Digital Marketing 101: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide

Introduction to digital marketing

Any marketing that uses electronic devices to provide promotional messaging and track its effectiveness throughout the consumer journey is crucial to businesses.

Digital marketing refers to marketing initiatives that display on electronics, such as computers, laptops, tablets, phones, etc. Online videos, display ads, search engine marketing, paid social ads, and social media posts are a few examples of digital marketing.

We often compare digital marketing with traditional marketing methods like magazine ads, billboards, and direct mail. Surprisingly, television comes under the traditional marketing umbrella.

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing also follows some concepts of traditional marketing. It is a novel way for businesses to reach out to customers and learn about their habits.

Let us first understand what digital marketing is:

Or, in simple terms:

Modern digital marketing is a vast network of channels that marketers must integrate into their brands. However, online advertising is far more sophisticated than the channels themselves.

It requires marketers to delve deep into today’s intricate cross-channel world to identify tactics that create an effect, i.e., high audience engagement.

To put it simply, the approach of building meaningful interactions with potential and returning clients based on the information you collect over time leads to engagement.

Therefore, you need to engage your customers in a digital environment to:

• increase brand awareness,
• establish yourself as an industry leader, and
• position your company at the top of the customers’ minds when they are ready to buy

Digital marketing objectives

Engagement is a measure that defines how well a digital marketing campaign is performing. Some examples of engagement metrics are clicks on search ads, display ads, likes, shares, comments on social media, video views on videos, etc.

Engagement helps in achieving the other digital marketing objectives, which are listed below:

1. Increase direct sales to determine the return on your investment – how much revenue was generated directly for every rupee spent.
2. Maintain a continuous flow of new leads so that your sales team has sufficient prospective customers to work with.
3. Reduce the cost of acquiring new customers by reaching out to a large pool of targeted audiences faster.

Why digital marketing matter?

Digital marketing is a powerful and crucial tool as it connects a business with its clients while they may be online. It connects you with the best clients on:

• Google via SEO & PPC,
• social media with social media marketing, and
• via email using email marketing

Every business needs digital marketing, and yours is no exception. You must recognise the importance of digital marketing for the success of a business. Listed below are some key benefits of digital marketing:

1. High affordability: Digital marketing costs much less than other traditional marketing techniques.
2. High flexibility: There are different digital marketing tools, such as banner ads, email marketing, content marketing, and social media marketing.
   By gaining knowledge of all these tools, you can broaden your opportunities for devising intelligent strategies and running targeted digital campaigns.
3. Easy mobile access: According to a study by Deloitte, India will have 1 billion smartphone users by 2026. In 2021, the count of smartphone users in the country was 750 million. Digital marketing can help you reach these smartphone owners.
4. High interaction: Digital marketing lets you directly interact with your customers via website comments, messaging apps, reviews, and social media posts.
5. Multimedia content: Customers tend to engage more with marketing material that integrates different multimedia content, such as photos, video clips, and audio. It is a lot easier to include these content types in digital marketing.
6. Quick expansion: Most customers buy products/services they need online. Digital marketing can help you attract these prospects and amplify the pace at which your business converts leads into actual sales.
7. Influencer engagement: Today, many influential figures promote themselves online or via social media.
   Digital marketing lets you interact with these influencers and gain their respect. If you do it right, you can get them to advocate your offering and leverage their following.
8. Print enhancement: Digital marketing can let you amplify your print advertising and marketing efforts.
   By writing online content that explains the claims you are making in your print advertisements, you can go into more detail, maximising the effectiveness of all types of publicity and integrating your campaigns.
9. Intelligent tracking: Besides communicating with customers, digital marketing also lets you track your customers’ activities. You can screen the ad campaign or the type of content they engaged with before making a purchase.
   You can then utilise this information to optimise all your digital campaigns.
10. Establishing authority: Digital marketing lets you talk about problems and controversies related to your product or industry.
    With that, you can establish yourself as an expert/thought-leader on such topics, leading customers to trust you, come back for more information, and eventually make a purchase.

How to do digital marketing?

From personas to the correct tools, many big and small things may facilitate or hinder the success of your digital marketing strategy. So, let us first understand what a digital marketing strategy is.

Steps to create a digital marketing strategy

Wondering how to do digital marketing? Explained below is the foundational work you need to put in to ensure your digital marketing strategy works:

1. Define your goals

When getting started, you must first identify and define your goals as you will craft your digital marketing strategy based on these goals. For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, you might want to pay more attention to reaching new audiences via social media.

On the other hand, if you want to increase the sale of a specific product, you should focus on SEO and optimising content to get potential buyers on your website.

2. Identify your target audience

One of the key benefits of digital marketing is that it lets you target specific audiences. However, you cannot take advantage of this benefit if you have not identified who your target audience is yet.

It is important to note that your target audience might vary depending on the channel or goal(s) you have defined for a specific product or campaign.

For example, the audience on Instagram is usually younger and prefers funny memes and quick videos. However, the audience on LinkedIn is majorly older professionals looking for more tactical content.

3. Prepare a budget for each digital channel

It is crucial to allocate a budget for each channel included in your overall digital marketing strategy. Of course, the budget will depend on what elements of digital marketing you want to add.

For example, if your strategy focuses more on techniques such as SEO, social media, and content creation for an existing website, you do not need a big budget at all.

On the other hand, if you want to focus more on outbound techniques such as online advertising and purchasing email lists, they all come at an expense.

4. Maintain a balance between paid and free digital channels

A successful digital marketing strategy is a blend of both paid and free aspects.

For instance, spending time on building comprehensive buyer personas to identify the needs of your audience and focusing on creating quality online content to attract and convert them will give you great results fast with minimal ad spend.

On the other hand, if paid advertising is part of your digital strategy, the results might come even quicker.

When in doubt, try both, and keep optimising your campaigns as you learn which channels – paid or free – perform best for your brand.

5. Create engaging content

Once you have identified your audience and have arrived at a budget, start creating content for the various digital channels you will use, such as blogs, social media posts, sponsored content, PPC ads, newsletters, email marketing, etc.

Ensure to create high-quality and interesting content that engages your audience as the whole point of marketing content is to increase brand awareness and improve lead generation.

6. Optimise for mobile

One of the crucial components of digital marketing is mobile marketing. As per Statista, mobile commerce sales were estimated to be valued at approximately $38 billion in 2020 in India.

So, it is crucial to optimise your digital ads, web pages, social media images, and other digital assets for mobile devices. Your audience engaging with your products online via smartphones should get the same positive experience as they would on a desktop.

If you have a mobile app that enables users to engage with your brand or buy your products, your app will also fall under the digital marketing umbrella.

7. Conduct thorough keyword research

Conducting thorough keyword research is critical for optimising your website and content for SEO and ensuring people can find your business through search engines.

Start by creating a list of high-performing keywords relevant to your products or services. Also, consider long-tail variations for additional opportunities.

You must conduct social media keyword research to facilitate the marketing of your products or services on various social channels too.

8. Measure performance and iterate

Lastly, to create an effective strategy for the long term, your team must learn how to pivot based on the campaign results.

For example, the analytics shows that your Instagram audience is not as interested in your content anymore, but they are engaging well with the content you are creating on Twitter.

Consider this insight as an opportunity to re-think your Instagram strategy. However, it might also indicate that your audience prefers a different channel to consume branded content.

Pillars of digital marketing

Explained below are some of the most common tactics that digital marketing includes:

1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO or search engine marketing is a tool that aims to improve your site for increased visibility when people search for products or services related to your business on Google, Bing, and other search engines.

2. Content Marketing

Content marketing is a strategic digital marketing approach that focuses on creating and distributing valuable and relevant content in the form of videos, blogs, social media posts, etc. It helps in attracting and retaining a clearly defined audience and, ultimately, driving profitable customer action.

3. Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social media marketing (SMM) refers to using various social media platforms – on which users build social networks and share information – to build a company’s brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic.

4. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is an online advertising model where advertisers run ads on a platform such as Google Ads and pay a fee every time someone clicks on it.

To see examples, run almost any search on Google, and you will see ads displayed at the top of the search result pages.

5. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a model in which you work with external websites to generate traffic and leads for your products/services. These external websites are affiliates who work for a commission to promote a business.

6. Native Advertising

Native advertising refers to paid media designed to match the content of a media source. An example of native advertising is paid video content on the Youtube app. This media is designed to match the visual design and function of natural content that appears in your feed of recommended videos.

7. Marketing Automation

Every business desires higher revenue and faster growth at a lower cost. But many struggle to align people, processes, and technology to achieve these goals.

Marketing automation solves this problem by enabling businesses to streamline, automate, and measure marketing tasks and workflows to increase operational efficiency and grow their revenue faster.

8. Email Marketing

Email marketing makes the customers on your email list aware of new products, discounts, and other services. It can also use a softer sell approach to educate your audience regarding the value of your brand or keep them engaged between purchases.

9. Online PR

Online PR, also known as digital PR, is a link-building strategy that involves creating a story or piece of creative content and distributing it to target media to secure coverage that includes backlinks to a relevant website. It helps improve SEO and overall search rankings on Google and increase brand awareness.

10. Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing aims to create valuable content that aligns with the needs of your target audiences to build long-term relationships with your customers.

There is a reason why your customers are your customers. That is because you solve their problems with your product/service.

That is where inbound marketing comes into the picture – providing the solutions that your target audiences are searching for in the form of different types of content across platforms, designed to connect with potential buyers at every stage of the buying cycle.

11. Sponsored Content

Sponsored content is a type of promotional media that is published in exchange for paying an advertiser. However, it is created and shared by another brand, influencer, or publisher.

This content is most engaging when you sponsor a company or influencer who targets your core audience and discusses topics that align with your brand. If done right, any mention of your brand feels like a natural fit rather than a rehearsed advertisement.

Instead of thinking they just saw an advertisement, audiences feel like they have learned something interesting. It makes your brand look more credible, memorable, and trustworthy.

12. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search engine marketing (SEM) is one of the most effective ways to increase your ranking on search engines and attract qualified traffic to your website. With SEM, you can grow your brand awareness and increase sales.

13. Instant Messaging

Marketing your products through messaging platforms is a quick way of reaching your potential leads. It is a great way to inform your audience about flash sales, new products, or updates about their orders.

If your customers have questions or need more information, they can conveniently connect to the customer service. You can also send messages directly to a mobile phone by text or through messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.

On a concluding note

No one can afford to miss out on the opportunities of the web, and eventually, every marketer will have to master digital marketing.

Employing a few of these digital marketing tactics will ensure that you do not put all your eggs into one basket. At the same time, it will help you diversify your lead generation beyond offline tactics.

Integrating digital marketing into your overall strategy is crucial for successfully marketing your brand, product or service. Similarly, integrating a robust payment gateway is the key to the overall success of a business. That’s why you need to –

Integrate Paytm Payment Gateway today!