What is Digital Marketing? A Beginner’s Guide to the World of Digital Marketing

What is Digital Marketing? A Beginner’s Guide to the World of Digital Marketing | Digital Marketing | Emeritus

Over the past two decades, the evolution of marketing techniques and internet-based platforms has brought digital marketing to the forefront. As a result, even traditional marketers and conventional businesses are busy reviewing and polishing their strategies to embrace the benefits of digital marketing. And with customers and clients becoming more and more adept with new media, companies are forced to have a clear understanding of what digital marketing is and how to deploy a perfect mix of innovative digital marketing strategies to scale their business. In addition, it has opened the doors to a host of new sectors and an abundance of opportunities for people who have taken a digital marketing course and possess experience in the field.

Promoting products and services through digital media, social media platforms, and digital technology is known as digital marketing. It is any form of marketing that is executed online with the help of digital devices using the internet. There are numerous examples of digital marketing initiatives ranging from complex automated email communication to something as simple as a post on Instagram or a blog on a company’s website.



 

Types of Digital Marketing

While scrolling on social media platforms or surfing the internet, most of us come across different digital marketing efforts being made by various brands across different channels and platforms. It could be a professional email in our inbox, a search result when using a search engine like Google, an ad on Twitter or Facebook, or a post by a celebrity we follow on Instagram.

Digital marketing is evolving fast and expanding across platforms, unfolding many areas of specialization. Let’s take a quick look at types of digital marketing.

  • Bulk Short Message Service Marketing: SMS marketing, for short, is one of the most common forms of digital marketing that uses text messages to promote products, services, deals, offers, and important updates to customers directly to their cell phones.
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO): This type of marketing involves structuring and optimizing a company’s website pages, blogs, and other forms of content by carefully adding specific keywords and tags. The aim is to top the list on SERPs (search engine result pages) when people enter a query on search engines like Google for finding information related to their business or any other thing.
  • Social and Search Advertising: These are paid advertisements that appear on your social media handles or search engines when you enter a query.
  • Bulk Email Marketing: It is one of the earliest forms of digital marketing and involves the forwarding of promotional messages to a potential target audience via email. With more evolved versions, this form of digital marketing can involve the use of sophisticated databases and advanced algorithms.
  • Paid Content Marketing: All types of marketing through online content such as blog posts, infographics, videos, and animated graphics are a part of content marketing. They often employ SEO, paid search, and paid social advertising to reach a mass audience.
  • Viral Content: A prevalent variation in content marketing is the use of engaging messages or videos, usually with a high entertainment quotient, such as memes or video clips floated across social media platforms. The aim here is to ensure that the content is interesting enough for people to share it with their friends and family and build a mass reach at no cost to the company.

Benefits of Digital Marketing

Unsurprisingly, time spent by people and their involvement with other traditional forms of media such as newspapers, magazines, and radio has witnessed a significant decline over the past decade. With customers and clients spending an increasing amount of time online, digital marketing has become hugely popular within a short period, and for some excellent reasons. As people visit online platforms for news, entertainment, and professional needs, they naturally expect their favourite brands and companies to have a meaningful online presence.

One of the most significant benefits of digital marketing is that, unlike traditional media, it is possible to customize your marketing strategies according to the interests, tastes and preferences of your target group highly relevant to your business on digital media. In contrast, in conventional forms of marketing, you place an advertisement that pretty much reaches everyone regardless of whether they are appropriate for your business or not.

If used effectively, one can achieve a lot through digital media at a far more affordable price than traditional marketing methods allow. Entry levels for a good marketing campaign across digital media can cost a fraction of what it costs on conventional media. Therefore, it is no surprise that we see the explosion of small and medium-sized businesses succeeding with their online campaigns. Even home-based businesses have become highly visible online through compact and innovative digital marketing strategies.

How Does Digital Marketing Work?

The internet landscape may seem complex at first blush. However, in reality, this may not be the case. It just requires implementing effective digital marketing strategies after diligent planning and a thorough analysis of cost-efficient ways to accomplish each goal. The benefits of digital marketing accrue through expanding relevant audiences and seamlessly connecting with potential customers. It demands the use of highly credible customer-related data; about where they are spending their online time and knowing the best ways to reach them.

While there are numerous benefits of digital marketing, one needs to understand that every form of online marketing functions in distinct ways. It is the wisdom to know the difference between what can work and what could be a complete waste of time. This means assessing the bigger picture before determining which forms of digital marketing to invest in and which platforms to use. It is generally accepted to begin small-scale, test each approach, and then roll out a clearly defined strategy.

While course corrections are always possible, one must be careful not to dilute the primary objectives of a marketing campaign with conflicting messages. Your online digital strategy should ideally reflect your brand personality in ways that customers can relate to. This is highly critical because the digital medium is a highly personalized domain by its very nature.

Be it your website or social media handle, every potential first point of contact should display a consistency that a customer can relate to and instantly recognize. The use of crisp language, clean design, and a seamless path to the next step in a customer’s journey are all critical to the success of a business in the digital domain.

Choosing a Career in Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is also the amalgamation of a variety of skill sets. From writers to designers, from graphic artists to animation experts, from sociologists to software programmers, from analysts to photographers, the field of digital marketing is an absolute open house for skill and talent from a broad spectrum of domains. There are innumerable opportunities to shine and succeed as an individual. Underlying each skill is the need to be totally on top of the game in understanding how digital marketing works.

Moreover, with an increased number of companies shifting towards digital marketing, the value of internet marketing and job opportunities in the field continue to rise. Career prospects depend not only on courses in digital marketing but also on how adept you are at stringing together the various elements that go into building an effective strategy to strike fruitful dialogues with customers and clients.

To master the fundamentals of digital marketing, it is undoubtedly good to study the types of digital courses available. The good news is that employers are not always seeking candidates with degrees in marketing or years of experience, but they look for people with acquired skills besides a college degree. Therefore, you can choose the best online digital marketing course for yourself which usually involves opportunities for some real-time experience. In addition, you can gain knowledge by acquainting yourself with the way experienced digital marketers use online platforms to promote themselves.

Emeritus India offers options to enrol in a digital marketing course or a certificate in digital marketing in partnership with the top universities and the best schools in the business. We offer high-quality online learning experiences that can help you launch and grow your career in digital marketing. Once you sign up for one of these courses, you will get to learn from one of the top universities, world-renowned faculty, and leading industry experts. These experiences will help you go beyond theory with real-world case studies and simulations, preparing you for immediate opportunities to apply what you learn.

About the Author

Manager, SEO Content
Rounak Sharma, a talented author with 4.5 years of experience, excels as an SEO content manager. Specializing in finance writing, she simplifies complex concepts and provides valuable insights on personal finance, investing, and budgeting. Expert in competitive analysis and keyword gap research, Rounak formulates content strategies for organic brand growth. When she is not crafting great content, Rounak can be found on the dance floor for some well-deserved partying.
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