What is Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing is the use of internet, mobile devices, social media and search engines, display advertising and other channels to reach consumers. ” Internet marketing differs from digital marketing. Internet marketing is posting advertising solely on different internet websites, whereas digital marketing can take place over the telephone, on a subway platform, in a video game or via a Smartphone app. Digital Marketing is used to market more than just products and services. It is extensively used to sell people also, on things such as companies, political parties and ideas. Political parties use Digital Marketing to target voters with positive messages about their candidates and negative messages about opponent’s candidates, and shape ads to receivers who frequent use particular digital channels, such as Facebook, newsfeeds and YouTube etc.

Fundamentals of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is not new; it has been around since the invention of internet. Now days digital marketing is not just an activity but it has become an integral part of marketing strategy. It is a bunch of marketing techniques used to reach vast range of targeted customers more quickly and cost effectively using various digital channels. Digital marketing has many, advantages over traditional marketing. Just like traditional marketing digital marketing is not limited to promote the business but is more about how you can connect with your target audience, potential customers. Digital marketing can also be used to deliver the better customers services and customers delight. Digital marketing is the term generally used for promotion of products and services with the help of internet. The term Digital Marketing is self-explanatory. It shows a silent shift of traditional promotion to digital promotion in a fastest, quickest and cheapest way as a mass communication strategy. Digital marketing has several small divisions that work in different directions yet contributing to the overall growth of the firm. Digital marketing can be used for the purpose of making sales, brand awareness, building brand loyalty, communicating with present and prospect customers etc. In general digital marketing is an umbrella term which is also known as data driven marketing and operates over the digital platform i.e. internet for the purpose of introduction and promotion of various goods and services. Digital marketing industry is booming not just in India but all over the world. In the year 2022 as good as 1.5 lakhjob opportunities was created in digital marketing domain in India. It is expected that with more and more digitalization in different Government sectors as well as in veteran private sector the scope of jobs in Digital marketing field will increase in quantum.

Scope of Digital Marketing

A: As a tool of communication

Digital Marketing points to a group of techniques used in promoting or marketing products or services on the Internet. It is a process that brings together many wide-ranging functions to work toward the market growth of a business. with the rise of digital media including social media, there is a new route to tap into sales, brand awareness, and easy introduction of new products. The Growth of digital media gives a push to the Digital Marketing of products and services of digital media giving a push to the Digital Marketing of products services.

I) Digital Marketing Gives Fair Opportunities to All Kinds of Business

Digital Marketing gives fair chances to all kinds of businesses that prefer to go online in branding and advertising. It is not anymore like the day’s yore state of affairs when only the multinationals and top business houses for the most part, grasped Digital Marketing. At present, the role of Digital Marketing in SME is equally important and effective for small and new businesses, as it is for well-established businesses. Small and medium-scale organizations or new businesses now have access •to perform online advertising and lead generations. While thinking about the role of Digital Media Marketing (DMM), the most obvious advantage is its capacity to connect with different clients without utilizing call centers. The lead generation and conversions related to Digital Marketing are comparatively way better than different other methods of marketing and advertising.

2) Digital Spending Up

Big companies are aware about the power shift of adverting that moves consumers from conventional to online through the internet and social media. These companies are ready to spend a big pie of their promotional budget on digital marketing. They are seeking digital media technology and manpower to woo them. Now a day’s consumers can share their opinion online and influence millions of other people in their buying decision. The Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey on more online consumers throughout 56 countries said 36 percent had smart-phones and 35 percent of online respondents made payments with their phones. These metrics emphasize the need for organizations to make available consistent and personalized messages across multiple channels. Consumers referee companies on the basis of how they engage them and their own personal mobile devices can keep all brand information update.

3) The Power of Smart-phone as Game Changer

The tremendous growth of smart-phones really well-established digital marketing. The convenience of mobile connectivity has revolutionized the world. Most of the media, including TV, has taken a back seat, as people are watching online post or videos on youtube, and Tv shows on different apps than sitting in front tv in a room, where privacy and choice of program is other challenges for this media. This shift in choices and preferences has strengthened digital media’s entry as a break from the past. it is an absolute revolution, as Digital media marketing is barrier-free, doing it from the office or home doesn’t make any difference; all that is required is a device connected to the internet. it is also eco-friendly as no paper is used and saves time also, long work and other limitations inherent in traditional marketing are absent.

4) Consumer attention and online Dominance

Today the consumers have to be approached personally as their attention is split across a range of channels and devices. The Internet, mobile apps, email, Twitter and so many channels have flattened the influence of IV, direct mail, and magazine ads. Today the consumers have to be approached personally as their attention is split across a range of channels and devices. The Internet, mobile apps, email, Twitter and so many channels have flattened the influence of IV, direct mail, and magazine ads. It is only digital marketing that can offer customers personally relevant, timely product & service information via preferred channels.

5) Data Explosion

Digital Marketing also means handling data explosion. The world has a massive amount of digital data and companies are collecting and storing this massive data for a future strategy-making purposes. Wal-Mart, the biggest retail chain company in the world, has more than I million customer transactions in an hour. The retail giant stores that data in 2.5 petabytes (1000 to rabytes) databases for future use.

6) Bright Future

The core of Digital Marketing is data and its stature is increasing as an alternative to the benefits flowing from the collapse of traditional marketing methods. The rising number of mobiles users especially smartphones and tablets have shifted marketing channels to new media where the speed of communication is the deciding factor. As per the estimation until 2017 December, India’s total advertising industry is valued USS7.94 billion in which USS 1.78 billion is the share of s Digital Marketing including mobile ads. The future of Digital Marketing in India is shining as growth will continue at an average 16 percent, with time spent by more people on mobiles and social media is adding up. As life is becoming so hectic, the mobile smart-phone has become the one-stop partner for music, shopping, cabs, food ordering, financial transactions, and social chat, and also for watching TV shows and videos.

B: As a Career in Marketing

In recent time digital markrting has become the most sought-after career opportunity not only in India but all over the world. statistics shows that Digital Marketing industry is booming worldwide offering 8 lakh jobs in the first quarter of 2017. Naukri.com, India’s largest job portal announced and advertised as many as 13000 jobs for Digital Marketing professionals through its portal in the first quarter of 2018. In USA the scope is much higher than in India as near about 50000 digital marketing jobs were created in the year gone 2017. So far as jobs and work  scenario in digital marketing is concerned, by the end of 2020, it is expected that all business and service line completely turn into digital. So as to demand of well versed and certified personnel in this field will also be increased. A list of different positions one can apply for in digital marketing is as follow:

• Digital marketing manager
• Content marketing manager
• Content writers
• Inbound marketing manager
• Social media marketing expert
• Search engine marketer
• SEO Executive
• Conversion rate optimizer
• Copywriters
• Web analytics executive
• Email marketer

In India, the scope of the digital marketing industry is bright and the booming phase will stay for many years. The positive argue is the creation of thousands of job opportunities with job growth surpassing other industries. Nowadays no business can think of surviving in the market without a web presence and the brilliant future of Digital Marketing for the years ahead is already assured

Importance of Digital Marketing

1) It Provides Equal Opportunity for all Kinds of Businesses:

Digital Marketing offers equal opportunities for all kinds of businesses. It is no more like the old days scenario when MNCs and big business houses mostly embraced digital marketing. Now small, medium, and even the little micro-level businesses are using digital marketing as a platform to make realise their presence in the online market as well as ; to showcase their product to target customers and to compete with big business houses and make a share in the profit pie. The Small and even start-up companies have the access to perform sales and marketing activities throughout the country and even all over the world with the help of digital marketing that was beforehand accessible to big companies. The most promising benefit of digital marketing is its ability to engage with multiple customers without using call centre services. Even the conversation rate associated with digital marketing is higher than any other mode of marketing and communication.

2) More Cost Effective than Traditional Marketing

Small business with no assets and finance for advertisement in costly conventional media like popular TV channels, national dailies, hoardings and billboards, prefer digital marketing as a superior and financially savvy marketing channel. As per Gartner Digital Marketing spend report-

• Up to 40% of respondents claimed getting considerable saving by using digital marketing methods of promotion for their products and services.
• The report further suggests that 28% of businesses studied move advertising budget allocation from traditional marketing channels and put them into digital marketing channels.

Hubspot affirms this as appeared in the above graph that how digital marketers get better cost per lead (CPL), contrasted with other marketing channels (*PPC= Pay per click )

3) Better delivers conversation

Business measure accomplishment by the rate of approaching traffic converted into leads or sales. if no conversation occurs, all your efforts and activities would amount to nothing and all marking effort will go waste. that is the reason entrepreneurs are streamlining their digital advertisement efforts towards conversation rate optimisation (CRO) making it their topmost priority.

• There are top few CRO tools and procedures that you can use for your digital advertising efforts to optimize conversation.
• Different digital marketing activities like search engine optimization, search media optimization, and email marketing will also aid you in doing so.
• As observed from HubSpot’s state of inbound marketing report, SEO, SMO, and email marketing create fast viable communication with target audiences and ensure a high conversation rate.

4) It helps to Generate better Revenue

Along with better conversation rate, created by successful digital marketing strategies, Digital Marketing also ensuure higher conversation value for the entrepreneurs.

• with the better revenue generation small and medium business utilizing digital marketing strategy are likely to earn 3.3 times higher revenue by optimizing their business through internet.
• Digital Marketing opens the way to better, bigger and remote targeting markets both locally and abroad.
• According to google asia pacific heads of SME, Kavin O’kane Digital Marketing will act as rocket fuel for small and medium scale ventures.

5) It Facilitates Interaction with Targeted Audiences

One major reason why internet marketing is assuming upper hand over traditional marketing channels is the capacity of digital advertising methods to assist the targeted audiences and ensure result driven interactions. Digital Marketing ensures the engagements that your clients hope to get while interacting with your business.

• How you manage such engagements will bring the difference  between business achievement and disappointment.
• Facilitating your clients with justifiable engagement, can give you knowledge of what your prospects necessitate.
• This necessary data will control you towards making the correct arrangement of next moves, give your clients far better experiences, and grow great associations with them.
• This will let you develop the desirable trust building with your audiences when your business starts to grow.

6. It Caters the Mobile Consumers

With no doubt, having more than 60% mobile market share and 15% growth rate; smart phones gradually become an integral part of our daily life. Young generation, especially the college students and commuters are the main users of smart phones. India, with a dividend of more than 40 crore youth in its population is a most attractive market for MNCs. Companies with their digital marketing efforts are targeting these smart phone users for better communication and turn up. According to research report, smart phone plays a great role of decision making for purchase and order placing because of its convenience and easy to use compare to desktop, laptop, and tablets.

7. Builds Brand Reputation

Brand building or brand reputation is a process of generating awareness and promotion of company’s products or services through direct advertising campaign or through sponsorship. Brand building brings consumers close to the product or company. Digital marketing becoming more necessary for businesses that are seeking to build or enhance their brands through brand building programmes. Digital marketing is more powerful tool for brand building as it engages, and importantly leverages “word of mouth” communication. It is a medium with great reach and rich deep content, and most trustworthy to consumers. The benefits of digital marketing for brand building were also supported by Global consumer brand perception research conducted by Nielsen in 2012,

• which shows:92% consumers stating that they trust unearned media(free media) such as word of mouth, recommendation from friends and family.
• Online customer review was the second most trusted source with 72% indicating that they trust this.

Digital channels offer ways to connect with consumer and leverage their goodwill. Offering what you guaranteed will enable you to build up a superior association with consumer, which will turn them from loyal consumers to advocate s of your company.

8) Influences Customers to Take Favourable Action via CTA

Digital Marketing makes utilisation of successful techniques that will allureIndividuals to make a positive move you expect them to take. It lets you use Call To Action (CTA) that specifies what your site visitors should do next. There are many innovative ways that you can use to ensure conversions, using call to action (CTA). • Calls-to-Action allow your visitor know what they can do while Visiting your site. They can sign-up, download something, subscribe or purchase. • Digital Marketing lets you choose and use particular steps that will lure prospects make some favorable moves. • Forms, buttons, and messages are optimized as per the graphics, designs, text, colour schemes etc. of your webpage to produce the best outcomes.

9) Let you be prepared for Iot

In this digital age of internet of (IOT) can be understood as an inevitable biological system of interconnected devices that includes laptops, desktop, tablets, cell phones, smart phones so on. such devices can communicates with each other by using internet. Digital marketing will set up your business in such an interconnected environment that will penetrate through each part of individual’s life.

• Survival for your business will also depend upon the ability of having ability of having adaptability for this interconnected matrix.
• Digital Marketing lets you be equipped with adept adaptability for IOT that ensures online business survival for you, hence lets your business enjoys long-term benefits.

Benefits of Digital Marketing

When compare with traditional marketing or offline marketing, Digital Marketing has many advantages. Though Digital Marketing has been introduced in India since the bigining of this Century, it is still in its stage of infancy. Here are few benefits of Digital Marketing that a business may derive from it. Here are few benefits of Digital Marketing that a business may derive from it. • Digital Marketing is easy to measure• Digital Marketing is easy to implement • Digital Marketing is inexpensive • Digital Marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing   Digital Marketing is flexible. • Digital Marketing have wide reach • Specific targeting rather than general targeting compare to traditional marketing The best part of Digital Marketing is that you can measure its effectiveness very easily. It is a data driven marketing where you can measure the effectiveness of your campaign and you can make any change for better result without incurring much cost. Since Digital Marketing is a rapidly developing power in modern marketing, it is set to be an eventual fate of marketing and soon it will surpass all the traditional marketing maneuvers. Digital mode of communication and marketing are more adaptable, quicker, quantifiable, and result driven. Digital Marketing benefits are applicable for both marketers and customers.

Types of Digital marketing

There are Eight different types of digital marketing which are being presently used by the marketing which are being presently used by the marketers throughout the world. A brief description of all eight categories is mentioned below

I. SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

  SEM is a type of internet based marketing related with the researching, submitting and positioning of a website within search engine with the aim to attain maximum visibility and increase the share of traffic referrals (paid/ organic) from search engine. It involves  things like (Search Engine Optimizer), research competitive anal»is, paid listing and other search engine services that Will increase the search traffic of your website. SME is one of the most ways to grow business online and promote prodUCts. It focused on improving the visibility of your company’s website in search engine. The concept of SEM is quite simple: when someone is sharing a product online, it means that they are on ‘hunting mood’ and are in need of reference information to meet their immediate or future need.A signal is sent to the search engine that the person is looking for information and the search engine provides some of the best sources to targeted traffics. e.g. search for a hotel in a tourist place the ads appears on your Facebook & email pages.

2. SEO (Search Engine Optimizer)

SEO is a technique of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine.To understand the true meaning of SEO let us break it down and look at the parts: Quality of Traffic: you can attract all the visitors in the world but if they are coming in your site because Google tells them that you are a source of Apple computer when in reality you are a farmer who produce and sell Apple; and that is not a quality traffic. Once you have the right people click through those Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), more traffic is better. Things to know about search engine optimizer (SEO):

• SEO is a long term strategy.
• It is part of inbound marketing and SEM.
• SEO gives you better ROI compare to other channels.
• SEO is difficult, complex, and time consuming but deliver better result if implemented properly

SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) is the method of making a web page easy to find, easy to crawl, and easy to categorize. It is about serving your customers to find out your business from among thousand other companies SEO is an indispensable part of any digital marketing strategy. It is basically concerned with a holistic move towards driving customers to your business via online platforms. And to do that, one must ensure that the website rank’S higher in the SERP (search engine result page). To give you a clear cut idea on this, let start with the fact that nearly 14 billion online searches take place every month. With the beginning of Global economy, all most all business have an online presence. Just imagine the fraction of those 14 billion searches happen for your company. To achieve that benchmark, your company website must rank higher in the SERP, must perform well in the social media marketing, and the PPC(Pay Per Click) activities must be very well along with other digital marketing tasks. An appropriate SEO makes a website rank in the first page of SERP. And the common belief is, that people generally scan and review the first two pages of the SERP. Nearly, 74% of consumers use search engines to find local business information. Compared to online marketing, such as PPC (pay per click), social media marketing, email marketing program, SEO provides fairly good ROI. It has been find out that on a daily basis nearly 80-90% customers who have an access of internet, check online reviews before taking any final decision on purchasing a product.

3. PPC advertisements:

Pay per click ads is often known as PPC ads are displayed on websites and you need to pay when the advertisement gets clicked. We can target the specific audience with PPC ads. There are plenty of websites with different niches and based on our business, we will select the websites that match our business model. Payments are done on a number of clicks the advertisement got from the users. Leads are obtained with PPC advertisements. These ads are displayed mostly on the sides of web pages and blogs.

4.Content Marketing

Content marketing is the king to any website and online media. whenever a user goes to site, he will find the content. in a foam of blogs, making a videos, and image increase rank website, which helps in the gradual increase in viewers.

 5.Mobile Marketing

The power of social media can be understood by the fact that people are spending more than 4 hours a day in internet. Computer and Laptops are great for browsing but Smartphones can never be compared. All most every activity in internet is supported with smartphones. From sending emails to messaging, free International calling with apps, payments, seeking directions in unknown places and list goes on. Mobile marketing is important because more people are addicted and using smartphones. Marketing can be done in app advertisements, SMS and MMS campaigns. You can easily find top apps installed in almost every smartphones like security apps, games etc. Just like PPC ad, your business ads are displayed in apps while connected to internet and based on clicks, payments should be given.

6. Email Marketing

For retargeting a customer and doing the rebranding of your company, email marketing is the best thing as it behaves to be most customized. When people find mail in their inbox, they have a feeling of exclusiveness as if it only for him and no one else gets this opportunity. Marketing through email helps the customer and making them know in details about their requirements. Email marketing is one of the most confusing parts of digital marketing mix, as some people call it bulk mail, some call it mass mail, and some are even confused between mass mail and email marketing. Email marketing is very old marketing channel and it is also changing very fast. Email is one of the most preferred communication channel for marketing after SMS. The growth of Whatsapp and other marketing channels are also challenging the importance of email marketing. It is not a primary channel for marketing, but it acts as an enabler of promotional mix. It is a communication channel between buyers and the brand. Everyday email marketing is improving and now email marketing has become a part of marketing automation. Marketing automation is the future of email marketing:

• Email marketing is now becoming a part of marketing automation.
• Email marketing is very effective medium for communication
• Email marketing offers much better ROI compared to many other marketing channels.

7.Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing or SMM is an important tool which no marketer can even ignore. Marketers use social media both paid and unpaid form. The aim is to engage as much people as possible in social media and to build up a positive image of companies’ product. Higher the engagement of prospects in social media higher will be the chance to become a loyal customer. Social Media Marketing is all about the use of social network platforms and social media website for marketing purpose. Social Media Marketing is now becoming more and more popular as access to internet with a very cheap data rate and high rate of diffusion of Smartphone even in rural areas are the main reasons. Nowadays not only the companies but the political parties, celebrities are using social media for image building. Social Media Marketing is about promoting business using social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitters, YouTube, Instagram, Google+, Quora, Linkedln and many more such popular social networking

• Social Media Marketing is growing very fast.
• Social Media advertising is also a part of Social Media Marketing.
• Social Media Marketing have both organic and paid channels.
• Facebook ad, Twitter ad, Linked ln ad are also a part of Social Media Marketing.

8.Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest forms of online marketing wherein you refer someone to buy any online product and when that person buys he product based on your recommendation, you will receive a commission n the sale taken place. How it works-4 simple steps: 1. Join an affiliate programme. 2. Pick a product you want to promote (you will get a unique affiliate link). 3. Share the link via Facebook, YouTube video, blogs, email or any other form. 4. When someone purchases the recommended product, you will get a handsome commission Many online companies who sell shoes, clothes, web hosting space or some other services usually offer an affiliate programme. What you have to do is simply signup the programme and get your unique tracking link. Now whenever you will write about their product, you can simply use this tracking link to recommend the company’s site. If your readers/ follower buy any product by using this link you simply will get commission out of the sale. Conclusion: We do not know if the promotions are going well or not until loss or profits are gained in the case of traditional marketing. This puts the business to risk because not knowing if the business is going good or not, investing more and if it results in losses then it’s not good at all. With Digital marketing, quick results either good or bad can be obtained. This overview results in either improving tactics for better marketing or leaving the business at that point as it’s not suited for this time.  Decision of continuing or leaving the business can be taken before the owners experience huge loss.