If you’re on the hunt for an updated, comprehensive and easy to understand digital marketing guide, this is the one for you.
This is your Complete Digital Marketing 2019 Guide aimed to give you the full run down on everything you need for your digital marketing journey. Whether you’re a beginner student or a professional, we’re here to offer you the skills and knowledge you need to be the next digital marketing wiz.
Digital Marketing
What is Digital Marketing?
The Financial Times defines it as products or services that are being marketed using digital channels in order to reach consumers. Its main goal is to promote brands via different forms of digital media.
Digital Marketing Activities are defined by Equinet Academy as doing market research with the use of research tools like Google Keyword Planner or analyzing the performance of your marketing with software like Adobe Analytics. It may also go into the use of digital ads through digital advertising platforms like Google Marketing.
This goes further than internet marketing because some venues don’t require internet usage. Examples of these include the use of mobile phones, social media, display advertising and the like. Digital marketing is a whole new approach and takes a different level of understanding customer behavior. It involves analysis and quantifying the number of downloads and views along all devices. It also includes interaction and replies on social media.
Altogether it may sound overwhelming, especially if it’s your first time hearing about it, but that’s why we’re here. Digital Marketing is something anyone can master with enough effort and resources.
In this guide, we offer you all our resources, just bring in the willingness to learn and let’s get started!
Why should you use Digital Marketing?
You’ve probably been exposed to Traditional Marketing most of your life. Everyone’s youth was filled with newspaper and TV ads and while these are still alive and kicking, Digital Marketing is now the smarter and more effective way to go. If you’re still unconvinced, you can read a full article on how it trumps Traditional Marketing over here.
The Internet as an Essential
First of all, it’s now a vital part for both the businesses and the customers. While some think it can at having a website, it actually goes way beyond that. This is due to the Internet becoming a part of our everyday lives. This equates to the value of digital marketing in order for a business to thrive.
You are able to reach your audience where they spend their time the most which is usually on their phones. They are inclined to buy your product especially if it is to be promoted towards your target market. Whether you are a small or big business, digital marketing works because you are able to suit your ads. You can also adjust the duration due to your budget. You can also get into growth hacking if you want to take your business even higher.
Telling your Brand’s Story
Most importantly, it’s a quick and easy way for your brand to tell your story and get people to listen through an online platform. People are a lot more responsive when it’s a narrative. Digital platforms can give you the opportunity to tell them that wherever they may be as long as they have a device. This direct access to consumers is something that you can utilize. Most customers are getting information digitally now more than ever.
Earn more Revenue
When you think about it digital marketing practically converts itself to digital sales as your goal is to get people to avail your service or product. Everyone is starting to get into digital marketing more and more and if your competition is using it and you’re not, you’re really at the losing end.
Without the use of digital marketing, your sales would mostly come from word-of-mouth and traditional channels which will cost you more and has less assurance of success. This is why most brands are making it their main method for marketing.
If you’re apprehensive you can try it out through free channels like Facebook pages and from there, we can assure you’ll see its major difference in reach and effect with non-digital channels.
Which Digital Marketing channels do you need?
With your brand and persona on hand, it’s important to use this and know where you can market your products and how to make the most out of these channels. These channels are your gateways towards reaching potential customers so it’s good to know what options you have and which suit your brand the most.
Let’s start with Inbound Marketing.
Inbound Marketing
You can use Inbound Marketing to attract visitors and customers to your brand. It combines the use of several marketing channels as its goal is to increase the reach of your brand and increase the quality traffic, conversions and engagements. You are able to attract more prospects with the use of relevant and helpful content. From there you can connect with them further with newsletters and chat to keep them up to date. Altogether, they creates a lot of trust and credibility for your business.
This is a good starting point since it’s the most commonly used strategy. It’s a tactic to present your product/service to prospects that are already looking for solutions to a specific point. When you use inbound marketing then they are able to find your site and they will immediately be interested because you offer what they need.
Its whole methodology has four stages: attract, engage, close and delight. It is able to help create trust, credibility and momentum and overall, add value to your customer’s journey. This methodology may also be compared to how your business grows as the customers are the ones fueling it. It can only end up with them buying form you again or even recommending you to others. At the same time, if you have unhappy customers, it will slow down your growth and maybe even halt it.
Inbound Marketing has 4 main channels namely:
- Search Engine Optimization
- Social Media
- Content Marketing/ Lead Generation
- E-mail Marketing
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Seach Engine Optimization (SEO) involves improving a website’s content through using specific keywords. It can be in the title or the content of the website so that it ranks high once searched on the different search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. SEO is a tried and tested method of increasing the visitors on your website. It’s also budget friendly because you don’t need to spend in doing this. Do not be misled in thinking it’s easy though, SEO is a complex marketing activity taking months to understand.
Google’s algorithm is complicated and uses more than 200 factors to determine your site’s rank. There is also no guarantee for it to rank high and you cannot pay to have it rank higher. Google works hard to retain the quality of their search results.
Social Media Marketing
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We are all in the world of social media.
This is the very reason why it’s a great tool for B2B & B2C companies who aim for increased leads, sales, brand exposure and referrals. These are also good for improving SEO since the shares your site gets is part of the major factors Google considers for a better rank.
In order to truly succeed in using social media, you must be able to integrate it in all your activities because it is now a big part of digital corporate culture. It is a place where everyone in your brand can further its reach and the networking power.
Influence everyone to go social.
Content Marketing / Lead Generation
When you use Content Marketing, it goes beyond simply creating blog posts on your site about your product. Rather, it goes into discussion of more general topics. What are these topics? They’re chosen based on the community’s interest so it has more appeal compared to product content which features more specific problems. Whenever you create content, keep in mind that this is all about the customers’ preferences than about your product. This is what gets their attention early in the sales process.
It’s easier to activate customers to make a small action like reading a blog post that getting them to immediately buy a product or review one. This content is also shareable which will gain you more web traffic.
You can get more attention when you are offering to educate them, apart from selling a product. This will build their trust which is significant in breaking into an established market.
E-mail Marketing
E-mail is the spine of any effective automated marketing strategy because it delivers your message directly to your customer’s inbox. It needs an efficient strategy and a purpose of achieving a larger goal.
To get started on e-mail marketing, you must add a newsletter subscription option in your website or Facebook page. Once they are subscribed you can start sending them a set of auto-responder emails. The aim is to gain trust by creating insightful and education information for your prospects. These e-mails should be designed and produced carefully as they will convince your subscriber about how your content is something they need to read.
Once you are able to obtain more subscribers, you are then able to heighten your converts by so much more. This is due to the fact that people who buy via e-mail spend 100% more than those who don’t. Surprisingly, it also has more converts than social media and is at least three times higher so it is definitely something to tap into.
Direct Response Advertising
Direct response Advertising makes use of paid advertisements offered to customers while they are browsing the internet. It involves the following channels:
- Paid Search Advertising
- Display Advertising
- Affiliate Marketing
Paid Search Advertising
search ads paid eoi digital
Paid Search Advertising is when you pay to place text ads on search engines like Google. Why would you want to do this? Simply because it’s one of the most effective advertising channels to use both traditionally and digitally. You also get to control the keywords that bring up your ad and bring you prospects that are ready to buy.
Almost all of the big search engines have a real-time auction system in running their ads. This is so advertisers specify keywords that pop up when users search. You will then place a maximum bid on each keyword. From there, when a prospect searches this keyword, all the advertisers are entered into a real time auction and the one with the most relevant ad and highest bid will win. You will then get the prized position of your ad being at the top spot.
Keywords can be added and edited as you through the process and learn new keywords that users are using. There are many tools like Google Analytics to measure the conversion rates and ROI for the keywords you bid on.
Display Advertising
Display Advertising, meanwhile, is a more visual process. You get to create banners and video ads that will appear on websites and blogs. This is a great channel for creating brand awareness and increasing clicks to your website.
Remarketing
This can be related to display advertising as it is also a visual activity and something you can probably relate to. It’s when you visit an e-commerce website and you browse for items and when you click off and go onto other websites, you notice ads from that same shopping website. It’s usually the exact products you viewed from the first one. This process is better known as remarketing which is a display advertising technology that lets the advertiser serve ads to buyers that have already been to the site. It’s significant because of the following:
- Increase response rate of up to 600% over traditional banner ads
- Focuses on prospects that have already show interest for your product
- Triggers a brand recall
- Speeds up the buying process
These can be purchased through ad networks like Google AdWords, Youtube and Double Click. These usually costs 1/3 of the search ads.
Affiliate Marketing
When you watch any sponsored YouTube video or Instagram post, do you notice the voucher? They usually give this for the item they’re promoting. This may also be called as a re-seller or commission program. This type of marketing allows third party companies refer business onto your site and they will receive a referral fee for it. This is usually ranging from 5%-15% of the subscription price.
This is like Zalora’s ambassador program wherein you can apply to become an ambassador. Once you are approved, you are given a referral code which can be used as a discount voucher by buyers. Every time they use it, the ambassador is able to earn a percentage.
If you’re a company with a product to sell, it’s pretty simple to set up this program and track your referrals. You may recruit affiliates using low-cost softwares. You can also create a part of your site to explain the program for future affiliate partners.