
Businesses all over the world have unconsciously applied digital marketing to their business and probably never understood its importance. Some businesses advertise their products and services on social media, some businesses use emails to communicate and market their products and services, and while some use influencers to market their products for them.
These are simple ways to apply digital marketing to businesses, but digital marketing goes beyond social media or email marketing.
To understand how to use digital marketing to upgrade your business, let me first define digital marketing.
Digital marketing is the use of online channels such as social media, mobile applications, websites, emails, and search engines to sell, promote, and market your products and services.
The keyword here is online and you can verify from the definition that digital marketing is more than social media and emails.
Now, let’s move on to the channels of digital marketing
Digital marketing channels are the ways through which digital marketing strategies are executed. These channels are all online and they are
This is the use of social media platforms to promote, market, and sell goods and services. It is used to network with current, new, and potential customers. Examples of social media platforms are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Myspace, and Tik Tok.
The two ways to use social media marketing
Consider your target audience and company goals when selecting a social media platform for digital marketing.
Email marketing is the promotion and marketing of goods and services through emails. Email marketing was formerly used for communication, but there are now upgrades in the uses of email marketing.
Email marketing is now used to generate leads, increase the number of potential customers, and communicate with customers about new goods and services. Email marketing channel has the highest return on investment (ROI) and with the right skill, knowledge, and tactic, email marketing is one of the best online digital communication channels.
This is a broad channel of digital marketing in which advertisers pay a particular amount each time an advertisement is clicked on. Ads are viewed on social media, search engines, mobile applications, and websites. Pay –per-click has a few prominent forms.
Search marketing is the process of increasing traffic and visibility from search engines through both paid and organic or unpaid efforts. There are 2 main types of search marketing
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing online content to increase visibility on search engines such as Google and Bing. SEO doesn’t require paid ads.
Search engine marketing (SEM) is the process of increasing traffic and visibility of online content through paid advertising on search engines.
Affiliate marketing is simply paying an individual or business (i.e. – an affiliate) to promote and market your products and services on their blog, website or social media page.
The affiliate is usually someone or a business that has a lot of influence on the product and services marketed.
This is the use of content to market goods and services. The various types of content are blog posts, case studies, checklists, news, video content, infographics, and white papers.
Sharing various content on websites, social media, ads, and emails will increase visibility and increase the number of customers and sales.
To enjoy the full benefits of content marketing, the content has to be relevant, of high quality, and has to relate to your targeted audience.
By now, you should have understood what digital marketing is and the channels involved in digital marketing. Next, you should understand the factors to consider when choosing digital marketing channels.
Know who your customers are by creating a buyer’s persona. A buyer’s persona is a description of your target customer, a buyer’s persona is categorized based on
To know your buyer’s persona, ask the sales or marketing team, ask customers to fill survey forms or search through customer feedbacks and comments.
No matter what your business goals are, they have to be SMART – Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Examples of business goals and the appropriate digital marketing channels are:
a) Social media marketing and ads: Facebook, Twitter
b) Content marketing
c) Digital campaigns
2. To increase sales of boots in shop A by 20% in the next 3 months. Examples of digital marketing channels to use for this goal are:
a) Affiliate marketing
b) Social media marketing: Facebook ads
c) SEO and SEM
Your budget will depend on a lot of things such as what type of digital marketing channel you want to use, the talents you need to hire, and your SMART Goals. The factors you need to consider when creating a budget are
Digital marketing is not a luxury, it is a necessity and it is designed in such a way that you can use your everyday tools like your smartphone and laptop. Some other tools used in digital marketing such as Hootsuite- social media monitoring tool and Hemingway app-a writing tool are free. You can also take free classes on writing, social media management and digital marketing to reduce your budget.
Now that you understand the channels and factors to consider when choosing a digital marketing channel, it is necessary to know the importance of digital marketing to your business.
Digital marketing has proven to be of crucial importance to small and large scale businesses, some of its importance are:
What do you do?
Check your analytics and take note of which content customers engage with the most and through which digital marketing channels do people order for your products or services the most.
Email marketing, for example, check your email analytics; which emails do customers open the most i.e. open rate, which emails do customers click on a link to buy your products or services, i.e. click-through rate, and which emails have the least engagement.
Through these analytics, you will have a better understanding and knowledge of which emails customers engage with the most and you will understand and know which methods you can use to increase the number of customers and sales. By understanding and knowing your customers’ needs, you can reduce your marketing costs while bringing in more sales and profit.
You can also check for analytics on social media, blogs, Google ads and SEO.
All these mentioned above are referred to as digital marketing analytics. Analytics is the interpretation of customer behavior to data and it allows you to make better business decisions. Simple analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Google search console, Moz Pro determine digital marketing analytics.
With digital marketing, you can target your website content, social media posts, blogs and digital ads to your potential customers based on the buyer’s persona.
Digital marketing is one of the best investments for businesses. Return on investment (ROI) is a ratio that compares the net profit to the cost of the investment. A high ROI means the net profit gained is much more than the cost of the investment.
So, Digital Marketing ROI is the ratio of profit or loss to the cost of investment generated by digital marketing strategies. One of the valuable importance of digital marketing is a high ROI, most businesses invest in digital marketing for the sole purpose of generating a high ROI.
Email marketing is the best digital marketing channel to use to generate a high ROI. However, you mustn’t only rely on email marketing, other digital marketing channels such as pay per click, content marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization and social media also generate a high ROI, using these digital marketing channels together efficiently and effectively will also return high profit or investment in the long run.
Compared to traditional marketing, digital marketing is cost-effective and affordable. Digital marketing doesn’t require printing materials, social media ads don’t cost as much as billboards and with digital marketing, you spend less while gaining more.
Additionally, before I leave, these are a few valuable digital marketing tips to use to ensure business success
Digital marketing is of benefit to businesses and individuals. It has a lot of channels, factors, and importance that help achieve business goals and objectives. The processes listed above are effective and efficient and if you ever want to start digital marketing as a career or for your business, follow the steps listed above, use the tips and start now.
Esther Ilori has been a content writer since 2017 and she currently works as a digital marketing manager at WayMaker Digital. She brings her years of experience to her current role where she is dedicated to educating and inspiring the world on how to effectively use content writing and digital marketing in various companies, careers and to achieve various goals. Links to her published articles can be found here. You can find Esther on LinkedIn or Twitter.