Whether you read an article in an online newspaper, see photos in an online magazine, or watch videos on YouTube, you will come across advertisements for services, courses, tools, and more related to digital marketing.
The term ‘digital marketing’ has become all the rage now. Also known by other names, such as ‘online marketing’, ‘web marketing’, ‘internet marketing’, and ‘electronic marketing’, digital marketing is increasing in popularity day by day. More and more people are either joining the field of digital marketing or trying digital marketing services.
The fact that you have landed on this page today proves that you are also interested in learning more about digital marketing. You might want to either hire online marketing services to grow your business or gain expertise in the field to provide services.
But before you sign a contract with anyone or register for a course, you must learn a bit about internet marketing. You should refer to multiple sources to understand the meaning and importance of digital marketing. It will help you get a brief idea of the field, and thus, you will be able to make a better decision, whether it’s in terms of seeking employment or hiring services.
We have created this blog post that can serve as a simple guide for digital marketing for dummies. We know that our readers are smart enough not to get offended by the word ‘dummies’. This word is used to refer to newbies who still have a long way to go.
Digital Marketing for Dummies: Read This Simple Guide
Table of Contents
In the second paragraph of this blog post, we have mentioned various names by which digital marketing is known. As all the names suggest, digital marketing is nothing marketing done digitally, i.e., through the use of the internet or web. Let’s dig a bit deeper into it.
Digital marketing involves the use of digital technologies to promote business offerings in order to acquire customers. In today’s time, every person uses technology to some extent. They use smartphones, tablets, desktops, and laptops heavily to perform a variety of tasks. One of these tasks is searching for the right sellers or service providers to fulfill their needs.
Therefore, business firms have to showcase their products and services on these devices to potential customers. They can use organic and paid methods for this purpose. Both of these methods are a part of digital or internet marketing. Businesses can use either or both of these methods. Learning digital marketing for dummies is incomplete without learning how digital marketing started.
The advent of digital marketing is the result of the launch of Google – the most widely used search engine. People use Google to look for different options whenever they want to buy any product or hire any service. Not just shopping, but people use this search engine to browse the internet for a number of reasons. They find information to seek answers to their questions, queries, and doubts.
Whether it’s learning how to pay taxes, what are the best gift ideas, which movie has been released recently, or how to cook a vegan dish, people take the help of the internet to meet their requirements. Business enterprises use this habit of people as a chance to draw the attention of customers toward their offerings.
Digital Marketing: What are its Different Types and Benefits?
When you sit down to learn digital marketing for dummies, you should not expect to learn every little detail about the field as it’s neither possible nor practical. But you should definitely understand some basic aspects of digital marketing.
Hence, we have specified different types of digital marketing. We have also mentioned some of the tools and techniques used by internet marketing executives. You will also see how businesses can benefited from online marketing.
Businesses need to create digital properties, such as a website and social media accounts, which include detailed information about their products, services, location, operations, staff, and more. Then, they need to bring online visitors to their website and social media accounts. Digital marketing is necessary to attract visitors, and thus, generate their interest.
You should know the types and tools used for online marketing to properly understand digital marketing for dummies. Types of digital marketing include but are not limited to search engine optimization, search engine marketing, social media optimization, social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, display advertising, mobile marketing, and re-targeting.
Let’s understand some of the different types of digital marketing properly.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization or SEO refers to the practice of optimizing a webpage or website to improve its organic ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs). Higher ranking leads to more traffic, which ultimately leads to more conversions. SEO includes a wide array of techniques that professionals carry out.
Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing or SEM refers to the process of enhancing the visibility of a webpage or website in search engine result pages (SERPs). SEM includes both organic methods and paid advertising. So, SEO is a subset of SEM. Google Pay Per Click program, banner ads, and many other techniques are used to conduct paid advertising for promoting a webpage or website.
Social Media Optimization
Social media optimization or SMO refers to the use of social media channels to create awareness for the products, services, brands, webpages, websites, events, and more. A number of SMO techniques are implemented to create a buzz and increase the visibility of digital assets of a business with the help of social media.
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing or SMM is similar to search engine marketing because it includes both organic and paid advertising methods. It involves showing advertisements in different forms on social media platforms to promote a webpage or website. Thus, SMO is a subset of SMM. Social media marketing helps in increasing sales of a business firm.
Email Marketing
Although some people believe that email marketing is dead, it’s not, as business firms still achieve significant results by using it. As the name involves, email marketing involves sending promotional emails to prospective customers. Email marketing has become sophisticated over time. Business firms send personalized emails to get a favorable response from the recipients.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a set of practices implemented to create and distribute content on different platforms. The content should be relevant and valuable to the targeted audience groups so that they get interested in the product offerings of business firms. Blogs, articles, website content, infographics, videos, social media posts, and white papers are some of the different forms of content.
Digital marketing professionals use tools like Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, Yoast SEO, and MailChimp to make search engine-friendly and user-friendly digital properties. They use techniques like adding a subscriber form to a website and incorporating the keywords strategically. New trends keep coming up in the digital marketing field.
Those business firms that take the help of internet marketing to increase their sales benefit a lot. They are able to identify the target market accurately. They can even select the most suitable tools, techniques, and tactics to develop a full-fledged strategy to achieve their goals.
Professionals conducting the digital marketing activities for their employers or clients set KPIs, i.e., Key Performance Indicators. They monitor KPIs to measure ROI (return on investment) on the investment made in terms of time and money. They use tools like Google Analytics to track conversion rates, traffic, bounce rate, and other metrics. Then, they make changes in their strategies accordingly.
Conclusion
You should know digital marketing for dummies if you are thinking about creating a digital presence for your offline business or building a career in the digital marketing field.
