Here are 30 common digital marketing FAQs that people usually ask us many times. Digital Marketing is a highly demanding career option today. Those who are not fully aware about this subject, these 30 most common questions can help them get some ideas about digital marketing.
What is the Definition of Digital Marketing?
Very simply put, digital marketing refers to any form of marketing which involves a digital medium and is conducted over digital devices. Since that digital medium is primarily the internet and the devices are computers, smartphones and tablets, the marketing is done online.
You will find that many refer to digital marketing by other names like online marketing and internet marketing. Digital marketing differs from the traditional form of marketing in the fact that there is no offline work done in the former. Everything happens over the internet.
Digital marketing is a form of marketing which can be called the great leveler. A startup or even a company with a very-curtailed marketing budget can make a big splash with the help of digital marketing. In the traditional form of marketing, companies and brands had to splurge a lot of money to get the kind of attention that they wanted.
Potential customers could not be tapped without going really huge and wide with the marketing and promotion. However, with digital marketing, you can reach a global audience with your brand of products and services. Also, it will not demand much of financial resources to achieve that.
There are many sections within the framework of digital marketing. All of these sections contribute toward the bigger umbrella of digital marketing. There is content marketing which focus on the promotion of published content containing information that you want your target audience to read or watch.
There is social media marketing which works on tapping social media networks like Facebook and Instagram. The idea is to promote products and services where your customers may be spending leisure time online. Social media marketing is also useful in getting access to user data that is invaluable in marketing.
Other sections include email marketing where emails and newsletters are used to promote and marketing brands. Even a division like online reputation management falls under the purview of digital marketing. As the internet is a fully democratic medium, giving a voice to anyone with an internet connection, people express their opinions freely.
Sometimes customers are unhappy and pour out their grievances online. That may put off potential buyers. Online reputation management teams work on resolving issues that can cause damage to the perception of your brand.
Advertising is a key component of digital marketing. It can be free or paid. Affiliate marketing, native marketing and marketing automation are some other terms that you will hear in the context of digital marketing. Search Engine Optimization or SEO takes a pivotal role in this form of marketing where content is promoted and marketed on search engines, especially Google.
Brands can decide to engage all of these sections in their digital marketing initiatives or pick and choose what suits their needs. A professional digital marketer can guide you on what’s best for your brand, depending upon the goals you want to attain.
What Digital Marketing Includes
The first thing about digital marketing that you should know is that its boundaries are quite blurred. By definition itself, digital marketing refers to any form of marketing conducted through digital means. The definition is so broad as to include every activity that markets or promotes products and services with the help of digital devices like computers, tablets and mobile phones. You should know that by virtue of this definition and the nature of digital marketing, there are multiple flanks present.
So what are the angles included in digital marketing? Here are some of the marketing aspects which definitely form the core, and fringes, of digital marketing.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO was once the bedrock of digital marketing. Though it has been overshadowed a little by more targeted digital marketing methods, SEO still remains a dominant force. In this mode, search engines like Google and Bing are used to market products.
The keywords or phrases used by searchers on search engine boxes trigger algorithms that pull up web pages with relevant content. SEO experts try to optimize their web pages for these keywords so that searchers come across their pages. That is the first step of generating leads online through SEO.
Social Media Marketing is now on the digital marketing initiatives of every brand, big and small. In this mode, social media networks like Facebook and Instagram are used to reach out to customer groups.
Users of these social media networks put up a lot of personal information on their profiles, including their likes and dislikes. Customer groups are prepared by demographic research for targeted social media marketing. Social media is also where brands can engage with users to resolve their grievances and complaints.
Online advertising is a key ingredient of digital marketing. This can be paid or free. Advertising can happen over search engines and social media networks. It can also be in the form of classifieds. Like the traditional form of advertising where you put up adverts at places visited or seen by your target consumer groups, the same happens in digital marketer. PPC or Pay Per Click is another model of digital advertising where revenue is generated according to clicks made on visible adverts.
Email marketing is also a component of digital marketing. Additionally, digital marketing includes the designing and development of websites. Without a proper website, online marketing attempts will fall flat. In fact, you have to build a secure and safe website because most websites these days have an ecommerce division.
This is where customers buy products after paying online. So their payment details have to be safe. All of this comes under the ambit of digital marketing. Moreover, online reputation management is another aspect of this mode of marketing where brands try to protect their branding through various online activities.
Why is Digital Marketing Important?
To answer this question in a single line: digital marketing gives everyone a chance, no matter how big or small your company is, and where it is geographically located.
- The avenues of traditional marketing are available at a steep price and only companies and brands with deep pockets can afford them. With digital marketing, even a startup can compete with a multinational company on a level field. The reach of the internet, with thousands of new smartphones being sold every day on a global scale, is getting wider and deeper by the day.
- Digital marketing has the power to turn each of these smartphones into a shopping bag.
- It embraces social media networks and search engines. With the help of digital marketers, you can now tap potential customers who were outside your customer demographic circle. It may be that you didn’t know they existed as potential customers before digital marketing brought them into the mix. With this plank of marketing, you will be able to add a whole new dimension to the way you promote or sell your brand.
- The return on investment (ROI) is high with digital marketing as opposed to traditional and offline means of marketing. What it means is that startups and businesses with a tight budget can afford this form of marketing. This is not just for those powerful players in the arena. Every brand can start off their online marketing with the right digital marketers on their side. Moreover, the rate of conversion (the ratio of the number of customers checking out your products and services with the number of them actually buying something) is quite high in this form of marketing. With the initial investment low, the conversion rate makes it a win-win situation for brands.
- In the day and age of connectivity, it is very crucial that you remain connected to your brand at all times. Digital marketing helps you achieve that. With social networks and websites, people who actually buy your products and services can communicate with you, leave reviews or offer suggestions. It helps you make better products or offer better services. Similarly, it gives you an opportunity to address their concerns and resolve their problems. The whole interaction comes together to make it excellent for brand reputation. In fact, brand building is a critical by-product of effective and targeted digital marketing.
- In the days to come, digital marketing will get a larger share of the marketing pie so the sooner you adopt and adapt, the better it will be for your brand or company.
Is Digital Marketing a Good Career Option?
Digital marketing is a dynamic and growing field. If you look at the number of smartphones being bought increasing every year, you will know that these are all potential customers to one brand or the other. To tap into this potential, brands are unleashing digital marketers to grab a larger market share. More companies and brands are joining the digital marketing bandwagon. So the arena is widening as well.
As a digital marketing enthusiast looking for a career in this field, the most obvious reason is that the number and range of jobs is increasing with each day. More companies are either outsourcing their digital marketing work to digital marketing agencies, or they are building up in-house teams to do the job. Either way, it means more jobs in the market. Candidates completing their training in digital marketing don’t wait around for jobs. If they are job-ready, they will quickly find one.
The second reason why digital marketing is an excellent career option is that this field does not have water-tight boundaries. In other words, if you join this arena as a content writer, there is no reason why you cannot train yourself on the job and become a social media expert as well. This flexibility ensures that you can switch careers within the industry if you don’t make the expected headway in your current position. Or it may simply be that you don’t like your profile after a while. Or you may want to expand your profile to include more skills and take on more responsibilities within this department. All of this is possible in digital marketing.
A third reason for you can be the compensation package or salary that you can expect. Because digital marketing is so indispensable for more companies, they are willing to pay a higher pay packet for suitable candidates. Also, if you take on more responsibilities as a digital marketer, your pay package obviously shoots up a little.
As this is a highly competitive industry, the salary never goes below a certain level for any position in this field. On the contrary, due to greater demand for professional and trained personnel, the salary stays at a higher level than most other industries.
If job satisfaction is a priority for you in picking a career, you can take heart from digital marketing. This field has enough scope to express your creativity and innovative ideas. Marketing anyway is a field where ideas are always valued. Digital marketing is such a heady mix of advertising, marketing, promotion, and brand building. All of them come together to give you a lot of opportunity to showcase your range as a professional. Even technical professionals have ample scope to be creative and do something new.
These reasons combine to make digital marketing a globally trusted career choice. Read – Why should you learn digital marketing
Related reading: Ultimate guide to digital marketing career and jobs
Will Digital Marketing kill Traditional Marketing?
To know the answer to this question, you need to understand the major points of difference between these two forms of marketing. Broadly speaking, digital marketing qualifies as online and traditional marketing is offline. So it’s the internet that is creating the whole difference between the two. Also, digital marketing is evolving every day, so it has the potential to drive traditional marketing out of the picture!
However, you should know that traditional marketing has its own strong base. This is true for many of the people who are not tech savvy enough. But you will have to look around with a flashlight to find people who don’t Google for a product or service!
Even if they find some bit of information through traditional marketing forms, like newspaper adverts, they verify the material online before going ahead with their decision to make a purchase or not.
Digital marketing may not be able to kill traditional marketing completely in the immediate future, but it is surely taking giant strides to make that happen! Have you noticed how people check out reviews and ratings before they make up their mind about a particular brand or company? People don’t shy away from asking their contacts on social media networks. In such times, how can any business run without relying on digital marketing by hopelessly expecting that traditional marketing will see them through? Check why digital marketing is important.
Smaller brands have a better chance of making an impression on customer groups with digital marketing. The costs incurred are lower and with the geographical barriers taken off the equation, they have a larger audience to tap. They can connect with buyer groups that were probably outside their sales circle. Traditional marketing can seldom make that happen.
Older business houses still swear by traditional marketing. They are unable to read the change of wind direction. To stay relevant, traditional marketing has not been able to tweak itself enough to be acceptable.
On the other hand, digital marketing is a dynamic field that innovates and explores new avenues every day. Even if you feel that your primary buyers are offline, you should embrace digital marketing to tap buyers who you didn’t know existed.
Can I do Digital Marketing from Home?
Yes, you can! Digital marketing is a field which is high on skills and low on infrastructure. You don’t need big guns to fight this battle. All you really need is a computer and internet connection. That is how startups and budding entrepreneurs begin their career. Though not strictly digital marketing, you know what a computer and internet connection can achieve by the stories of Facebook or Apple.
Digital marketing requires you to learn some skills before you can begin professional work. A quick search on the internet will reveal numerous free options for online courses. Taking these courses over the internet will help you get a quick idea of what this is all about. Digital marketing tools like social media marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization or SEO are some of the basics that you need to learn.
You should also know here that these free online courses offer a very cursory idea of digital marketing. If you want to work as a professional or a freelancer in this field, you need a more in-depth learning that a reputed digital marketing institute can provide. It is not mandatory that you physically attend classes but you need customized learning modules and mentors available online to address your queries. That is the only proper way to learn this form of marketing.
However, your learning doesn’t end when you finish your digital marketing course. This is a dynamic field and you have to keep updating your knowledge by studying regularly and doing your own research every day.
Companies that hire you as a freelancer will expect you to give them world-class work, even if you are doing that from the comforts of your home. In order to deliver that kind of work, you need to be updated about the latest tools and techniques. While you can work from home in this field, you need to deliver cutting edge work to stay relevant.
While you can do digital marketing from home, the first step toward that is learning it thoroughly and professionally through a reputed, credible digital marketing academy.
Will Digital Marketing be Automated?
According to a report by McKinsey, only 13% of the existing jobs in the market can be taken up by a robot, and marketing is among the 85% of the jobs which are in the safe zone!
Before you consider your career as a digital marketer completely safe right away, you need to know some more insights. For starters, you should know that automation isn’t something new in the digital marketing sector. Industry veterans will tell you about those days when link building, a strategic part of online marketing, was done manually! It took a lot of time and effort before some parts of it started getting done by automated software.
What changed was that the time factor became very crucial. As is obvious, manual jobs took more time while the automated tasks were carried out quicker and error-free. All you had to do was program it according to your requirement. Then you had to monitor the progress and step in when necessary. But this form of automation has not spread out to engulf the other aspects of digital marketing, like content writing.
Yes, there are software that give you variations of the same content and pass copy detected bots, but they will not retain the flavor of a human-written copy. Making a copy unique is something that robots and artificial intelligence will not be able to do.
Moreover, even when a copy can be simulated with software to bring in the feel of a human-written content, numerous others will use the same software and cut down on the unique factor of the content. The same goes for copies for social media, online ads and the like.
A lot also depends on how you handle your work as a digital marketer. You have to be innovative and intelligent, something that robots cannot be. If you mentally distinguish yourself from automated software, you will never go out of business as a digital marketer. You need to realize that digital marketing is more of a skill than a job. Think creatively and use automation as a digital marketing tool. Right now, completely automated digital marketing is like science fiction.
How Will Digital Marketing Change in the Future?
Like every other dynamic industry, you cannot say for sure how digital marketing will change in the future. What you can be certain about is that there will be a sea of changes happening! The proof of this is how the industry has changed in the last couple of years. With more internet connectivity and cheaper smartphones, the digital marketing sector has seen a wave of new tidings. That is certainly going to continue in the days to come.
Change 1:
There are a few changes in the digital marketing future that are written on the wall. For example, the dominance of voice searches is a foregone conclusion. Right now, stats say that 40% of adults in the US use voice searches at least once every day. Moreover, comScore predicts that in the next couple of years, 50% of searches conducted will be through voice. People prefer to use their voice rather than their fingers to access information as most of them are doing ten different things at the same time!
Change 2:
There’s another growing trend in digital marketing that you should be aware of: the use of videos. Yes, you are already using more videos than ever but you have to pull up your game here as well. Cisco tells that by the year 2021, 81% of online traffic will be through video! YouTube is already the second most popular website online. So the power of videos speaks through numbers. Add to it the falling readership of blogs, the rising rate of unopened email newsletters and failed social media engagement and you will know why videos are the next level.
Change 3:
You must have heard a lot about machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) changing the face of digital marketing in the coming years. It is true that AI will be more in use but it will only be a weapon for digital marketers. As of now, the uniqueness of digital marketers cannot be overshadowed by AI. It may be that the fringe jobs of the sector, like chat bot management or bidding will see a rise in automation but the core sector will continue to have a human face, and brain.
These are the Big Three changes that digital marketing will see in the near future. There are other smaller changes on the anvil, like the social media engagement methods or online advertising models. However, if you get the Big Three mix right, your digital marketing future planning will be sorted.
Related reading: Digital Marketing Trends & Why digital marketing is the future of marketing
Who is a Digital Marketing Specialist?
A digital marketing specialist is a multi-faceted job. If you are a digital marketing specialist, you will have to handle the online marketing department of a brand or company’s products and services. This involves promoting the brand online through various avenues and platforms, developing a marketing plan to reach as many customers or clients as possible and leading these customers through the marketing funnel toward making a purchase.
In other words, a digital marketing specialist has three different levels to master, promotion, marketing and selling.
If you borrow an analogy of a person handling the job of marketing on an offline basis, it will be easier to comprehend the entire gamut of roles that a digital marketing specialist has to play. The difference is in the use of tools. Because the job title is of a ‘digital’ marketing specialist, it will require technology for the most part.
However, the use of technology does not make it something totally removed from the basic tenets of marketing. For example, maximising profits and returns on investment (ROI) are still the major goals even in digital marketing.
A digital marketing specialist has to know a bit of everything required to carry out online marketing. The most obvious areas where you need good practical knowledge and experience include search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, email marketing, online reputation management and basic ideas of website development and designing. A digital marketing specialist needs to be a decent writer as well or you will not be able to handle the demands of constantly updating social media networks or posting on blogs and websites.
If you plan to pursue a career as a digital marketing specialist, you need to have a nose for marketing. You have to study and analyse the marketing techniques and modus operandi of A-list brands and companies. You need to study social media posts and blogs written by such brands in order to get a pulse of how they are reaching out to customers and clients.
Digital marketing is learnt as much on the job as in classrooms. You need to be innovative and creative in your digital marketing ideas so that you are always one step ahead of the competition around you.
Lastly, a digital marketing specialist cannot rest on their laurels! You have to constantly update yourself with new technology and techniques to remain in the hunt.
How will Digital Marketing add Value to Your Business?
Pick up any survey on the future of marketing. You will find that anyone staying away from digital marketing, relying solely on traditional methods, will run out of business sooner than later. This is a clear indication that you have to embrace digital marketing if you want your business to flourish.
Customers and clients at large prefer buying products and services through online means and that underlines the need for businesses and brands to jump onto the digital marketing bandwagon.
There are many different planks in which digital marketing will add value to your business.
- First up, conducting marketing through digital means improve your return on investment (ROI) significantly. The overhead costs, like maintaining an establishment or an office, goes down because everything can be encapsulated within a laptop! The different divisions of making a sale, like promotion, marketing and finally sales, are all achieved digitally. So, in a way, the number of personnel you need to run a business shoots down substantially. That adds to your profit margins as well.
- Secondly, digital marketing helps you improve your customer service. As a conscious customer yourself, you know that the only way to maintain brand loyalty is through active and interactive customer service. It is quite impossible to maintain competitive efficiency in this department if you are sticking to traditional means of marketing. By the time you reach out to disgruntled customers through traditional means, the costs and the time goes up way too much. You may not retain the customer even after incurring that!
- Thirdly, digital marketing gives you a good handle over predicting customer buying trends. In the online world, trends and patterns of customer purchases change within a short time. This is a dynamic field. Unless you are in the loop, you will lose out on business simply because you have not been alert in your business dealings and customer handling. Use of data analytics in digital marketing will ensure that you have the buying patterns of existing customers and potential ones at your fingertips. That will help you attune your marketing efforts toward targeted customer reach.
- Finally, market research is a key ingredient of digital marketing. In enriches your marketing efforts to a fine degree. It gives you ideas about customers’ latent demands and how a product or service might fare in the market. This will help brands and businesses to deliver products and services which meet the exact and precise demands of a customer. That will help improve sales simply because you are giving something the customer desperately wants, on a platter!
With such value addition, can you really keep digital marketing at bay?
How Digital Marketing helps Small Businesses
Small businesses have strong competition coming from the larger players in the market, simply by virtue of their budget constraints. Smaller companies don’t have the expansive budget that larger brands have. But to stay relevant in the market, smaller companies have to work out a marketing strategy. In the traditional mode of marketing, smaller companies have no chance of being noticed amid the blitzkrieg of larger companies.
Digital marketing offers help to small businesses so that the field of competition is somewhat levelled.
You need to know how this is possible, where digital marketing gives small businesses a much needed boost.
Firstly, digital marketing gives the opportunity to smaller businesses to take their content to a wider audience. Previously, these companies were only known among people geographically closer to them. To the world at large, the company and its products and services were unknown. Digital marketing takes your small business to an untapped market where they are potential customers. That is a huge boost to a growing business.
Secondly, digital marketing is a highly cost effective. Traditional forms of marketing can burn a hole through your pocket. For example, advertising on TV or newspapers is an expensive proposition, something that smaller brands cannot afford. With digital marketing, they can advertise online on social media platforms or search engine pages. It gives them exposure, grabs eyeballs but all at a much lower advertising budget. So, the cost effective factor is very much there.
Thirdly, the return on investment or ROI is quite high for digital marketing. As such, the only tools required by a digital marketer are a laptop and an internet connection! You don’t need a plush office or several people running the show. A small company can get a small team onboard and get the work done. While it takes so little to get online and noticed, the digital marketing efforts done through this means brings your company to the notice of thousands of netizens.
Finally, small businesses have a unique opportunity to even beating their much-fancied larger rivals through digital marketing. Carefully crafted content have the ability to go viral online. Similarly, planned content marketing or innovative social media can turn the tables in a jiffy and get you customers and clients in large numbers.
Digital marketing can be a real winner for smaller businesses.
What are Digital Marketing Channels?
Any avenue or platform that helps in marketing products and services online can be labelled as a digital marketing channel. These are ways in which you sell or promote something online.
Like the traditional model of marketing, digital marketing contains a marketing funnel as well, where leads are generated and then carried forward till the sale is clinched. The only difference is that the entire process is conducted online. So, the channels or pathways needed for the generation of leads and the final culmination in a sale is also different from traditional, offline methods.
Some of the most useful and effective digital marketing channels include:
Social Media Marketing:
This is surely the most popular and efficient way of connecting with your customers and tapping new ones. Social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are getting more users every single day. Potentially, all of these users are consumers waiting to be tapped. By the use of tools offered by these social media networks, you can launch targeted marketing campaigns online so that you can reach out to users who are more likely to buy your products.
Search Engine Optimization:
This is another time-tested method of digital marketing. Using search engines to bring users to a website or blog is more effective in generating online leads. With the use of keywords that are keyed in by searchers in the search boxes, content is optimized. When the content shows up on search engine pages, users respond to them by clicking and visiting your website. If they like what they see, your job is done.
Email Marketing:
This channel of digital marketing is particularly useful for customer service and touching base with existing customers. Newsletters and promotions emails are sent to subscribers’ databases, informing them about products, services and other tidbits. Receivers of these emails can respond through emails, phone calls or visits to websites.
Online Advertising:
Advertisements online can be paid or free. You can post ads on websites, blogs, search engine pages, social media networks and mobile apps. All of them fall under the ambit of online advertising. Like its traditional counterpart, the job of online ads is the same: grabbing eyeballs and leading potential customers to a services page to make a purchase.
Website:
Your biggest digital marketing channel is your website. A beautifully and logically designed website, with great content, is the best digital marketing channel. People visit websites more these days for information than make phone calls. If you have a good website, your digital marketing job is half-done. Websites can inform customers, encourage them to buy and even be a platform where they can buy.
Related Reading: Digital Marketing Guide
What are Digital Marketing Strategies?
To conduct digital marketing effectively and efficiently, you need a plan. It is a blueprint where you have to mark the opportunities available and what you need to do to utilize those. An ideal digital marketing strategy will take into account all the factors on the table, including the budget.
You will have to chalk out the digital marketing channels you will use and how. You also need to have an aim and objective marked out so that you can evaluate if your strategy is working or not. If not, you will need to go back to the drawing board and figure out another strategy.
Factors to decide digital marketing strategies
There are various factors that decide your digital marketing strategies. For example, your budget is a huge factor in deciding your plan of action. There are avenues that you may not be able to use because of budget constraints. Similarly, if you have deeper pockets, you can use the additional dough to launch a more offensive and large-scale digital marketing campaign. Your strategy has to be tweaked according to the budget.
An important factor deciding the digital marketing strategies is your goal. Some brands are interested in selling products while others are selling services. Your digital marketing strategy will vary accordingly. Similarly, if your goal is simply to promote a brand or an idea, you need a different method of disseminating the message.
The goal of your digital marketing campaign will decide which way you are going to take. The channels of communication you will be using for digital marketing will also be decided by the goal of your digital marketing initiative.
Let us now look at some of the pointers to develop an effective digital marketing strategy.
Firstly, you need to have a clear idea of who your targeted audience is. Unless you have a clear demarcation of your targeted demographic, people who are likely to buy your product or service, you will not be able to create and launch marketing messages suited for them.
Secondly, you have to be aware of the pros and cons of digital marketing channels. By drawing up this list, you will find out which channels are ideal for the kind of digital marketing you are planning to do. These insights will make up your strategy.
Finally, you have to keep a close eye on the branding of your product and services. You cannot use any digital marketing strategy that goes against the brand values which customers identify with. Doing so would mean long-term damage to brand perception and alienate customers.
Related reading: Digital Marketing strategies in post covid
What are Digital Marketing Campaigns?
True to the original meaning of the word ‘campaign’, in the digital marketing world it refers to planning and execution made toward reaching a desired objective. Digital marketing campaigns are conducted online and in such they are not very different from offline campaigns.
The sustained effort to generate online leads, get them to engage with published content and finally drive them to a point of sale, those are three phases of a digital marketing campaign that you have to keep in mind.
A digital marketing campaign is designed in three tiers: planning, development and management. In the planning stage, the factors taken into account include identifying the targeted customers, the objective of the campaign and how long the campaign will be conducted. In the next stage of development, you have to consider the various digital marketing channels and how you are going to use them.
You have to think about your marketing message and which is the best possible way to reach out to your audience. In the final stage, the question of management comes up, where you will have to evaluate what has been done. Evaluating the campaign will teach you lessons that will come in handy going forward.
There are various finer points in this broad categories or stages. For example, you have to consider the question of budget. Digital marketing campaigns, like every other campaign, are run on money. It is true that some of the digital marketing channels are free but you need to pay the experts who will work on them to optimize them for your brand.
Budget plays the central role in deciding on a digital marketing campaign. With a bigger budget, you can work extensively and tap premium services of free platforms for better results. With a shoe-string budget, you have to pick and choose what’s best for the campaign because you can certainly not tap every online avenue available.
Research is the cornerstone of every digital marketing campaign. Before the campaign is launched, you will need data to back up your plans. Otherwise, you will end up throwing money and resources at the wrong end of the pool. With sufficient data gleaned from reliable sources, your campaign will have a stronger backbone. After all, you will need specialists to work on your campaign. Trained personnel alone have the best chance to take your campaign to the heights of success.
Are Digital Marketing Agencies Profitable?
Yes, digital marketing agencies are profitable from every perspective. If you consider them in terms of financial gain, they are successful because more and more companies are hiring digital marketing agencies to work on the online division of their business. From a job satisfaction point of view, the challenge of working for A-list brands and marketing or promoting them to different demographics is quite satisfying for anyone looking for such challenges.
Even from the standpoint of the impact it makes, digital marketing agencies are the real movers and shakers today because most companies wanting to make a mark take up digital marketing as the number one choice.
You know how the proliferation of the smartphone market, along with the emergence of high speed internet in remote locations of the country, is adding millions of potential customers every month. There are brands waiting to tap these customers and bring them into their business. The best way to reach them is through digital marketing.
Online marketing tools like social media marketing, search engine optimization or SEO, email marketing and others are helping brands and businesses reach these potential customers. You have to remember that these customers were beyond the marketing sphere of these brands if you take digital marketing out of the equation.
Companies are hiring digital marketing agencies because they want to offer information to customers. Almost no one buys anything anymore without checking up for information online. This presents an opportunity to brands. They want to give out the required details to customers in order to earn their trust, and hopefully convert them into customers.
Brands need a quality website, blogs, social media pages and other content dissemination channels to give out the information in the form of written text, infographics and videos. All of this can be handled by a digital marketing agency.
Digital marketing agencies are crucial for brands even in the aspect of branding and online reputation management. Because the internet is a free medium, anyone can write anything about a brand. That can have a negative impact on the minds of potential customers. So, brands have to work towards managing damaging and disreputable content by various methods. including problem-solving. Without a digital marketing agency working for them, brands and companies will be all at sea trying to figure out how to handle negative press online.
Also, digital marketing agencies are made profitable by the influx of bright young minds and digital marketing enthusiasts looking for a dynamic career. To sum it up, the future of digital marketing agencies looks quite promising.
What are Digital Marketing Jobs?
The field of digital marketing offers a wide range of jobs for you. Some of them require technical training, some may need you to be creative and innovative while others would demand you to be analytical and research oriented. It depends on what kind of job you are looking for in this dynamic industry.
What’s best about this field that it does not make it mandatory for you to have high grades or exalted academic qualifications. If you have a nose for learning and is willing to update yourself every single day, this is the arena for you.
Let us look at some of the popular digital marketing jobs and what you need to be or do in order to grab them.
Digital marketing managers are very much in demand these days. Almost every brand or company has a digital marketing plank these days and such initiatives require the services of a trained digital marketing manager.
As is obvious from the name of the job position, a digital marketing manager needs to know a bit of everything, from the tech to the creative side, along with the hardcore marketing aspect.
Content creators and managers come in next. It is not enough that you write well in order to survive in the digital marketing arena. You need to keep yourself updated about the latest trends in online writing and editing in order to stay relevant. Content managers have the additional task of picking digital marketing channels and platforms ideal for different marketing messages. It is not just the question of the written word here. Videos, infographics, images and everything related to content are your ambit.
Search engine optimization (SEO) specialists have been in demand in the digital marketing domain for years now, probably since this field’s inception. SEO experts are still very much in vogue, albeit with lots of changes in how they do their job. SEO experts optimize a website and content to feed search engines and grab attention online.
Social Media experts are also a vital clog in the digital marketing machinery. They handle the social media profiles of brands across networks like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Along with social media experts, there are Online Reputation management experts who keep a tab on how brands are perceived online and fight negative reviews and feedback published online.
Researchers and analysts, along with technicians with knowledge of a website’s backend operations, complete the picture of a full digital marketing team. They handle the technical aspect of a website like User Experience or UX. The security of the website and financial transactions conducted on the site are also aspects that fall on the technical side of a digital marketing team member.
With such a wide array of professionals welcome in the digital marketing world, you can understand the demand for trained professionals here. That is why youngsters are so interested in a career as a digital marketing professional.
What are Digital Marketing Skills?
High demand digital marketing skills
Like the traditional form of marketing, a professional digital marketer needs multiple skills. Because this is a dynamic field, a digital marketer cannot rest on their laurels. They have to constantly learn new tricks and unlearn obsolete methods.
Before we talk about the skills you need to become a digital marketer, you need to understand that there has to be some qualities in your personality to be successful in this field. For starters, you have to be open about accepting changes in this arena and work hard to keep yourself updated.
One of the most important skills you need to be a successful digital marketer is to have a nose for marketing. Be it digital or traditional mode, the tenets of marketing remain the same.
In the digital field too, you have to reach out to your targeted audience, engage them with your marketing message and convert them into sales. The only difference is in the mode of marketing. Unless you have a knack for marketing, you cannot be successful here. So that’s skill number one.
Skill number two is that you need to be research oriented. Digital marketing is not done blindly. For every step you take, it is important to have data and stats backing you up. The good part about data on the internet is that it is mostly available for free.
You only have to dig it out with the right tools. With a research oriented mind, you will be able to glean the data you need. Analyses of available data and a lot of comparisons and contrasts take you to the right decision in digital marketing. If number crunching bores you, this is not the field for you.
Digital marketing demands that you have the ability to learn quickly and adapt. Tools change every single day. So it may be that the techniques you learnt at the digital marketing academy are no longer used where you work. Surely no institute can predict technology for the future. What you have to do is learn on the job. There are free tutorials available online, along with paid ones. Self learning is crucial to staying relevant in digital marketing. So that’s a skill you sorely need.
Other than these soft skills, the others can be taught in a premiere digital marketing academy. Skills like social media marketing, SEO, email marketing, online reputation management, website designing and development and the like are all about learning the tricks and techniques. Digital marketing doesn’t demand sky-high academic qualifications. What it demands is a positive approach to pick up lessons and learning how to implement them. With these skills, you will shine as a digital marketer.
Related reading: The most in-demand digital marketing skills
Why Use Quora for Digital Marketing
There are many question and answer forums online. None of them are as popular as Quora, a platform which gets 700 million visitors every month, if you go by stats of February, 2019. This figure is increasing each day for several reasons. You should know that Quora has content which are regularly monitored and updated. You cannot work on Quora without a verified profile to ask questions, or provide answers. This ensures that whatever is found on this platform is a substantiated answer.
The unique identity of Quora makes it a digital marketing tool. You can achieve so much as a digital marketer if you have this tool in your control.
Quora for Digital Marketing – Reason #1
Firstly, you should know that the high number of monthly visitors on Quora can become your target customers if you handle this tool properly. By answer posted questions in an informative and structured way, you can work your way into the minds of your potential customers.
When people come to Quora looking for answers, they acknowledge anyone who offers them the precise answer to their question. If you can become that source of information in your domain of business, you can earn the trust of people who may be interested to buy your products or services.
Quora for Digital Marketing – Reason #2
Secondly, by staying on Quora and marketing your content there, you will get to know a lot about how users behave in your business area. You will get to know their doubts and queries, their thoughts and concerns and what are their pet peeves. You may even get information and feedback specific to brands, products or services.
All of this helps you get a finger on the pulse of the people you expect to become your customers. Quora helps you get a sneak peek into their minds and offer you ideas to capture their imagination.
Quora for Digital Marketing – Reason #3
Thirdly, you will stand to gain quite a bit in terms of SEO advantages if you use Quora for digital marketing. Google places a lot of trust in Quora and the answers you post here have the legs to make it to the top of SEO ranking in your field of interest.
Quora is a new, organic way of hiking your main keywords up the ranks. However, you have to be careful about how you answer the questions. Dropping keywords indiscriminately, or going overboard with click baiting and other unfair means will downgrade your position. So use this tool judiciously.
Final words
Finally, you will understand buyer psychology in your domain and that will help you improve your business quickly. When you can feel what buyers want, you can provide it to the market. You can also use Quora as a tool to address customer grievances. Customers will enjoy having an authorized voice answering their questions on this platform.
Related reading: How to use Quora for marketing
How to Start a Digital Marketing Agency?
To start a digital marketing agency, you need to have a mix of skills, determination, some capital money and lots of contacts to tap for business. While it may take you a couple of years to get the digital marketing agency up and running, the initial stages is also the time when you learn some invaluable lessons in entrepreneurship and problem solving. Later on, when the agency is well established and flying on its own, you will find these lessons are useful in cutting down on mistakes.
If you are the founder of a digital marketing agency, you need all-round skills. You cannot be a specialized player in only one aspect of digital marketing. It may be that your forte is something, like social media marketing, but you need to understand the basics of everything under the ambit of digital marketing.
This is crucial because in the very early stages of your agency, you may have to do all the work, or train people working for you. If you don’t have the all-round skills now, develop them before launching your agency.
The second point you should keep in mind is that you need to develop contacts through networking. Digital marketing agencies need business and when your agency is running, it will need the money of clients to move forward. While you develop skills as a complete digital marketer, you should actively network with people you know. They may be former colleagues, clients you handled while working in a previous organization, peers or anyone in this industry. Social media profiles are very helpful in this kind of networking.
Next is that you need to keep aside enough money to sustain your digital marketing agency for a year or two, even when there is little business coming in. That is why most entrepreneurs work in a full-time setup while they build up their agency. It means you have to work during the weekends or long hours into the night!
But it will keep you solvent till your agency is able to fund itself. Also, you need to hire a tax consultant. You may be good with taxes but a consultant takes the pressure off you and you can work on your core business area. Tax consultants can also save you valuable money and keep your paperwork tidy.
When you start a digital marketing agency, you have to work towards developing a niche market. In the initial stages, it will be cruel to say no to clients but when you work in areas where you are not comfortable, you will not be able to deliver results. That will have a negative impact on your agency’s reputation. Instead, work in areas where you have a strong insight and experience. This will give you positive results and that can go a long way in establishing your fledgling agency’s brand name.
You can enroll for our start a digital marketing agency course .
Where to Learn Digital Marketing?
As you should know, digital marketing is a specialized job. As a digital marketer, you will have to express your skills in a highly competitive space, with innumerable brands jostling with each other for the same customer groups. At the same time, you have your own targets to achieve within the framework of digital marketing. In other words, you have to know your job exceedingly well in order to nose ahead. That can only happen when you train in digital marketing from the best available institute.
Previously, digital marketing was a bunch of skills which you picked up on the job. Almost every first generation digital marketer found out the tricks of the trade while working on live projects. There were mistakes made and that’s how you learnt! All that has changed over the years!
The stakes are higher now and each mistake can cost heavily. Anything you publish online can turn back from the grave to bite you several years down the line. So, as a digital marketer, you have to totally sure about what you are doing, and how.
This shifts the entire onus on the digital marketing institute where you learn the ropes of the profession. You can learn digital marketing through brick and mortar academies as well as online. There are innumerable free tutorials and videos available which can give you a basic guidance on what digital marketing is all about.
However, to work as a professional in a serious company, you will need more than just cursory ideas. You need to have ideas that take you to the forefront of the digital marketing arena. Also, you need to know what the best in the business are doing right now in this field. This will give you an idea of what is expected of you.
Learning digital marketing is a dynamic experience. You can never say that your process of learning is over even after a decade in the digital marketing sector. That is so because the contours of the arena change every day! The moment you learn something well, you find that something new has emerged to nudge it out of work. You have to unlearn the old ways and learn new methods all over again. Even experts who teach digital marketing have to be well aware of the changes happening every day. Unless they know, they will be unable to prepare candidates enthusiastic about this profession.
After checking through tutorial modules, course curriculum, brand reputation and various other factors, including placement opportunities, you should pick the digital marketing academy to help you prepare. There are a wide range of options available but only a few of them are able to provide quality training, with exposure to work on live projects so that you get job ready by the time you finish your course. A judicious choice in which digital marketing academy is ideal for you will open up career doors for you. If you are searching for digital marketing course in Kolkata, you can contact Seven Boats Academy for classroom course or join their Online self-paced digital marketing course or Online instructor led course.
Learn more: Why Seven Boats is chosen by 50000+ students across 170 countries since 2011.
How can Digital Marketing be used for Publicity
In the days before the rise of digital marketing, people relied on the traditional forms of media for promotion and publicity. These traditional media included TV, radio and newspapers. There were other methods, like outdoor advertising in the form of billboards, classified ads and several others. The purpose was to reach out a marketing message to as many people as possible. All of this audience was potential customers. When digital marketing came up to be a strong force, you could no longer resort only to the traditional channels of publicity.
What most brands and companies started doing is that they added digital marketing to their existing publicity campaigns through traditional media networks. As a result, the TV ads or advertorials that were published in newspapers were put up on social media profiles of the brand.
It married the powers of both the traditional mode of publicity along with the new superpower, digital marketing. You could be sure that between the two of them, your marketing pitch will reach your potential customers.
While most brands played this game, you needed deep pockets to invest in traditional media. Newspaper or TV ads cost a lot, something that smaller brands and startups cannot afford. So they started relying entirely on digital marketing, a choice that paid great dividends for multiple reasons.
You get a favourable return on investment (ROI) when you use digital marketing. The cost of using digital publicity channels is pittance compared to using TV or newspapers. So, you save some money in your publicity campaign the moment you pick digital marketing ahead of others.
Secondly, the penetration of high speed internet and low cost smartphones has opened up digital marketing like never before. People are glued to their smartphones instead of watching TV. People check their smartphones on the way to work, watching movies or simply hanging out on social media networks.
The sale of newspapers is sliding down every day as more people are reading their news online, even on social networks. So the ideal way to publicise anything these days is through a smartphone or through digital means.
Digital marketing has many flanks that are great for publicity. Social media marketing is a very crucial tool in this regard. You can write blogs and publish them on your website or social media profiles for people to read about your message. You can use email marketing campaigns.
You can get low cost and effective publicity through SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. Digital marketing also helps you target specific consumer groups or demographics. This is something that you could not get even on traditional media platforms.
If your content is good enough to grab eyeballs, and goes ‘viral’, you need not push your publicity campaign either! The publicity will be auto pilot, with more people getting in million others, while you sit back! Digital marketing can actually take your message on a global scale. With the entire world as your potential audience in case of digital marketing, what more publicity can you want?
Why Digital Marketing Fails
Just like any other form of marketing, digital marketing has its own share of pitfalls. There are various reasons why digital marketing can fail. What’s worse, you may not have a direct control over these reasons!
That is why it is such a tough job. Digital marketing is all about planning and then hoping that your plans will fall into place. A lot of it depends on how your audience reacts to the marketing initiatives you take. When they like what you publish, your marketing and lead generation goes through the roof. The other end of the spectrum is a reality, too.
Let us look at some of the reasons why digital marketing fails. The first reason is the most obvious one: lack of market research. Before any brand launches a line of products or services, they have to conduct a marketing research to find out if there is a market at all for such products and services. If not, they have to tweak their product or service to fill in gaps in the consumer market.
The same is true for digital marketing. Before launching a marketing blitz, know your target audience and check what kind of content they are willing to consume.
The second reason for failure is lack of implementation. You will be surprised by the number of brands which keep delaying the release of a marketing video or blog post because they are too busy fine-tuning it. As they say, perfection is the enemy of ‘done’. So, your job as a digital marketer is to publish your content without worrying too much about the impact. Yes, you cannot hurry things and give our half-baked content but it is also not advisable to keep delaying things. That way, your competitor may get the first-mover’s advantage, which is more important than anything else.
The third reason for failure is lack of coordination between the different wings of your digital marketing team. There is social media, there is SEO, there is web development, there is content writing and several other wings. All of them have to be on the same page and work toward a common goal. Otherwise, each of them end up pulling the campaign in diverse directions.
Before launching the campaign, everyone should understand their role and what they need to contribute. They cannot work counter-productive to each other. As a digital marketer, you have to keep them on the same wavelength.
Digital marketing efforts fail for other reasons as well, like lack of proper budgeting. Low budget isn’t always the culprit. Failure to manage funds effectively, especially when the pockets are not too deep is a concern. Digital marketers also need to realize that all of what they publish will not go ‘viral’. So they must set a benchmark and follow it instead of going for gold every single time. Inadequate competitor analysis and wrong understanding of what products and services you are marketing are other reasons why digital marketing campaigns fail.
Why Digital Marketing is Essential Investment
There is an old saying marketing circles that you must have heard: “Go where the customers are.” This is the reason why traditional forms of marketing relied on newspapers, billboards, radio and TV. These are the platforms where people kept their eyes on.
The crux of marketing is to be visible to your targeted customers. If your marketing message doesn’t reach the customers, there is no point in creating and launching them. However, the dynamics of marketing have changed since.
How many people on the roads do you see glancing up at billboards or reading newspapers on their daily commute? How many people in your personal circle of friends and family watch TV or listen to the radio? They are all glued to their smartphones, tablets and computers. There is little point in marketing on platforms which customers are not viewing anymore. Moreover, those media were costly and had plenty of wastage, which in turn meant low returns on investment (ROI). Digital marketing is the perfect antidote for this kind of situation.
With people checking their smartphones every waking second, you can reach them through social media marketing or SEO or even email marketing. With many of them working through the day on computers, websites are a perfect place for your marketing message.
That is why more companies are willing to invest in digital marketing. The situation has turned in favour of digital marketing drastically. Even a couple of years back, companies had the customary website and social media profile but no active measures to use them for marketing. The scenario is totally different now.
Companies are not just getting in-house teams but also increasing their marketing budgets. They are helped by the fact that ROI through digital marketing is much higher than the traditional forms of marketing which they had been using till date. So you are getting more work done with a lesser sum of money. Additionally, the format of digital marketing is such that there are no geographical boundaries. You can sell your products to people across the globe. You don’t have to spend a fortune to grab international brand coverage. Just a laptop with a smart digital marketer is all you need!
Most digital marketing pundits feel that the main reason why companies are hiking up their budget allocation in this segment is the response they are getting from their targeted audience. Digital marketing means like social media marketing gives you an instant feedback on how your marketing messages are doing.
You don’t have to wait a long time to gauge the response, only to realize that the campaign has failed! In digital marketing, you can test the waters as you take the campaign forward, tweaking things along the way according to the audience reaction. That ensures that you don’t waste resources and yet reach audiences with a better marketing message. The targeting of audiences and consumer demographics is much precise here.
It is for these reasons that all companies around the globe are increasing their investments on digital marketing.
Who Works in Digital Marketing?
Youngsters are much interested in a career in digital marketing. However, they are often unsure about who works in a digital marketing agency. Before we discuss the roles in which you can work in digital marketing, let us look at some of the qualities that you need to have if you want to make this as a profession.
To begin with, digital marketing is a dynamic medium. So you have to be flexible and understand that there are no boundaries set in stone when it comes to working in a digital marketing agency. Your main job may be that of a web designer, but if there is a need of the hour, you may have to step in as a social media manager for a few days!
Role swapping and doing different things within the construct of a digital marketing agency should come as no surprise to you. If you are up for the challenge of learning almost everything done in a digital marketing agency even though you have a specific role in your job description, this is the place for you.
Secondly, digital marketing is a highly creative job. Yes, there are digital marketing templates and studies conducted all over the world that you can use as reference. You can study the various digital marketing campaigns launched by reputed brands. You can browse through websites that have millions of unique users every day.
You can pick up tricks and tips for your own digital marketing work. But at the end of the day, you have to be creative about applying these lessons specifically to the projects you are doing. And be innovative enough to create marketing campaigns unique to the brands you are working with.
Finally, if you want to know who works in digital marketing, it is the person who is willing to learn and unlearn every single day. The day you feel that you know enough, that might well be the last day for you as a digital marketing professional. You have to constantly update your knowledge bank and skill sets.
Because of the rapidly changing nature of technology, you can never put up your hands and declare that you have mastered them all. You will be helped by free tutorials and course material available widely on the internet. All you have to do is to have the desire to learn, only to unlearn everything the next day if needed.
If you want to know about the various roles and job designations in a digital marketing agency, it can be quite a long list. A typical digital marketing agency hires SEO experts, social media marketers, online reputation management experts, website designers, website developers, online advertising executives, domain and affiliate marketing experts, content writers and editors, among others. For the technical aspects, there are programmers and even website security experts. The roles are defined and you have to train well to do your job.
Will I Like Digital Marketing?
If you are a youngster with job satisfaction on the top of your priorities, you must often ask the question, will I like digital marketing? You can answer this question for yourself when you look at some of the aspects of this job.
Anyone looking for a career in a particular industry has to note how their prospects will be on a long-term basis. In this regard, digital marketing comes out with flying colours because the market expands every single day.
To put it in other words, every single person getting access to the internet through a smartphone expands the digital marketing sector! So if longevity is something you prefer, you will surely love digital marketing.
Secondly, you must be hoping for creative satisfaction in your job as a digital marketer. There is plenty of room for that because the creative scope is huge, and so is the option for innovation. You have to be creative enough to understand what kind of marketing messages will suit your targeted demographics.
Similarly, you have to innovate and find out which platforms of digital media will be more penetrative with your audience. There is a lot of data analysis involved, along with writing, designing, interaction with customers, both existing and potential and many other opportunities to love this job.
Thirdly, you will surely like digital marketing if pay packets give you a boost at work. More brands are expanding their digital marketing budgets and allocations. They are willing to cut down on their traditional marketing areas and concentrate on digital marketing.
This has brought in higher pay packets for digital marketing experts. If you are good at your job and know how to deliver what clients want, you will earn more than what you would with similar years of experience in any other field. Other than your day job, there is also scope for freelancing and adding to your income.
Fourthly, you will like digital marketing if you hate stagnation in your career. Other than digital marketing, very few other careers give the opportunity to learn something everyday. What you learn today can get obsolete in a few months’ time!
So you have to constantly update your knowledge base. You will have to pick up tips and tricks by studying other digital marketing initiatives. You can learn from techniques and campaigns launched and run by brands on the other side of the globe. It is quite stimulating to pursue a career in digital marketing.
Finally, you will like digital marketing for the various employment opportunities it offers despite specializing in one discipline. So even if you are a social media expert who learns on the job that writing content is your calling, you can quickly change streams and become a digital media writer.
The boundaries of digital marketing inter-disciplinary streams are fluid and vague. You can change track midway through your career without harming it in any way. Your experience will stay relevant and you can enrich your present discipline through what you have learnt in a previous capacity. No other professional field offers this kind of fluidity in career choices.
If you are still undecided, a course in digital marketing will help you decide if you like it or not.
Will Digital Marketing Die?
The simplest and direct answer to this question is NO. It is true that the face of digital marketing will change in the near future and the dynamics of marketing online may go a sea-change in the years to come, but the core idea will only grow bigger with time. It is also true that some trends of digital marketing which you find useful and effective today will fizzle out with time, only to be replaced by other trends which are nowhere on the horizon now.
Digital marketing is being used by the best minds of technology and marketing on a global scale. It is obvious that these brilliant and diverse innovators are creating or tweaking things around every single day. New ideas and methods are coming into the picture because the digital marketing pie is getting bigger.
There are also more digital marketers in the arena than ever before. Moreover, more brands and companies are taking their products and services online to tap a global consumer market. How do you expect such a thriving industry to die anytime in the future?
What will primarily keep digital marketing alive is the exponential rise in the number of internet users across the world. Each new user of the internet through a smartphone is a new potential customer added to the digital marketing audience. Brands will love to reach out to these users who are far flung from their geographic location. Without the internet, there is no way a brand in urban Boston can sell something to a remote location in rural Bengal. What will change in the future is the manner in which digital marketing is done.
For example, brands often have digital marketers post content on their blog or website just for the sake of offering something fresh. There is little planning or thought behind this kind of content creation. As a result, they serve no purpose other than filling up webpages.
The same kind of practice happens on social media networks. Digital marketers who are otherwise unaware of social media practices, post irrelevant content and expect their followers or friends to take them up for discussion or sharing. More often than not, social media followers are added forcibly or through dubious means.
These digital marketing practices will not live long, that’s for sure! Most smart digital marketers have moved away from these methods. To identify which practices are annoying the audience at large, you need to think like a member of the audience yourself.
What are your pet peeves as a consumer of digital marketing? Pop-up ads are one, for sure, you may answer. So, the next time you design a website or web page, get rid of pop-ups. Or videos that auto-play. You may shove some content down unwilling throats in this manner, but in the long run, the move will be counter-productive.
Digital marketing is here to stay for a long time. The trappings may change, but the essence will remain.
How Digital Marketing is Considered as Inbound Marketing
Any form of marketing that brings in potential customers within the marketing funnel by pulling them towards it through various channels is termed as inbound marketing. Digital marketing differs slightly in definition and intention. Any marketing that is conducted with the use of digital means is loosely termed as digital marketing.
The tools used by digital marketing and inbound marketing are often the same, or common to each other. This gives way to some people into concluding that they are the same. The truth is that the tools may be different, the methodology and the objectives are different.
You have to first understand the points of similarity between the two. Inbound marketing uses channels of communication to attract customers that are very popular with digital marketers. SEO and blogging are two among many other tools that inbound marketers use. The use of social media marketing is another key tool common to both.
Similarly, digital marketing tools like Customer Relationship Management or CRM, email marketing and Call to Action or CTA buttons are used regularly by inbound marketing teams. You can see that there is a lot of similarity between them when it comes to the tools and channels used.
Now you can focus on how they are different. The most obvious point of difference is that inbound marketing involves the entire journey of a potential customer from the first point of contact till he leaves the marketing funnel as a satisfied customer. All the tools used in the process are there to work towards this one goal.
There is a holistic approach in this. That is absent from digital marketing. There are numerous instances when digital marketers use just one or two online avenues to reach out to customers. There is often no integration of the various tools as a whole.
The objectives of digital marketing may be varied, too. It is not just about getting customers to buy. Sometimes, branding and online reputation management is also done through digital marketing. Here, there is no hardcore marketing done as such.
The only goals of the digital marketers in this regard are to promote something or handle customer service on behalf of a brand. Inbound marketing isn’t about these intangible deliverables. Only conversion of leads into sales matters when it comes to inbound marketing. It may not be products and services but a simple idea. That would still qualify as inbound marketing.
The final point of difference is that there are various avenues used by inbound marketing which are not digital in nature. Likewise, there are many tools used by digital marketers which are more outbound than inbound. So that way, too, they are different.
What is the role of Digital Marketing Executive?
To understand the role of a digital marketing executive, you need to know the roles and responsibilities of a marketing executive in the traditional sense. In a traditional framework, a marketing executive is entrusted with the duty of promoting and marketing a brand’s products and services. Sometimes, the marketing executive is tasked with achieving sales on the behalf of the company, in a setup where marketing and sales teams merge.
The difference between a traditional marketing specialist and a digital marketing specialist is the use of media. While the former uses traditional modes of marketing like newspaper and TV ads or door to door marketing, digital marketing executives use digital channels, especially the internet.
Let us now take you deeper into the role of a digital marketing executive. For a digital marketer, you need to have a clear idea of the basics of marketing. That is not quite different from the traditional mode. Here too, you have to push demand for a product or service. Where there is no demand for the product, it is the duty of the marketing executive to create one in the mind of the targeted consumer.
To make that happen, digital marketing executives have to study the market keenly. After discussing the USP of a particular product, service or brand in detail, a digital marketer finds out about the target demographic. That may be segregated according to age, gender, location, class or ethnicity. After the segregation is done, the various avenues of digital marketing are evaluated. One avenue of digital marketing may be suitable for a case, but not for another. So it is the job of the digital marketing executive to pick the right platform for marketing. More often than not, battles are won or lost on this one decision.
A digital marketing executive needs to have clear ideas about the different platforms of digital marketing like SEO or PPC. You cannot say, as a digital marketing specialist, that you are unaware of the latest trends in a particular platform. You have to keep yourself updated every day by studying the digital marketing trends of reputed, established brands in your arena of work, even if they happen to be rival brands.
You should also try to find the positives in what has worked for the brand you are working for, so that you retain your unique marketing trait. Brands are unique and so must be the digital marketing initiatives.
Digital marketing executives have to address the brand’s presence online. It is not just about selling and promoting. To work on the social presence of a brand, you have to use social media networks, blogs or video marketing. These initiatives are aimed at popularising a brand and managing its reputation online. Sometimes, the job entails responding to customer’s complaints or queries.
So, as a digital marketing executive, be prepared to have your hands full!
Who Benefits from Digital Marketing
Digital marketing has beneficial effects from every entity across the board. Whether it is a global brand or a startup, digital marketing has the power to take the marketing, promotion or sales to the next level.
Similarly, if you consider how local vendors are now able to reach out their products and services to far-flung locations simply because of digital marketing, you will understand that the reach and expanse of this industry is quite wide. Digital marketing benefits companies that want to conduct branding and promotion but with a shoestring budget. In other words, the beneficiaries are a long and winding list.
To start with, you have to understand what a great leveller digital marketing is for bigger and smaller brands. Previously, when there was only traditional form of marketing, brands with little exposure or marketing capital could not compete with the bigger fish in the pond.
As a result, bigger brands got bigger with their deep pockets to finance radio, TV or newspaper ads. Small brands had to make do with restricted markets only. With digital marketing, smaller brands can give the larger brands a run for their money with aggressive online marketing. With the right channels and tools, they are on an even keel with larger brands with more resources at their disposal.
Secondly, digital marketing does not cost as much as traditional forms of marketing did. A radio or TV ad was a fortune for smaller brands. They could not afford these ads and lost out on a lot of business because they could not reach a wider mass of people. With digital marketing, these hurdles are absent. You can reach a global audience with your brand at a much lower cost. There are paid and free channels for brands to use. If your budget is low, you can avail free avenues and they are quite effective. All a digital marketer needs is a computer and internet connection! So the overhead cost of running a digital marketing is low as well.
Thirdly, location ceases to be a factor when digital marketing gets in the equation. No matter where your business is located, you have the world as your customer base. Digital marketing channels ensure that the marketing messages from your end reaches out to a global clientele.
You don’t have to remain confined in your local domain and have the option to expand your business. Similarly, you can engage the best digital marketers without having to stir from where you are located! Your digital marketing team and your business can be on two opposite hemispheres of the globe and still work as a compact team.
So many beneficiaries, among several others, ensure that digital marketing methods are a win-win for startups, budding entrepreneurs and global business giants
Whom to Target in Digital Marketing
You need to know the target audience for digital marketing to succeed. When such precision in selecting and targeted demographics can be achieved, it will be a waste of resources if you don’t get the target audience right. There are many ways and layers of selecting the target audience for a digital marketing campaign. Let us look at them one by one.
- At the very start, you need to find out more about your own business and identify your ideal customer. This process will start by answering if you are a B2B (Business to Business) or B2C (Business to Customer) company. If you are selling to another business, like a tyre maker selling to an automobile manufacturer, you fall in the B2B segment. But if you are a tyre maker selling to owners of automobiles, you fall in the B2C category.
- Once that is done, you need to answer some questions about your ideal customer. For example, is your target customer based in a particular geographical region? Is your customer educated? What is the ideal age group? These questions, and many more including gender, race, ethnicity, religion etc help you narrow down your demographics. You will be surprised to know how much of data is actually there in the public domain about individual customers that will help you target them individually, if you so want.
- Next comes the process of using these answers to look for those customers. You can do them through online tools, like Facebook Insights. If you are aware of Google Analytics, then Facebook Insights is not going to be alien for you. It provides you information about customers on Facebook. Other tools include BuzzSumo which essentially helps you understand your content strategy on social media networks. Google Analytics itself is quite helpful in segregating users of search engine Google. With their data pool, you can narrow down your target considerably.
- There are other ways of pulling data about your target audience. If you are new to the arena, these are your best bets, other than online polling tools. If you are already sitting on some data like an email list of your subscribers, you can ask them directly for additional information. Surveys and opinion polls are great ways to find out more about your existing pool of customers. When you collate all this data, it will make a substantial reservoir. Now you need to test your content against selected data groups for targeted marketing.
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Read more FAQs on Digital Marketing Course offered by 7boats
Read more FAQs on Digital Marketing Course
Digital marketing is really a best option for any student it have a wide range of diversity for career option. The detail shared by you is really helpful and inspiring for the students. Regards, Shamsher Khan, shamsherkhan.com