Digital marketing basically describes any form of marketing that uses digital tools and channels. For decades, marketing teams have used the same recipe in the form of TV ads, print ads, and billboards to tell customers about companies’ products and services and to convince them to spend their money. Then in the 1990s, the internet came along and the number of websites exploded. The newly emerged channels such as Facebook have created a whole new area of marketing.
In the past, digital marketing was approached the same way as traditional marketing, except that you used the new channels. Talk about your products on your own website, place a few banners on popular websites and online publications, and sell your products then the same way you always sold them. Over time, however, the marketers realized that the digital world had completely new ways to interact with and sell to customers, and that required a completely different approach.
But what are the goals of digital marketing?
Website traffic optimization
Qualified website traffic and the right users on the website play a major role in digital marketing. The improvement of qualified traffic is an overarching goal of all digital marketing activities.
Lead generation
A lead is an interested party who is understood as a potential customer. Individual marketing activities aim to meet the demand with the right offers and thus generate contact information.
Attracting viewers
The customer-friendly design of the online presence and fulfillment of user expectations is a major factor in encouraging visitors to stay longer on the website. This also has a great influence on the ranking results of the search engines.
Brand building and brand loyalty
Digital marketing is used to build and maintain the brand. To this end, different strategies and tactics have developed across the individual digital channels. In combination with the communication that fits the brand, a consistent brand structure can be created.
Increased efficiency
Efficient digital marketing makes a significant contribution to a measurable customer approach. A major goal is to improve conversion optimization and thus avoid wastage.
Strengthening customer loyalty
Customer feedback software makes it easy for visitors to communicate about their customer experience directly and help avoid interrupting the online journey.
Satisfied customers are an elementary factor for every company. With the right instruments and tools, successful customer management can take place via digital channels. Thus for retaining loyal customers businesses should integrate CRM tools or use omnichannel customer communication platforms, always staying in touch with their customers.
Let’s now talk about other marketing techniques that can be used for business to grow in 2020.
What is Search Engine Advertisement?
With Search Engine Advertisements, advertisements are placed with the respective search engine providers against payment.
Contrary to the activities of SEO, the goal here is not to appear in the organic ranking results, but in the advertising, spaces set up for this on the SERP. Marketers bid for specific keywords in order to appear in the search results for these ads. The payment model used for this is a cost-per-click or pay-per-click system. Depending on the popularity of the keyword, different prices may apply. In order to achieve the best results for searchers, Google also calculates a quality factor for the website, which is offset against the price offered and ultimately decides on the ranking of the advertising placement.
What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing is the use of platforms and websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube to advertise products or services or to direct the content created to the appropriate community.
The extended area of responsibility of social media marketing accordingly also includes community building, community management, and social media advertising. In addition, SMM offers the opportunity to analyze various reactions from customers in the form of likes, shares, and feedback and to control customer service directly via the channels.
What is email marketing?
E-mail marketing is a digital marketing instrument and is usually used to send relevant and informative content in the form of newsletters or offer emails to a target group. This includes different forms of email marketing with suitable content such as blog posts or sales campaigns, which can be personalized depending on the customer life cycle or customer journey. Email marketing is used by companies to strengthen customer relationships and generate sales by addressing the target group in a personalized and direct manner.
What is a display advertisement?
Display Advertisement is used to place advertisements on websites that can be coordinated in the form of text, images, Flash, video, or audio. You can also make a Wikipedia page because it also helps to improve the online recognition of a brand or business. The general promotion of products or services as well as brand messages, for example with the help of banner advertising or videos, are in the foreground. For this purpose, certain sections on the respective websites are used and specially assigned to advertising spaces. The success of display marketing can be measured using reach, click-through rate (CTR), bounce rate (BR), and conversion rate (CR).
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate Marketing is an online type of sales in which companies pay their sales partners in the form of commissions. The advertising of products and services placed on the partner’s websites is made identifiable via an affiliate link. The remuneration usually takes the form of pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, or pay-per-sales models, although other commission systems are also conceivable, such as pay-per-install or pay-per-view.
One of the largest affiliate platforms in the world is Amazon. It has over 300 million users, and it currently makes up almost half of all e-commerce sales in the U.S. They offer millions of products for sale, but what are some strategies to optimize an account? Amazon account management is one of the most important aspects of Amazon Seller Central.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing Automation deals with the automation of marketing activities through software solutions. This includes the automation of marketing measures such as email, social media, or other website campaigns. The aim is to address potential customers at every point of the customer journey with the right messages and content and accordingly to automatically build up a business relationship until the purchase is completed. This goes hand in hand with an increase in the efficiency of the individual lead nurturing processes up to and including the purchase.
Create and optimize sustainability
If companies first take the step towards digitization, they will gain access to a whole range of new tools that can be made ready for use with little effort using digital data. Steps that are particularly easy to implement, such as entries in business directories, feedback portals, and much more, can be a first step towards improving visibility on the Internet.
Once all the relevant data is available in digital form, it can be used to feed all imaginable tools for the profit of the company. Extensive software platforms can already link the warehousing of online shops and retail stores with one another and take over the majority of the sales themselves. The replenishment of stocks and even the bookkeeping are done independently and individually by tools. Marketing automation software positions particularly popular products and services accordingly. At the same time, such a software system gains extensive user data in all these areas, which can be used in real-time and make the interaction between marketing and digitization even more efficient.
