending too much time and effort to acquire clients. A ratio higher than 3 means you're not gaining business because you're not increasing your marketing efforts online to connect with more potential clients.
You can think, this method doesn't provide a precise estimate of the time it takes to meet your revenue goals. It's only as precise as the information you give. However, it's much better than picking your month randomly and hoping digital marketing will yield the results you require.
How Is Digital Marketing Different on Mobile?
Mobile-based digital marketing is quite different from the digital marketing that is available on a desktop. This is significant since smartphones are the main device used by people to connect on the internet.
With more than 50% of internet traffic being performed on mobile devices, this shift from desktops to mobiles has had a profound impact on digital marketing.
Google Ads got rid of the ads in the sidebar on their search results pages in order to ensure an experience that is consistent between desktop and mobile. Facebook Ads did the same at some point over the past five years, and stopped showing ads in sidebars on desktops or mobile devices and instead advertising in-stream. The article was revised to reflect the change with regard to Facebook Ads' in-app marketing methods and strategies, as well as the types of ads allows businesses to make use of. The article used to state that on desktops, Facebook still showed sidebar advertisements. This is a fantastic example of an ongoing adaptation of methods for digital marketing and strategies for maximising the return on investment.
Alongside optimizing your mobile ads It's also important to consider your website and the user experience of your landing page. Yes, your site may look stunning on a desktop display however, if it's not able to navigate your mobile site and you'll lose an enormous portion of the traffic to your site.
At at a minimum, your site should be able to create at a minimum, a responsive mobile-friendly website. The ideal mobile user experience (UX) must be designed to enable users to quickly access as many features of a desktop website as they can.
If most marketers realize it or it isn't the fact is that digital marketing is predominantly mobile-based today. The good thing is that for those who are new to the field of digital marketing, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Start by creating compelling mobile ads and then modify to desktop ads as you need.
Taking the Next Step on Digital Marketing
The digital marketing industry is the way to market that will be the norm in the near future. One of the benefits of digital marketing is the ability to easily and precisely track the outcomes of your work using analytics tools that collect pertinent information. It's simple to identify the strategies that are generating positive outcomes while others require some tweaking.
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