"The future of advertising is the Internet" – Bill Gates
Considered among the smartest men alive, Bill Gates could not have put things more distinctly. Digital Marketing has taken the field of marketing itself in a direction many did not see coming some time ago. The ubiquity of internet devices and social media connectivity has made this field an indispensable today's advertising business.
On the outside, this does seem an easy enough concept. The promotion of products and services online through peer-to-peer sharing and other strategies seems simple enough to understand, but notoriously tough to implement.
Before delving into techniques and strategies, the question is- What is digital marketing?
The Essentials of Digital Marketing
The marketing of any product or service on a digital medium is called digital marketing. The medium can be computers, mobile phones, tablets or even iPods.
There is a reason why such marketing overpowered traditional advertising. On televisions and billboards, advertising is a one-way street. Customers do not have a platform to communicate with manufacturers and companies themselves. This gap in communication is eliminated by the internet.
Online platforms selling products like Amazon and Flipkart rank products based on consumer ratings and allow customers to give in-depth reviews about the product in question. This creates a direct line of communication between consumers and manufacturers as the latter is able to forgive what the former really needs.
Strategies and Techniques
As mentioned above, digital marketing may seem straightforward but involves a large amount of planning. Some techniques used by the individuals to increase the online visibility of a website are stated below:
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): It is a set of guidelines set by search engines which if followed, results in a higher position of a website on Search Engine Page Rankings (SERP). These guidelines include factors like keyword density, back-linking, domain authority etc.
2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Although SEO is a subset of SEM, many experts use SEM while talking about paid advertising online. To get higher rankings on search engines, companies often purchase certain keywords on search engines. SEM deals only with paid results while SEO is about unpaid and organic results.
3. Social Media Marketing: Seeing a chunk of the online audience on social media websites, forming a solid social media marketing plan has become essential for digital marketing strategies of companies. Using trending posts and targeting specific groups of people online who may feel interested in a product offered by a company are only some ways of promoting products on social media.
The Legacy of Digital marketing
While there is no denying the importance of digital media, there will come a time when companies will have to change their approach yet again. Marketing is a very dynamic field. Considering the organic nature of audience online, it is safe to assume the tide will turn soon. Whatever digital marketing chooses to swim or drown remains to be seen.