Digital Marketing: A Step by Step Guide to Success

Nowadays whenever we talk about a website or blog, a word keeps repeating regarding the promotion of a business or website or blog – Digital Marketing.

What do you understand by this term?

Here I have prepared a detailed step by step guide on the digital mode of marketing – what the term means, how it can be implemented for business promotion, its types, and more.

To begin with, this is not a new term. This mode of marketing has been existing in the e-world for 20 years now.

Though the term was coined in early 2000’s, the concept dates back 100 years.

The concept of wireless marketing first came to human beings through radio. When the radio was invented in 1896 by Guglielmo Marconi, human beings came up with the concept of advertising through wireless transmission.

The first incident of successful digitalizing happened when an Opera performance from Met was aired and then people bought tickets for that show.

Since, then digital promotion is ruling the world.

When we spoke of digital promotions, you must have thought it to be a new-age concept related to the internet. But it all started back in the 19th-century world.

Defining Digital Marketing

Digital marketing can be defined as any type of marketing, both offline and online, that promotes services and products with the help of electronic or digital devices.

Starting from TV ads to social media advertising, e-mail marketing to SMS marketing, everything falls under this category.

The Changing Trends in Digital Marketing

Which is the first form of digitalized marketing tool you remember?

I recall seeing billboards while driving. They used to display many compelling ads on new brands coming into the market.

Well, that trend has changed now.

The majority of brand promotions happen through internet-driven platforms. Nobody looks up to the billboards anymore. If you glace at the rider seat you will see the passenger peeking at his or her mobile.

Once a digitalized mode of marketing, has now become an internet-based or online marketing system. Yet the basic concept remains the same, as you need to access the online ads through your electronic devices like mobile or laptop.

The new marketing trends clearly indicate that it is an online marketing that will rule the market. If you want to succeed, you need to gear up with the new trends.

The digitalized platforms of marketing have equipped humans with the scope of earning in millions even when they are in their early 20’s. Almost every American spend about 11 hours on the internet in a day. The world is changing fast and it’s best if you cope with it.

An overview

Digital marketing is a vast topic for discussion. Offline and online marketing strategies are its two main pillars, with the latter ruling the major market.

Each of them come with different categories and sub categories.

Digital offline marketing strategies itself has 4 categories-

1. Enhanced Offline Marketing: A marketing process that involves 100% offline marketing but has the use of electronic devices.
2. Radio Marketing: The oldest digital marketing strategy in the world that uses jingles and advertisement for engaging people.
3. Television Marketing: Color TV advertisements are popular and have successfully reached millions of people since 1953.
4. Phone Marketing: This form of marketing came about 3 decades ago and soon became popular with the Bulk SMS concept of promotion.

However, all these strategies seem to have lesser effects on humans than any online marketing promotion.

Online Marketing has 7 sub-categories for e-promotion-

1. Search Engine Optimization or SEO
2. SEM or Search Engine Marketing
3. Content Marketing
4. Social Media Marketing
5. Pay Per Click Advertising
6. Affiliate Marketing and
7. E-mail Marketing – a popular and effective online marketing strategy.

A Brief on Online Marketing Strategies

As mentioned before, there are 7 categories or strategies in the online market that drive sales through online traffic. We will describe each of these strategies in brief here. We will be following the Noob Guide to Online Marketing, as explained by Unbounce in their infographic.

They took a timeline of 6 months to study the nature of each of the marketing strategies and derived these results. Each of the activities began at the landing page of a website.

SEM/ SEO – The Organic form of Marketing

When you indulge in e-marketing, the first and foremost thing you need for organic traffic at your website or blog. SEO has proved to be the best organic way of driving sales to your website. If you optimize your content and maintain a good rank on the Search Engine, your success is sure to come. SEM, however, is a paid model of marketing.

The best way to make them work are-

• Setup your webmaster tools.
• Design your website suitably for customers to search for.
• Track your search progress with the help of SEOmoz tools.
• Add backlinks and internal links to your web content.
• Do keyword research and ensure they are well placed in the title and meta description.

Optimize Conversion

You can get traffic at your website, but if the content is not engaging, it hardly holds the traffic. The best way to keep your readers glued to your website is to optimize the conversion.

• A/B test the website landing page first.
• Optimize every page for CTA and a single purpose.
• Improve user experience by considering their valuable insight with the widgets for live chat and feedback.
• Break the sources of inbound traffic into segments.
• Run an optimization test for 5 seconds.
• Give your landing page a rating.

Analytics

Analytics is an important part of online marketing. If you are taking analytical studies, how will you find out how many people visit the web page, how many were repeat visitors, if the count is increasing, and other details?

• Start with setting up Google Analytics for your web page.
• Create an analytical funnel and establish the conversion target.
• Mark significant events over the analytics.
• Custom design a dashboard to display analysis results.
• Find out which areas of your web page are not performing aptly.

Content Marketing

An important phase of online marketing is content marketing. It is what you share with your readers or visitors to keep them engaged. It’s important that your content is always relevant and optimized with keywords.

• Begin a blog and start by spreading free knowledge at first.
• Share your content over social media for more popularity.
• Keep your content bookmarked.
• Activate the option for content sharing over social media.
• e-books are great for content marketing.
• Use Google calendars to line up content for publishing.
• Indulge in a guest post.
• Mention influencers in your blog for backlinking and building relationships.

PPC Advertising

The concept of Pay Per Click is very simple; you earn for every click you get on your links shared over social media and other e-commerce platforms. The concept is very similar to that of SEM.

• Start by creating an account in Google Ads.
• Direct more traffic to your landing page.
• Link one landing page along with every ad your create.
• Score high by improving your messaging match.
• Hire PPC experts for the best results.

Social Media Marketing

This is a vast area to cover. Nowadays, you can promote your website through various social media platforms. Though the process is a little time-consuming, yet, once you get people engaged with your posts, you are bound to get more traffic and a higher chance of a conversion.

• Creating a content page and making it viral is a good way to reach more people.
• Keep live tabs of Twitter open for action.
• Join LinkedIn for better networking in the professional field.
• Converse with your followers.
• Share your blog link over Facebook to increase the count of readers.
• Schedule your Tweets to ensure regular posts.
• Develop more fans over social media.
• Create a Facebook Page that focuses solely on conversion and optimize it.
• Claim a brand name for your webpage or product.

E-mail Marketing

We discussed this before that e-mail marketing is the best way to build relationships and get more traffic. It gives your customers a personal touch and draws better attention. The steps are simple and start by creating an e-mail list for the customers.

• Choose a valuable e-mail provider for your bulk or personalized e-mailing purpose.
• Get branded templates for emailing your customers.
• Add educational and motivational campaigns to your e-mail subscription.
• Don’t forget to A/B test the e-mail.
• Before you start sending emails, segment your customers from the e-mail list you had prepared.

Lead Generation

The final step and probably the beginning of every conversion in lead generation. When you combine all these marketing strategies, work together in generating leads for your web page. If you have optimized correctly, you will be generating potential leads from your target audience. They always have a higher probability of conversion.

• The best way to capture leads and track down the RSS readers is to get Google-Feed Burner.
• Arrange for e-mails before you launch your product and promote your launch.
• Give away valuable information to gather more customer data.
• Engage with readers over Quora and LinkedIn and answer their questions without delay.

When all of these strategies are well-planned in advance and taken up one after the other, they always generate potential leads. The ultimate goal of online marketing is after all lead generation. The more leads you get the higher are your chances of conversion.

However, once leads are at your hand, you need to ensure conversion with worthy products and services.

A Step-By-Step Guide to Offline Digital Marketing

Online marketing is ruling the world, grasping the youth, and getting traffic to your business. But to get more people to your retail store and see your product, you need something more than online promotions.

Offline marketing does that job.

We have discussed the different strategies you can take for successful online marketing so far. Now, let’s take a journey through the path of offline digital marketing.

Enhanced Offline Marketing

We started our discussion with billboards as a common form of digitalized advertising platform. But with changing trends, these billboards have changed as well.

What kind of billboards do you see now days in New York Time Square?

They are all LED or electronic rather than printed banners.

Why do you think such change was necessary?

The answer would be simple – to be distinguished in the crowd, create an impact, and get customers.

when you move across New York, you will come across several forms of advertising campaigns. You will see banners on buses, cab advertising, and even people holding placards and shouting out brand names.

But, what gets the major attention?

It’s the LED billboards flashing through Time Square.

This is not the only form of enhanced offline digital marketing. If you look at Apple Stores, you will see customers pouring over demo iPads. Similar kind of practices is taken up by various companies.

The concept of enhanced offline marketing simple. If you want to promote an electronic device or any fancy product, you must give a product demo to your customers. Nothing gets more value than a real-time encounter. The billboards will create a virtual impact. But the real impact is in the hands of a product demo.

Similar strategies are often practiced by singers, magazines, and other platforms. They all start by giving a demo or sample product in a digitalized format. Even the movies do so. Haven’t you come across Teaser trailers?

Well these are all enhancers and are used by bigger brands for their digital promotion.

What about smaller companies and entrepreneurs?

Well, the other forms of offline marketing are always there.

Radio Marketing

Radio Marketing is the oldest form of digital marketing we can think of. It’s more than a hundred years that the first opera promotion took place on the radio and compelled hundreds to buy actual tickets.

Even now, radio creates a similar impact.

Though online radios are also gaining importance nowadays, we can’t deny the contribution of the old school radios. Even TV commercials couldn’t change its impact on potential audiences.

Facts About Radio Marketing

• 85% of the US population still follows radio every week and takes influenced-decisions.
• On average, radio listeners spend 2 hours on their radio, not even turning it off during commercials.
• 40% of the world’s advertising expenses on the radio comes from the USA.
• Almost 505 of the US population prefers to listen to e-radio once a month.

The facts you see here display incredible numbers of radio listeners.

You must be wondering, how many of the young generation people have a radio at home? Well, they don’t have a physical radio maybe, but they do use the digital or rather virtual form of radio through Pandora.

The Pandora Music App has nearly got 80 million radio listeners on it. It has effectively contributed 80 billion dollars profit to the company.

The profit might shrunk a little over the years, yet, radio is not over.

Now, it is more than just creative, kick-ass commercials on the radio that makes a difference in the marketing segment. It is now the era of Podcasting before radio shows.

We often come across short podcasts about training, education, “how to achieve success in life” seminars, just before or after a radio show has ended.

The podcast runners are highly aware that they need to represent their content and create an impact within 6 seconds. Guess what? They nail it every time. It is because of their compelling representation that radio ads have so much demand, even in today’s world.

How to join a podcast to showcase your product or service?

If you have a plan to use radio marketing as your offline promotional tool, know the fundamental rule of radio promotions – you need to be entertaining to gain attention.

Else than that, these steps can make your life easier-

• Find a suitable local station through social media platforms
• Pay to join a show or get an invitation to join a podcasting show
• Represent your views over podcasting in an interview form
• Ensure that the content you represent creates impact and gets you sponsors
• Become a prime participant of the show
• Slowly gain a prime slot for airing your podcast show

Once your podcasting airs in a prime slot, know that you have nailed it. Now you are sure to have millions of listeners or, as I call it, target clients. Deliver the best content, and you will create an impact on them. The more you engage these people, the better profit you can expect.

Television Marketing – The Most Successful Form of Offline Digital Marketing

Television Marketing has so far been the most successful offline marketing strategy in the market.

TV marketing is a platform where you are uncertain for your target audience.

You come across commercial ads for burgers, soaps, junk food items, medicines, and don’t know what else.

From an obese person to a diabetic to an athletic everyone gets to see the advertisement when McDonald’s shows their cheesy burger and french fry combos. The advertisers never who becomes motivated by the ads and becomes their customer.

However, with the rising fame of web series and SmartTV and add-free movie sessions, the commercials are getting less access to people nowadays.

Does that mean TV advertising days are over?

Not really. The new trend of cross-pollination, i.e., mixing TV commercials in social media platforms, has managed to create some new impact.

Did you know, events like Super Bowl shares 10% of TV commercials over social media platforms? It even constitutes 85 of the ads viewed over YouTube.

Studies reflect that advertisements from Super Bowl have got the highest rate of retention. Another commercial that won over millions is the “Puppy Love” commercial of Budweiser.

If you wish to use TV commercials over social media platforms, you need to remember it’s not for free. It will cost you to display your ads in between two videos or shows over the internet. Moreover, customers will always tend to skip commercials after 6 seconds. So, effectively, you will have 6 seconds to create an impact and compel people to watch your advertisement and get leads.

It’s a tedious job.

However, once you successfully launch TV commercials on social media platforms, it becomes an asset for you. Get a million views and you will have a thousand buyers.

However, to this date, people are spending more than $200 billion on TV commercials. It is an unjust expenditure when the majority of the world population is opting for Netflix and similar online streaming platform.

In a decade or so, the craze for television will come to an end. It will naturally take down than chances of marketing expected by TV advertising. The best way to cope with the world is to link your TV commercials with online streaming platforms and stay relevant.

One of your best options to manage commercials over the online platforms is to make them Android-friendly. The world is shifting slowly to mobile marketing strategies as Android takes over the world.

Phone Marketing – The New Age Offline Digital Marketing Strategy

While we are discussing phone marketing, it is essential that we acknowledge the contribution smartphones have towards our lives.

More than 80% of internet users, prefer to access it through their smartphones. Smartphones are always preferred over PC or laptops or desktops; after all, their mobile device and you can access your internet from anywhere, anytime.

Clearly mobiles are essential in our daily lives.

This is why 2016 saw a surge in mobile ads and sell count over the demand for desktop advertisements.

Phone marketing and SMS marketing has proved to be highly effective. Statistics say that the text messaging open rate is as high as 98%, which is nearly 3 times higher than the open rate of e-mails. Bulk SMS marketing is by far the most effective advertising strategy in the modern world.

People are now spending more money on phone marketing, rather than on TV commercials.

While you can use the internet for your marketing techniques, let’s focus on the offline ways of using a phone for marketing purposes.

Texting and Calling Your Clients

You must have heard of the term “Cold Calling?”

When you initiate your phone marketing, it will always start with cold calling unknown people. But gradually you start convincing them about the brand, you start getting leads.

The scalability of telemarketing is not as high as social media promotion, yet it is effective. On average, a person needs to make 52 cold calls a day to be able to speak with 17 potential leads, and only 1 convert into a sale out of that.

Like e-mail marketing, marketing through calls or messages also requires a contact list. Either buy or prepare a database of target clients and list down their numbers.

Tactic work better on B2B clients. But if you have prepared a list of your existing clients and want to promote something new, even B2C sales is not that difficult.

But more than tele-calling, which makes a major difference in online marketing is bulk SMS services. Whenever you have a product or service or deal to promote, consider hiring bulk SMS services. You can also get an app for this job. It allows you to schedule messages and mass distribute it to your target audience at a scheduled time.

SMS is a more successful way of offline marketing as it has a nearly 98% opening rate. In fact, 90% of the messages are opened within 3 minutes of receiving them. Definitely, it’s a great option to choose when you want to share promotional deals

You can use SMS for marketing in different ways-

1. Promotional SMS marketing

This marketing technology that has been used thoroughly by restaurants, hotels, retail stores. The majority choose promotional messaging concepts for spreading coupons, deals, new arrivals, etc.

This has proved to be an ideal marketing technique to spread awareness among people.

2. Transactional SMS marketing

As the name sounds, this strategy is more transactional and is highly preferred by banks and insurance companies.

Suppose you have a loan installment due for the month, and you forget. The bank likes to remind you politely about the amount through such SMS. By doing so, they earn your loyalty.

Even SMS with OTP you receive from various payment gateways is a transactional form of marketing.

3. Voice Messaging

This mode of marketing is not very common in daily life. But still, Voice SMS for the promotion of brands can be experienced sometimes. They work as alerts mostly.

4. MMS

MMS is no more chosen as a way of marketing in the modern world.

About a decade back MMS became popular for marketing. Companies could create short videos of 160 seconds and send across to various numbers to create an impact.

However, with the advent of WhatsApp and other online chatting platforms, MMS has lost its vigor.

Loyalty Programs

Unfortunately, only 13% of the retailers in the world come with loyalty program options.

The programs require you to grant loyalty points to your customers, which on a minimum accumulation will allow them to shop cashless at your store.

QR Codes

Seems unlikely as a mode of marketing, yet, QR codes are highly useful. Even 3 years back, the USA had the concept of scanning QR codes through mobile and make payments.

The concept is still prevailing in India.

They worked as marketing tools in a different way. This process was chosen as a payment mode for people who wanted to go cashless. Naturally, stores that had QR code scanning payment options had more demand than the rest.

Final Thoughts About Digital Marketing in 2020

Here in this article, we have discussed the various categories of digital marketing and the strategies each use for success in Business. However, the use of offline marketing is reducing and the power is going to online marketing, slowly. To use digital marketing to its fullest, one must always stay updated with the latest trends in the market.

All the modern marketing strategies are deduced based on the market demand.

FAQ :

How can you define Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing has been defined as the marketing component that utilizes the internet, online techniques, and office digital devices like computers, desktops, mobiles, and other electronic devices, for the purpose of promoting services and products.

What is the difference between digital marketing and online marketing?

The terms are nearly the same with slight differences. While online marketing stands for marketing strategies that deliver content with the help of the internet, you can call a marketing strategy to be digital marketing if it uses any electronic device.

Online marketing is only a sub-category of digital marketing.

What is the difference between digital marketing and traditional marketing?

Digital marketing and traditional marketing differs in the marketing medium that aids in the encounter with the audiences. The traditional forms of marketing use traditional mediums like newspapers, magazines, or leaflets, or even signages. Digital marketing, on the other hand, uses digitalized media or electronic devices for its promotions.