With the rise of research-based tech giants like Google and social media moguls like Skype and Facebook, Digital Marketing has started to influence brand presence of various businesses including non-techno ones who are forced to resort to take their brands to social media and come up with certain tactics with one objective in mind: reach out to as many consumers as possible in the least possible time as with every passing year no of people engaged in online activity keeps on increasing.
Marketing Types
Before we proceed to understand the different types, we need to understand what Digital Marketing is. As the name suggests, it involves promotion, selling and communication of a company’s products or services (collectively called “MARKETING”) through digital media like the Internet, on our mobile phones, display advertising, etc. among others.
There are also methods like Email Direct Marketing, display advertising and free eBooks/content provided by certain institutes which are less cumbersome and can be handled by in-house technicians. Even if you are new to these, you can always learn these things very easily using YouTube videos or many easy to read blog posts. If you are a company, then it’s advised to hire a person with proper knowledge of these things.
We move on to give a brief yet comprehensive explanation of each of the different types of digital marketing methods with a focus on top 3: SEO, SEM, and SMM.
SEO, the process of ensuring that your page gets ample amount of visibility in search engine results through use of certain tactics which lead to either your page gets listed in higher ranked results of Google search engine or it becomes easier for your targeted customers to find your page in unpaid results which are often called “natural”, “organic”, or “earned” results.
The process involves not an only textual method but also targets different kinds of search like image search, video search, academic search, news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. Your content should be in such a way that it should look good from the search engines point of view. Then only you can rank in search results. Ranking in search results will not give your returns but ranking on page 1 of Google will. So for that only, every company is competing using various SEO techniques.
The impact of SEO can be understood through a case study by columnist Andrew Dennis in which he used the technique to create a million visitors in 12 months to his brand new website by simply focusing on key SEO terms. The full case study can be found here.
Search Engine Marketing
It’s also called “paid search” or “pay per click” advertising, it is a strategy used for the purpose of increasing the visibility of a website in search engine results. The basic difference between SEO and SEM is that the former is an unpaid method while the latter (SEM) happens to be a paid one.
The benefit gained is a significantly lower level of marketing budget maintained by you as you have to pay your advertiser based on a number of successful clicks which lead to your website.
The best way to understand SEM as a customer is by checking out the various sponsored ads you get after you enter a search term (E.g.: shoes makes ads from Amazon and Myntra come up). To know the marketers perspective of setting up an SEM, you can click here.
Social Media Marketing
Simply stated, it is the use of Social media portals like Facebook to run marketing campaigns where company executives handling the work can focus on real-time demand and perception of the Business’ service/products through reviews or comments from their targeted customers. A US startup called “Sharpie” runs a blog for its customers where they can share their creative ideas on how to use markers for craft work as well as read reviews of others.
Different SEO Campaigns Case Studies
Case Study #1: Sharpie
The permanent marker has come up with a sweet tactic to use different images of creativity and artistic genius in its website to bring out the hidden artist in its customers. Their Twitter handles, the Instagram account contains various images of creative designs and artwork which encourages potential customers to try out the product and register for their blog to read ideas of different customers as well as post their own.
Another very good idea we can take from them is the creation of an online community. Very useful if you are in the games industry (Think W.O.W). Having a working online community can help out your customers reach out to you in real time in case of any problem. Kind of a one-stop contact source for guidance if you understand.
This type of strategies will create a brand image for your business in the market. You will be known for your uniqueness.
Case Study #2: Free Material Providers
If you are a college student looking for notes or free text, then there are certain websites roughly made which host such material which matches your requirements accessible only after you share the website URL on popular websites like Facebook and Google+. They might also ask you to like the page before opening access to the downloadable material. Pretty genius idea, assuming your customers click on the ads on the page thereby providing you money.
Some websites got viral because of such marketing strategies. If you are really giving valuable content or material to your audience, then it’s very damn sure that your readers will do things to get it for free.
Final Words
So these are the best and the most famous methods used in the Digital Marketing front. There are many others but these are the most used and relevant in today’s market. Almost all the top tech giants are using these marketing strategies to reach to the target audience. I hope that by now you got some idea on why your business should have good online marketing.
