Basics of Digital Marketing You Must Understand!

Business competition is now increasing and spreading to the digital realm. Not only in terms of selling, now, even marketing methods also depend on wireless or online networks. That is why it is important for you to understand the basics of digital marketing, both as an entrepreneur and as a marketing service provider.

An understanding of digital marketing techniques or what is known as digital marketing is very necessary at this time. If you open a job advertisement at this time, digital marketing jobs are one of the busy vacancies posted by many companies.

The reason is quite simple, following the times, conventional media is no longer enough to help companies reach the target market, especially if their target market is millennials and generation Z who spend a lot of time in front of gadgets. Want to know more about digital marketing? Come on, see the discussion of this article!

Definition of Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is a product or brand marketing job using digital media or the internet.

The goal of digital marketing is none other than to attract consumers and potential customers more quickly and boost product sales from a brand and at the same time, increase a company's brand awareness.

Digital Marketer, the term for a person whose profession is centered on digital marketing is said to be the most sought-after profession and has the highest job opportunities according to the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Quoted from Kreativv, 

as much as 46% of total global advertising spending in 2021 is allocated for digital marketing. 

This fact is not surprising, because according to one study, around 52% of customers decide to buy a product after they see marketing video content.

In addition, WBR Digital notes that businesses with digital marketing strategies generally have an 81% success rate in bringing in sales. So, if you want to be successful both in business and in career development, try to become an expert and professional digital marketing.

Benefits Of Digital Marketing

There are several benefits of digital marketing:

1. Increased Reach

Allows businesses to reach a global audience, breaking geographical barriers. With the internet, businesses can target customers from different locations and expand their reach.

2. Cost-Effective

Digital marketing is often more cost-effective than traditional marketing methods. It allows businesses to reach a larger audience at a lower cost compared to traditional advertising channels like TV or print media.

3. Targeted Advertising

Enables businesses to target specific demographics, interests, and behaviors of their target audience. This targeted approach ensures that marketing efforts are focused on reaching the right people, increasing the chances of conversion.

4. Measurable Results

Digital marketing provides detailed analytics and data tracking tools that allow businesses to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. This data helps in understanding customer behavior, identifying trends, and making data-driven decisions to optimize marketing strategies.

5. Increased Engagement

Digital marketing channels, such as social media and email marketing, provide opportunities for businesses to engage with their audience in real-time. This engagement helps in building brand loyalty, increasing customer satisfaction, and driving conversions.

6. Personalization

Allows businesses to personalize their marketing messages and offers based on customer preferences and behavior. Personalized marketing creates a more personalized and relevant experience for customers, increasing the chances of conversion.

7. Flexibility and Adaptability

Allows businesses to quickly adapt and modify their marketing strategies based on real-time data and market trends.

Basics of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is a strategy used to promote products or services using digital technologies, primarily on the internet. It encompasses various practices aimed at reaching and engaging with a target audience, driving website traffic, generating leads, and ultimately converting them into customers. 

Here are some basics of digital marketing:

Digital Marketing Strategy

A digital marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan that outlines how a business will use various digital platforms and channels to achieve its marketing goals. It includes the following components:

1. Goal Setting

Clearly define the objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) that the digital marketing strategy aims to achieve. Examples could include increasing website traffic, generating leads, or improving brand awareness.

2. Target Audience

Identify the specific target audience or customer segments that the strategy aims to reach. This includes understanding their demographics, interests, and online behavior.

3. Market Research

Conduct market research on industry trends, competitors, and customer preferences to inform the strategy and content creation.

4. Choose your digital marketing channels

Select the digital channels that are most relevant to your target audience and align with your goals. This could include search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, paid advertising, and more.

Digital marketing channels refer to the various platforms and mediums through which businesses can promote their products or services online. Some common digital marketing channels include:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Optimizing a website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and increase organic traffic.
• Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC): Running paid advertisements on search engines or social media platforms, where advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked.
• Social Media Marketing: Promoting products or services on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., to engage with target audiences and drive traffic to websites.
• Content Marketing: Creating and distributing valuable and relevant content, such as blog posts, videos, infographics, etc., to attract and engage target audiences and drive conversions.
• Email Marketing: Sending targeted emails to a list of subscribers to promote products, share updates, and nurture customer relationships.
• Influencer Marketing: Collaborating with influencers or individuals with a large following on social media to promote products or services to their audience.
• Affiliate Marketing: Partnering with affiliates who promote products or services on their websites or social media platforms in exchange for a commission on sales generated.
• Display Advertising: Placing banner ads or visual advertisements on websites, apps, or social media platforms to increase brand visibility and drive traffic.
• Mobile Marketing: Optimizing marketing efforts for mobile devices, including mobile-friendly websites, mobile apps, and mobile advertising
• Video marketing: Video marketing is a digital marketing strategy that involves creating and sharing videos to promote products, services, or brands. It utilizes videos to engage and communicate with the target audience, delivering messages in a more engaging and memorable way compared to traditional text-based content.
• Retargeting: Retargeting marketing, also known as remarketing, is a digital advertising strategy that involves targeting and displaying ads to users who have previously interacted with a website or brand. It aims to re-engage potential customers who have shown interest but have not yet made a purchase or taken a desired action.
• Native Advertising: Native advertising is a form of online advertising that blends seamlessly with the content and design of the platform on which it appears. It is designed to match the look and feel of the surrounding editorial or organic content, making it less intrusive and more engaging for users.
• Search engine marketing (SEM): Search engine marketing (SEM) is a digital marketing channel that involves promoting websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) through paid advertising.
• Geotargeting: Geotargeting is a marketing strategy that involves delivering content or advertisements to a specific audience based on their geographic location. It allows advertisers to target their messages to users in specific regions, cities, or even neighborhoods.
• Website: strategies and tactics used to promote a website and its products or services on the internet. It involves various techniques to drive traffic, increase visibility, and generate leads or sales.
• Conversion optimization: Conversion optimization, also known as conversion rate optimization (CRO), is the process of improving the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or subscribing to a newsletter. The goal of conversion optimization is to increase the conversion rate and ultimately drive more conversions and revenue for a business.
• Podcast sponsors: Podcast sponsors are companies or brands that provide financial support to podcasters in exchange for advertising or promotion on their podcast episodes. Sponsors typically pay podcasters to mention or endorse their products or services during the podcast, either through pre-recorded ads or live-read endorsements.

5. Develop your messaging and content strategy

Create compelling and relevant content that resonates with your target audience. This could include blog posts, videos, infographics, social media posts, and more. Align your messaging with your brand values and key differentiators.

6. Implement and optimize your campaigns

Execute your digital marketing campaigns across chosen channels. Monitor and analyze the performance of your campaigns using analytics tools. Make data-driven decisions to optimize your campaigns and improve results.

9. Analytics and Measurement

Regularly track and analyze performance metrics, such as website traffic, click-through rates, conversion rates, and customer engagement. Use these insights to make data-driven decisions and optimize the digital marketing efforts.

10. Budgeting and Resource Allocation

Allocate the necessary budget and resources for each digital marketing channel, taking into consideration their potential return on investment (ROI).

11. Continuous Optimization

Regularly review and refine the digital marketing strategy based on data analysis, market trends, and customer feedback. Stay up-to-date with changes in technology and digital marketing best practices.

When creating a digital marketing strategy, it is important to consider the specific goals and resources of the business, as well as the preferences and behaviors of the target audience.

Must Have Digital Marketing Tools

There are several digital marketing tools that can help streamline and enhance your digital marketing efforts.
Here are some additional digital marketing tools that can be beneficial:

1. Google Analytics

A powerful web analytics tool that provides insights into website traffic, user behavior, conversions, and more. It helps track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and optimize your website for better performance.

2. Social Media Management Tools

Tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, or Sprout Social allow you to manage and schedule social media posts across multiple platforms, monitor mentions and engagement, and analyze social media performance.

3. Email Marketing Tools

Platforms like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, or Sendinblue enable you to create and send targeted email campaigns, automate email sequences, segment your audience, and track email performance.

4. SEO Tools

Tools like SEMrush, Moz, or Ahrefs help with keyword research, competitor analysis, on-page optimization, backlink analysis, and tracking search engine rankings. They provide valuable insights to improve your website's visibility in search engine results.

5. Content Management Systems (CMS)

Platforms like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla make it easy to create, manage, and publish content on your website. They offer customizable templates, plugins, and SEO features to optimize your content.

6. Landing Page Builders

Tools like Unbounce, Leadpages, or Instapage allow you to create high-converting landing pages without coding knowledge. They offer templates, A/B testing, and analytics to optimize your landing page performance.

7. Marketing Automation Tools

Tools like HubSpot, Marketo, or Pardot automate repetitive marketing tasks, such as email campaigns, lead nurturing, and customer segmentation. They help streamline marketing processes and improve efficiency.

8. Heatmap and User Behavior Tools

Tools like Hotjar, Crazy Egg, or Lucky Orange provide visual representations of user behavior on your website, including heatmaps, click maps, and scroll maps. They help identify areas of improvement and optimize user experience.

9. Video Editing and Creation Tools

Tools like Adobe Premiere Pro, iMovie, or Canva enable you to create and edit professional-looking videos for your marketing campaigns. They offer templates, effects, and editing features to enhance your video content.

10. Influencer Marketing Platforms

Platforms like Upfluence, AspireIQ, or Traackr help connect brands with influencers for collaborations and sponsored content. They provide tools for influencer discovery, campaign management, and performance tracking.

Read Also: 10 Digital Marketing Tools that Businesses Must Have

Digital Marketing Metrics

Digital marketing metrics are key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure the effectiveness and success of digital marketing campaigns. These metrics help evaluate the performance of various digital marketing activities and provide insights to optimize strategies. Here are some commonly used digital marketing metrics:

1. Website Traffic

The total number of visitors to a website, either overall or segmented by source (organic, referral, direct, social, etc.), provides an indication of brand awareness and reach.

2. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or subscribing to a newsletter, indicating the effectiveness of a website or landing page.

3. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave a website after viewing only one page, which can reflect the relevance and user-friendliness of website content.

4. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The percentage of people who clicked on an ad or link compared to the total number of people who were exposed to it, commonly used to measure the effectiveness of ads or email campaigns.

5. Cost per Acquisition (CPA)

The cost incurred to acquire a new customer or lead, calculated by dividing the total campaign spend by the number of conversions or acquisitions.

6. Return on Investment (ROI)

The ratio of the net profit generated from a campaign or marketing activity to the cost of that activity, used to determine the efficiency and profitability of marketing efforts.

7. Cost per Click (CPC)

The average cost paid for each click on a digital advertisement, provides insights into advertising costs and campaign performance.

8. Social Media Engagement

The number of likes, comments, shares, or other interactions on social media posts, indicating the level of audience engagement and brand affinity.

9. Email Open Rate and Click Rate

The percentage of recipients who open an email or click on a link within it, respectively, helping assess the effectiveness of email campaigns.

10. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

The total revenue generated by a customer over their lifespan as a customer, reflecting the long-term value and profitability of acquiring and retaining customers.

These metrics can vary depending on campaign goals and objectives, so it's essential to align them with your specific digital marketing strategies and objectives to track performance accurately.

Career In Digital Marketing

A career in digital marketing offers a wide range of opportunities and growth potential. Here are some key aspects to consider:

• Job Roles: Digital marketing encompasses various job roles, including digital marketing manager, social media manager, SEO specialist, content marketer, email marketer, PPC specialist, and analytics expert. Each role requires specific skills and expertise.
• Skills Required: To excel in digital marketing, you need a combination of technical and soft skills. Technical skills include knowledge of SEO, social media platforms, content creation, email marketing tools, and analytics. Soft skills like creativity, communication, problem-solving, and analytical thinking are also crucial.
• Continuous Learning: Digital marketing is a dynamic field that constantly evolves. Staying updated with the latest trends, tools, and strategies is essential. Continuous learning through online courses, certifications, workshops, and industry events is crucial to stay competitive.
• Industry Demand: The demand for digital marketing professionals is high across industries. Almost every business, from small startups to large corporations, requires digital marketing expertise to reach and engage their target audience. This provides a wide range of job opportunities.
• Growth Potential: Digital marketing offers excellent growth potential. As you gain experience and expertise, you can progress to higher-level roles, such as digital marketing director or consultant. Additionally, there are opportunities to work as a freelancer or start your own digital marketing agency.
• Salary Potential: The salary in digital marketing varies based on factors like experience, job role, location.

Tips for Digital Marketing Strategy

After learning sales marketing and knowing the types of marketing that are the basis of digital marketing, now is the time to know what skills are needed to start digital marketing.

Previously, the steps for beginners who wanted to start digital marketing were sorted into:

• Determine the target market and products;

• Products must be able to provide solutions to problems currently being faced by the market;

• Have a personal website to increase brand awareness and as a means of providing information to buyers and prospective buyers;

• Building interactive social media so that they are able to approach consumers and potential customers through intense communication;

• Make the best use of SEO, SEM, and Social Media Ads.

Ok, we are ready to dig in and start with some evergreen marketing basics. Let's go!

Finding your target demographic 

Before you start anything, you should figure out who are you trying to reach.

You will probably not get it 100% right on the first try, especially if you are a beginner. As time goes on, you will keep refining on your demographic and get closer to what works best. Also, the more experienced you get, the faster this process will be. 

The simplest way to start is to think who your product or service would help the most. 

Who is it perfect for? 

Get specific, think about one person. Think everything about them that is relevant to your product. Their age, gender, profession, location, they can all be helpful. 

Whatever you end up with will describe your target audience. Your efforts will be focused on reaching them. 

Reach your target audience 

After you know who you are after, you should brainstorm about the best ways to reach them. 

Where do your people hang out? Are they more likely to read blogs, watch videos, or scroll through social media? 

When you have an idea about where you might find them, you should focus your attention on creating content on that medium. 

If they do a lot of Google searching, you should start a blog. 

if they watch a lot of videos, start a Youtube channel. 

The way you get their attention will largely vary based on the channel, but there will be some common marketing tricks you can use no matter the channel. We will go over this in the next chapter. 

Create great content / advertise and A/B test 

As we already mentioned, there are two main ways to go about digital marketing. One of them is through creating lots of great content, and the other one is through paying for ads. They can (and should) be combined, but when starting out, choose one and direct all your energy to mastering it. 

The theory of creating lots of great content is very simple. In fact, there’s not much to think about, since it's mostly execution. 

If you are inexperienced, this will seem very hard at the beginning. But there is a great principle at play here

the more content you create, the easier it gets, the less time it takes you, and the content is better and better. 

Which means you only need to do two things: to start, and to keep going. 

The content creation path takes longer to bear fruit, and it involves more work. But it's also free, and it creates a lot more momentum that keeps your business going for free after put into motion. 

Creating content is crucial, and we will be devoting more time to it. For the time being, just keep in mind that it takes a lot of time and work, but when done right, the results are like nothing else. All of the best marketers ever have two things in common: they have created tons of great content, and they have learned how to make their content better by doing that. 

If you choose to learn advertising first, you will need some budget. It doesn't have to be great, but at least a few hundred dollars spread over two to three months will be the minimum requiement. 

The heart of advertising is measuring, testing and experimenting. You come up with an idea, and you test it. The best way to do this is through the core principle of marketing - the A/B testing. 

Most advertising tools and platforms provide easy ways to acomplish A/B testing. We will be going into more details about A/B testing later. 

Build a relationship with your audience 

Reaching your audience is just the beginning. 

Most successful businesses get their revenue through repeat purchases. That means they've built a relationship of trust with their buyers. 

The relationship with your audience is another crucial pillar of digital marketing. Marketing gets a lot easier when your prospects know you, trust you, and have already bought something great from you. 

There are many great ways to build a relationship with your audience, and we will dive deeper into each of them as we move along. The core principles you need to remember for now are: 

• you should listen to your audience and pay attention to their feedback, that is important information they are giving you for free about how to improve your product 

• ideally, you only want to be selling to them about one third of the time, the rest of the time you should provide them with value 

• never abuse their trust, it is very hard to regain it if once lost 

Skills Basic for marketer

The basic skills that you must master in order to start digital marketing are:

• Consistency: even though it looks easy, digital marketing is a job that takes a long time to master. If you want to know how digital marketing works well, then consistency is one of the keys;

• Willingness to learn: of course, your consistency must be accompanied by a high willingness to learn new things. Materials about digital marketing will always change, so if you don't have a high willingness to learn, you will get bored easily and eventually give up halfway;

• Open-minded: in a sense, you must be able to nurture ideas from other digital marketing practitioners, even though they have different incomes and ways of working. What you need to instill is, there is no default that governs digital marketing performance, so all methods need to be considered.

Conclusion

When compared to conventional marketing, some of the advantages of digital marketing lie in:

• Digital marketing strategies by utilizing internet media have a faster spread rate and can be monitored in real time;

• The results of digital marketing activities such as information about how many advertisements are watched, how many audiences your product reaches, to how high the conversion rate is, you can access all of them directly making it easier for you in the evaluation process;

• Broad Audience Reach: the speed of information exchange via the internet allows you to spread brand awareness of your product to foreign countries;

• Less budget used: advertising in conventional media such as billboards costs a lot of money and the results may not be as expected because you cannot choose who will see your ad, in contrast to digital marketing, which allows you to set your own budget and your target audience.

To find out more about digital marketing, you can refer to several digital marketing journals that contain information about digital marketing that you need to know or you can also take part in paid workshops.