What You Need To Know About Digital Marketing in 2021

Digital marketing is a career ripe with potential. The pandemic has not only accelerated brands’ move to digital, but reinstated the message that digital marketing remains indispensable for the future growth of businesses across industries.

Moreover, according to a recent US Bureau Of Labour Statistics (BLS) report, employment of marketing managers is set to grow 9 percent by 2024, which is faster than the average for all occupations. This growth is due to the increased use of social media and internet marketing. Which again makes digital marketing an extremely viable career.

In the UK, by 2020, 2 million new digital jobs were expected, and yet there is a digital skills shortage in a number of key creative industries in the country. This means the need for digital marketers exceeds the supply – again positioning this career at a unique competitive advantage.

As for pay scale, according to Indeed.com as a digital marketing manager, you can make roughly $ 60,000 a year.

Are you wondering how to build your own digital marketing strategy? Here are five ways that will help you optimize advertising through online channels for successful digital marketing:

1. Email Marketing:

This might seem like an archaic form of connecting with people, but it is the most effective marketing channel – ranking higher than even social media marketing, SEO, and affiliate marketing.

This is because email has a user base of over 4 billion people, and the number will only increase every year. Email marketing also has a whopping ROI of $38 for every dollar spent.

That’s because we keep our inbox far less cluttered than our social media accounts. It’s both personal and needed for high productivity at work. So if customers welcome a brand in their inbox, they are far more likely to read it.

Moreover, unlike social media marketing, email marketing eliminates the risk of algorithm changes that can deplete your reach as you own all the connections made in this marketing channel.

So it’s essential to incorporate a successful email marketing campaign in your digital marketing strategy.

2. Content Marketing:

Content marketing includes any unique content created to interest and enrich customers. This could be in the form of blog posts, podcasts, or even paying for content-related ads.

According to Hubspot “47% of buyers view three to five pieces of content prior to engaging with a sales rep, and the majority of them expect brands to create content to gain their interest.”

This is because through content marketing, customers feel in complete control over what they choose to engage with, which builds a high level of trust with the brand.

Compelling content will ensure that your target audience, buyer personas, and current customers find it relatable.

Native Advertising:

Paying a third-party website to feature your brand’s content is native advertising. Though unlike traditional advertising, where your content is meant to interrupt, native advertising does the opposite. It seamlessly blends in a way that makes consumers again feel they are more in control over the content they see.

That is why people view 50% more native ads than banner ads. This way, native advertising helps brands discover new untapped audiences.

Instagram does a brilliant job of it were brands that partner with it share posts that resemble the user’s followers posting style while marketing its products.

So to incorporate native marketing in your digital media strategy, it’s best to choose publications that resonate with your brand while making your marketing messaging as organic as possible.

3. Social Media Marketing:

With over 53% of the world’s population on social media, every brand needs a powerful social media marketing strategy.

With social media being the place where people engage with much of their personal lives, brands have the opportunity to connect with consumers here on an authentic and intimate level.

This opportunity can only be leveraged by understanding what specific channel works best for your brand and customizing content for that particular channel.

So culling social media channels that don’t serve your brand and putting your marketing efforts into two-three channels that do, will optimize your marketing efforts.

Here are a few trends to keep in mind when forming your social media strategy :

Video Marketing:

HubSpot Research shows that four of the top six channels on which global consumers watch videos are social channels. So budget-friendly video marketing with a simple smartphone and editing software should be essential for your brand’s online marketing plan.

Ephemeral Content:

It’s essential to have ephemeral content – one with a limited life cycle. Consider Instagram stories – an example of ephemeral marketing that has 500 million daily active users. That makes it a consumer database you must tap into.

Collaborating With Micro-Influencers:

Micro-influencers are social media promoters with a niche following, usually thousands to tens-of-thousands of followers. Yet, their high level of engagement with their followers makes them a successful way for brands to connect with their audience and convert it into active leads. Moreover, they are far more cost-effective than working with celebrities.

4. Search Engine Optimization:

Improving your SEO will mean making your brand more discoverable online. The best SEO practices keep changing with algorithms, but here are a few recent trends:

Optimizing Existing Content:

Apart from creating new content, brands should also reconsider optimizing existing content and repurposing it across all their social media platforms. This way, all your content is continuously relevant and working to grow your organic presence online.

Use Voice Search Methods:

The use of voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are now quite common. Brands must adapt to this change in consumer behavior to gain information. So a good digital marketing strategy would optimize its content by framing it around questions. This way, consumers are more likely to come across your brand’s high-quality content during their voice search.

Publish Long-Form Qualitative Content:

Though the average attention span of the modern reader is short, it is long-form content that performs better on Google – posts with 3000+ words get 3x more traffic, 4x more shares, and 3.5x more backlinks than articles of average length (901-1200 words).

So it’s crucial that marketers give priority to publishing at least 1-2 long-form blog posts in their larger digital strategy.

5. Website Design:

Mobile-Friendly Websites:

According to Hubspot, 48% of consumers start mobile research with a search engine, and the first position on Google search results on mobile has a 31.35% click-through rate. So brands need to ensure that their websites are mobile-friendly, or they will most likely lose a large percentage of potential consumers.

Improve Content Experience:

There is nothing more frustrating for customers than landing on a website that is slow to load, full of pop-ups, and hard to navigate for the information you need. So investing time and resources in decluttering your website and having a clean and appealing design will help brands retain readers.

The realm of digital marketing strategies is wide and versatile. That is what perhaps makes it attractive to most people – whether you are a creative, strategist, or tech geek, there are specialization opportunities for every kind of interest in this industry.

A new era career, it’s best suited for those who thrive in demanding and challenging environments. As much of successful digital marketing is hinged on understanding the constant change in consumer behavior.

It’s also a profession that is most likely to remain continuously relevant for our times.

According to a recent report by Pew Research, “constant” internet usage among adults has increased by 5% in just the last three years. This means the number of people going online is still increasing.

Digital marketing is a career path with a firm grip on our progressively growing digital-first society.

By Payal Mohta

To explore Digital Marketing programs, visit the program page here.