A Comprehensive Guide to Digital Marketing in 2022

In the modern age of the internet, in all probability, it is fair to say that traditional marketing techniques took a back seat while digital marketing is driving and ruling the online world. No longer advertisements in newspapers, newsletters or magazines are in need to shoot up your sales, as traditional ads become a thing of the past.

Hence, not just the print magazine, the whole marketing landscape has changed and is no longer the same as it was even one decade back. Gone are the days when one need to blow thousands of dollars to buy a TV spot to expand their commercial.

Now the question arises, how far it will be worthwhile to switch to digital marketing to channel your products or services?

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing, or what many of us might call internet marketing, online marketing, refers to any marketing efforts through digital channels via Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC), social media, website, Email or any mobile app.

In this time and age, we read on the web, shop online from groceries to dresses, do online research of any products or prices before purchase, and all these are the out-turn of digital marketing. And this shows how one will miss out on the potential visits and sales in case someone denies switching to digital mediums.

Because your users are 24 hours online and as soon as they get to know about your business, the first thing they will do is, search you online to find your business’s existence. If you are not available online, your business will be nonexistent for many of them!

How digital marketing help to expand a business

From acquiring and retaining more customers to creating more opportunities and growth for your business, digital marketing works in all senses.

Digital marketing is measurable

In digital marketing, you can get to know what your audiences are looking for. By looking at your business insights, you can find how many clicks you are getting in your Google AdWords or sponsored content, the audiences, how long they stayed on your site, what content they downloaded, etc. Analysing this factor lets you spend dollars in rightful places where your investment can be quantified.

Digital marketing is cost-effective

Even if your business is running on a tight budget, digital marketing would be the right option because it won’t come up with a hefty price tag. You don’t have to target a wide variety of viewers who might have minimum interest in services or products. Even when it comes to boosting your social media presence or other digital marketing techniques, the investment you will need is not even close to what you would have needed to get a billboard presence.

Digital marketing is attainable and brings fast growth

In this fast-paced world, you will not need much time to spend on digital marketing as it is easy to adjust. Such as you don’t need to worry if an ad is not working because it can be modified or stopped. Or, if another online tactic is working, you can invest more in it. Also, it brings the brand development fast with a useful website, some quality articles and uses social media channels.

Digital marketing is global

Your digital marketing campaign will reach a worldwide market and find your new markets. It ensures local plus global reach, and this expands your dollars. Online accessibility also opens the door of chances for both local and international businesses. So whether you run a small local business utilising effective strategies, you can discover more profitable avenues.

Digital marketing in B2B and B2C

Digital marketing is crucial for both types of consumer transactions B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer), where the end customers are businesses and consumers, respectively.

Just as their end customers, the two types also utilise digital marketing with some different approaches. Suppose, when the aim of B2B marketing is to reach the potential right audience, B2C’s marketing aim is to ensure and gather much traffic to the website and landing pages. Producing informational, educative and logical content to educate the audience is one target of B2B’s content marketing, in oppose to B2C’s content marketing, where the priority goes towards engaging, interesting or emotional stories.

Again B2B marketing seeks data-driven content where the B2C audiences look for something they can personally connect. That’s how all the social ads and flashy promotions we encounter on social media are influenced by B2C marketing that grabs the attention of consumers and encourages them to purchase.

Digital marketing channels

Once you decide to go for online marketing, you need to hold a competitive and strong online presence. And for that, several internet marketing tools are also available, but the question is which one will be worth enough to focus on. To decide the right channel that will generate considerable results, you need to consider your business types, budget, targeted audience, marketing goal.

So here is the list of some useful core digital marketing platforms that you can familiarise yourself with if you are ready to commit to online marketing.

• Email marketing
• Search engine optimisation
• Content marketing
• Social media marketing
• Pay-per-click marketing
• Marketing automation
• Native advertising
• Mobile Marketing

Email marketing

Email marketing is an open communication platform. One of the most effective marketing ways that assist the owner in nurturing leads also drives customer loyalty at every stage.

Don’t you get encouraged sometimes to buy some items after opening a promotional email since you can’t just ignore the exclusive offers? Or, just to check your transactional emails for your online purchase, you might click the link of the brand’s website repeatedly to know more and end up purchasing another new one. All these are results of email marketing that turn the prospects into paying customers and paying customers into repetitive customers.

Why prioritise email marketing?

• Email marketing is engaging: Email marketing let you educate your potential customers about your service, new products, and offers while driving traffics.
• Email marketing is one co-effective tool: Since your personalised email list lets you send your businesses email to your intended recipient’s inbox, they are more likely to be seen, which drives more sales.
• Email marketing generates more Return of investment (ROI): Email marketing lets the marketers send relevant and personalised messages to individual recipients, which allows the receivers to click through to visit the website. And this increases the possibility of generating more ROI.

Since you know why email marketing is considered the best bet to grow a business, let’s learn some ways to understand how to get improved.

Ways to run a successful email marketing campaign.

• Identify your marketing goal to craft your emails.
• Segment your email list as not all of your email subscribers will be interested in your all email subjects.
• Send a personalised email by addressing the recipient’s name and some personalised information.
• Ensure a responsive email design to make it optimised for all devices.
• Attach links to more information and features in your email.
• Keep the message on point and be specific about the subject of your mail.
• Track your emails to find out whether your subscribers are converting or not.

Search engine optimisation

Search engine optimisation, or in short, we say SEO, is the process of turning the quality and quantity of your site better for search engines. It is a process to increase the visibility of your website in search engines. For example, when you enter a search query in Google, the search engine results page you get delivered contains some non-paid organic results that bring organic traffic, which happens through an effective SEO.

Why is SEO crucial for businesses?

• SEO turns your site more trustworthy: When popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, or other platforms show your business as a trusted resource, it would definitely work to build your businesses credibility and trust.
• SEO let you understand the audience’s intent: You can let you catch what people are searching for, what results they are looking for, specific words they are seeking, type of content they are interested in, and all these help you to create your content.
• SEO increases engagement, traffic and conversion: Proper SEO aims to increase visibility and let you engage potential audiences as they can find you quickly. And boosting your brand loyalty increases conversion and traffic.
• SEO is a long term strategy: SEO can bring noticeable impact for several years and make your website stand longer in the market once you implement necessary requirements by following trends and changes.

To craft a successful SEO marketing plan, one needs few tips to increase your visibility in search engines. You might also need to register accounts on several sites because SEO requires a lot of new account creation. For this, you can use a password management tool, as it’s important to protect not only your own data and logins to your SEO tools but the general safety of the website.

SEO tactics you can use to ensure higher rankings.

• Review your website’s SEO healthiness to set an SEO campaign goal.
• Focus on the main metrics such as links, content and page structure.
• Study and research potential keywords to improve your site’s rank.
• Produce high quality and user-friendly content.
• Obtain high-quality backlinks to reach out to other websites.
• Work on on-page SEO and optimise the content.
• Ensure optimisation of the internal links along with external links.
• Monitor your performance on total visits, rank in Google, total backlinks and other determinants.

Content marketing

Content marketing is one online strategic marketing approach, where the goal is to attract and engage audiences by creating and sharing various content via social media, blogs, websites or other channels. The ultimate aim of planning high-quality, relatable online materials and content are to drive profitable customer action and increase brand awareness.

There are many content marketing formats available that can be used to boost your web’s traffic. For example, you can either create visual content or videos as audiences appreciate visuals or choose blog posts and social media posts, which are on the rise. Also, there are more types such as podcasting, live streaming, infographics, case studies etc.

Why is content marketing important?

• Content marketing can generate more leads: You can guide your viewers to your landing page through your content. This creates more chances to generate leads by the potentials who are more likely to purchase.
• Content marketing engage your prospects: You can make a great relationship with your potential customers by educating them about your products and services.
• Content Marketing can build your authority online: The more consistent, quality content you will produce, the more your business will be visible, which will help you to rank higher in search engines.

Some high effective content marketing strategies to follow.

• Be quick on your feet and go after effective keywords for your content.
• Use advanced tools to find phrases and keywords that your customers look for.
• Make your content available to share in building a following.
• Publish your best content to stand out in the crowd and be consistent.
• Run a content audit to set new goals.
• Use a content management system to track your content.
• Prioritise your audience’s comments and feedback and ask for questions.

Social media marketing

Social media marketing is another appearance of digital marketing where marketers use social media or social networks to share their brand’s content. Whether you want to build more brand awareness or increase sales and drive more website traffic, social media marketing will help you succeed.

What is the value of social media marketing in business?

• Effective brand building: Since customers tend to buy from brands they recognise, social media marketing can quickly builds your brand’s image by promoting your services.
• Encourage engagement: Social media marketing breaks the barrier between audiences and companies as the two parties can communicate directly. Also, social media opens doors for engaging activities via posts or stories to engage the audiences more.
• Stay up to date with trends: You can share trendy relatable content that will impact the latest industry trends and news. Also, you will get the chance to look up to your competitor’s strategy.

Some ways to create an effective social media marketing plan.

• Set some sound goals for your social media strategy planning.
• You can plan to share compelling stories and well-presented content for your brand’s image.
• Focus on social media metrics to measure your reach, clicks and engagement.
• Do follow social conversation and social research to search keywords.
• Engage your audiences with immediate interaction on your social media.
• Let your audiences feel heard by listening to their concerns.
• Make sure that customer service is available to handle your customer’s request.

Pay-per-click marketing

Pay-per-click or PPC is one common, highly impactful advertising model that works to drive traffic to a website. Most advertisers choose PPC marketing as they get quantitative measurements that let them pay only when a user clicks on their ad instead of wasting dollars after dollars on estimated impressions. For example, when you search for something on Google, you will notice some ads appears on the first page based on your searching keywords; this is how PPC works.

What are some actual advantages of PPC marketing?

• Pay only when your ads get clicked on: You can broaden your brand and reach your audiences cost-effectively since you pay only when someone clicks on your ad.
• Detect your right audience: You can segment your target audience, which means only your potential audience will see your ads. And this leads to getting a higher percentage of clicks.
• Provide you instant traffic: PPC campaigns drive instant traffics in your business where organic keywords might take several months to be on the first page of Google.
• PPC is measurable: You can get high-level performance details of your business in PPC advertising, and depending on that, you improvise to produce more positive ROI.

Some steps to develop a successful PPC campaign.

• Be sure about the goal of your PPC strategy and choose your best-suited ad types.
• Choose your competitors wisely and study them to compete.
• Target the highly relevant audiences to ensure more clicks.
• Effective ad content is crucial to raise your quality score.
• Optimise your landing pages, maintaining consistency with the ad contents.
• Measure the performance and do continuous improvising till you meet your goal.

Marketing automation

Marketing automation is the process where businesses use a set of tools and turn manual marketing processes into automated processes for modern marketing practices. For example, the advanced marketing automation tools can measure your user’s engagement and depend on that; the automation tools can trigger the right action.

Such as with these tools, neither the marketers need to align every process to send every email, campaign, message, while marketing automation tools send custom messages to targeted audiences.

How marketing automation helps a business?

• Grow revenue faster: When you send related content to your readers, you ensure customer follow-ups, leading to positive sale activity.
• Improve productivity: Automating many marketing and sale processes ensures picking the right prospects with the right messages and time. This improves the team’s productivity and saves time as well.
• Marketing automation is a clearly defined process: You can get a complete profile of your prospects behaviour. For example, utilising the customer behavioural tracking methods, you can analyse as you go to make the needed changes.

Strategies to use during marketing automation processing.

• Always craft your messages with a relevant topic.
• Continue post-purchase automation to encourage repeat visits of your customers.
• Use automation tools for social media updates.
• Also, segment your potentials with automation tools because not all customers will be interested in the same topic.
• Do remarketing of your ads to track customers who already know about you and keep them updated.
• Ask for a review from your customer’s as positive social proof.

Native advertising

Native marketing is a paid marketing media where marketers pay to put their content in any place of their choosing. That means the brands pay to get their desired spot; whatever they find will be eye-catching for their targeted customers. You might often notice some contents under headings such as ‘you might know’, ‘sponsored post or suggested post’ or ‘recommended for you; all these types show native contents.

How is native advertising effective?

• You are in control: When using native advertising, you exactly know to whom you display your contents and where they will be displayed. You can selectively choose the placement, maintaining content relevancy.
• Capture’s audiences action: Neither does it disrupt any user’s experience nor gives the audiences those familiar advertising-like feelings, which lets the audiences be more inclined to view the contents.
• It receives a higher click-through rate: With native marketing, you can reach the widest possible audience sharing your higher engaging content, which ensures a higher acceptance rate and click-through rate.

Native advertising strategy to improve your brand marketing.

• Consider what you want to achieve through your native ad campaign and who are your audience.
• Pick interesting as well as relevant content and creative elements to catch the reader’s attention.
• Select the right platform to publish your contents that match your requirements.
• To make your audience click through your content, focus on the titles, images and thumbnails.
• Continuously monitor your native ad campaigns and target new market opportunities.

Mobile marketing

Mobile marketing targets people using smartphones to convert them into customers, leading to more sales by sending personalised, time-based, and location-based messages about their services and products. Mobile marketing simply can’t be ignored because mobile is one most used devices that people use to browse the internet, and the number is still on the rise.

Why is mobile marketing becoming important for brands?

• One fastest way to communicate: Mobile marketing is definitely one far better option to get your message out right now, as people can get your message anywhere, anytime. This is one reason why a huge percentage of web traffic comes from mobile marketing.
• Several mobile marketing channels: Mobile apps, mobile websites, QR codes, SMS marketing or various other ways are available for mobile marketing with huge potentials.
• You can plan a more personal marketing campaign: Any message the user receives makes them feel personal since mobile is the one device we always keep next to us. This also creates more exposure for your marketing when your customers share the content with their near ones.

Some mobile marketing tactics you can apply to thrive your business.

• Use text message marketing to alert your potentials about the new deal, offers, coupons, promotions etc.
• Add links or code to let your message receivers trigger more information.
• Design your website, ads and other content in a responsive way for all devices.
• Use location-based mobile marketing to offer service recommendations to the local queries.
• You can add a live chat feature to offer support immediately to the prospects.

With all these discussions of types and usefulness of digital marketing, it is way clear that the approaches of digital marketing and traditional marketing are not close. Now, what if we say the effectiveness of digital marketing over traditional marketing is vast. Yet in doubt? Read on towards the listed points.

Why choose digital marketing over traditional marketing?

Each day, the world is turning more digital, so as do the people. Constantly all the classic methods that have been used for the past many decades are becoming less relevant. Let’s point out some issues which are letting traditional marketing lose the spotlight.

Traditional marketing is costly

For the full-page newspaper ad or a TV or radio ad, the cost is a lot where you cannot even guarantee that your viewers are giving attention to it or not. However, digital marketing is cost-effective; also, you can track every click, every visit and depending on that, you can decide further plan on how to improvise.

Traditional marketing is intrusive

In digital marketing ads, the viewers always get the option of skip through in case they are not interested. But in the traditional system, no matter how bored you are of those repetitive ads, you cannot just skip or block those, which disturbs the audiences, making them feel less interested in TV or radio ads.

It is not time efficient

In traditional ways of the marketing campaign, you need weeks and even months to evaluate how your campaign is performing. Just think, can you actually know who is reading your billboards unless or until someone gives a follow-up and even to understand what is the reason, you need to do a survey! But digital marketing let you measure your audience’s involvement in every step since the early stage.

The engagement level is minimum

The relationship between traditional marketers and audiences is too far to be engaging, and one need to wait long to measure the response. On the contrary, a digital marketer can interact with its audience personally via a live chat, which turns to be more effective since the customers feel heard and noticed.

It has physical boundaries

The advertisement of your products aired in the newspaper is limited to might be taking a column or space in a corner also limited for a specific region. With digital marketing, you can have a full website full of your services and details and make it available for your audiences worldwide.

Conclusion

As you can see, these are some road bumps of the way towards traditional marketing that is turning the old marketing strategies less prevalent. Which also release you from the upsetting situation to choose between digital marketing or traditional marketing.

But wait, before you hit the big time by creating websites, ads or sharing content, take some time to build a sound marketing strategy because with a directionless process, neither you will be agile enough to catch up nor you can be ahead of your competitors.