Table of Contents
Advertising and marketing have been in existence for years. In 1440, nearly 600 years ago, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press for the first time, which led to the publishing of printed books and marketing. Whereas, the 1800s show the earliest records of billboards.
People for a long time have relied on advertising and marketing to get familiar with the product or service that is offered. Advertising is also a genuine approach to reach the audience creatively, through a variety of resources and in a limited period.
1990 was the year when the term “Digital Marketing” first came into existence. Traditional Digital marketing consisted of advertising and marketing through radio broadcasting or television. However, the era of the internet has been overthrowing these traditional methods year by year replacing it with other digital methods and devices such as mobiles or computers, or digital platforms such as social media or email marketing.
According to Statista, by the end of the year 2020, the Digital Advertising Market is expected to reach 345 million USD whereas, Search Engine Advertising is expected to 148 million USD.
The rapid growth in the digital world and the expected upward trend in the upcoming years has led to some intense competition amongst the existing online marketers, making e-commerce and digital marketing even more demanding for the newcomers to follow
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing is advertising through 5 D’s namely: digital devices, digital platforms, digital media, digital data, and digital technology.
These 5 d’s provides an immense understanding of how to strategize your digital marketing plans to create brand awareness and reach the target audience.
Digital Devices are the devices which could prove most efficient for the success and growth of your brand. These devices mainly comprise mobiles, tabloids, computers, laptops, television and gaming devices.
Digital Platforms: The interaction of your audience through the preferred devices is through digital platforms like browsers, social media, and applications. Some of the major social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Digital Media: Other than the mentioned digital platforms, digital media proves to be crucial too. Digital media advertising includes engagement through both paid and organic communication channels like mobile commerce, email marketing, and social networking.
Digital Data: It is the insight collected through analytical tools that state the audience profiles, their engagement & interaction and site performance.
Digital Technology: It comprises all the marketing technologies required for the functioning of your site and creating an interactive experience through websites, applications and in-store kiosks.
The online world or the digital world is complex, multifaceted and most importantly ever-changing and evolving. With numerous people all around the world spending almost half their time on social media platforms or online, the scope of e-commerce and digital marketing has given rise to an inexplicable range of analytical tools and marketing terms.
Do you want to master the essential disciplines in digital marketing? Check out the Digital Marketing Specialist course now!
Digital Marketing Strategies :
As mentioned earlier, the digital world is ever-changing and evolving. With marketing trends and marketing technologies constantly updating, the marketers must keenly strategize their brand and it’s development for a better career.
The basic things to start from would be the site development, easy to access User Interface UI, interactive and creative User Experience UX design, easy to understand written content (product or service description, blog posts, testimonials, e-books, about your site and what you do), graphics (images, infographics, innovative banners), video content (product demos, product advertisement, gifs)
For an efficient and effective site performance, it is crucial to invest in marketing analytical tools. As per HubSpot, 64% of marketers have been actively investing in Search Engine Optimization SEO in the year 2020.
Search Engine Optimization SEO:
As per Statista, the Google Search Engine market accounted for 86.86 % as of October 2020. With the majority of people opting for google search engine, it is crucial to understand SEO. So what exactly is SEO?
When a person goes to the Google Search Engine in search of a specific product or service, the Google Search Engine Result Page SERP will show a list of websites or the top best results that match with the exact keywords that were input by the person.
Google uses a bot, Google Crawler, which when the search input is received, goes through every site based on the relevant keywords, domain, site’s internet speed, and site’s performance to rank the best search results on the first page.
With help of SEO, you can rank your site for targeted keywords to generate potential leads. Search Engine Optimization SEO helps in the optimization of your site’s performance and most importantly helps in the Google algorithm ranking.
Search Engine Marketing SEM:
To organically land on the first page of Google, the average time would take two years.
If one effectively invests in the best SEO tools, resources and keywords especially the long-tail keywords, it would hardly take months for your site to rank on the first page of Google.
SEM is a Pay-per-click approach, where you pay the preferred search engine suppose, Google, to rank your site for specific keywords. SEM helps in promoting your site and increases the site’s visibility that further helps generate potential leads and improves your site’s engagement.
Search Engine Marketing is often referred to as Paid Search Marketing.
Difference between SEO and SEM:
There’s a significant difference between SEO and SEM. Search Engine Optimization SEO accounts organic results that land on the first page of Google, which as mentioned earlier takes an average time of two years. Whereas, SEM is paid advertising where you bid for specific keywords on Google for it to rank on the first page of Google.
Though SEO earns you a free spot on the Search Engine Results Page SERP, it does not mean it won’t cost you money. Marketers need to invest in domain authority, SEO tools, site’s coding for the landing page and internet speed. But since you invest more in SEO tools and your actual site development, the results prove to be organic in the long run.
However, SEM is a Pay-per-click approach, where you pay for a certain number of clicks, so once you stop paying for the ranking your traffic may go back to zero.
But, with SEM you get sure-shot results from the money invested in a limited period whereas, the investment in SEO may take some time.
Pay-Per-Click PPC Advertising:
SEM is Pay-per-click advertising, but what exactly is Pay-Per-Click? Let’s dive deeper into the topic.
Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing allow online marketers to conduct an ad campaign. Google contributes to over 80% of traffic with approximately 3 million searches every day, whereas, Yahoo and Bing contribute about 20-30% of traffic.
So, Google proves to be the top-most priority for an ad campaign. But, each search engine ad campaign is equally crucial as the specific keywords that prove to work poorly on Google may work effectively on Yahoo or Bing search engine platforms.
These ad campaigns allow online marketers to bid ad placements for the specific long-tail keywords on the Search Engine Result Page. PPC is when online marketers pay a certain fee for each ad clicked.
For example, you pay $1 to your preferred ad campaign, suppose Google ads. Each time a visitor clicks on your ad you have to pay Google $1. The pro here is though you spend a fee for each click if the visitor reaches the bottom of the sales funnel and generates a revenue of $100, then that would result in an upward sales trend
Social Media Marketing SMM:
In the year 2020, there would hardly be any adult who hasn’t come across social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube or Twitter.
As of 2020, Facebook has about 2.6 billion monthly active users making it the most accessed social media platform, Instagram is second with 1 billion monthly active users.
With such a mass audience, it would be foolish to ignore the importance of social media marketing and advertising.
Creating brand awareness and gaining the trust and loyalty of the customers to generate revenue and sales are the top-most reasons online marketers are investing in Social Media ad campaigns too. In the US, the social media ad campaign spendings amounted to about 27 billion USD in the year 2020.
Regardless of which strategy you set and apply, the ultimate goal of digital marketing is to generate sales. There are a variety of complex digital marketing terms that one must understand to get a better vision and understanding of your site.
Return on Investment ROI:
For the above mentioned digital marketing strategies, one needs to understand ROI.
All the above-mentioned strategies require a set of budget and planning to predict the impact of the strategies applied on the site. To measure this impact one needs to measure the Return on Investment ROI.
ROI measures the profit or loss generated through the campaign implemented on the site and states whether the campaign is working in favour of the site or not. It also gives us an understanding of the cash invested and the return gained.
How to measure Digital Marketing ROI:
The basic way to calculate the ROI would be:
ROI= Net profit / Total Cost Spent X 100
For example, if you spent approx. $100,000 on the marketing campaigns and through which you generated a revenue of $150,000, then your profit would be $50,000. The ROI here will be calculated as follows,
ROI= $50,000 / $100,000 X 100 = 50%
This 50% ROI is the surplus you gained by investing a total cost of $100,000. However, as said earlier, this formula is for a basic calculation. The actual ROI is extremely complex and includes deduction of tax, overheads, expenses and so many other expenses.
There are also several Key Performance Indicators KPIs and metrics that one must consider and understand as not every campaign’s motive is to bring in sales and generate revenue. Some campaigns are just for promoting and creating brand awareness whereas some are for lead generation and some for sales and revenue. Hence, KPIs and metrics prove to be crucial.
1. Conversion Rate:
When you conduct an ad campaign that ranks your site on the first page of the desired search engine, your goal would be to attract customers and lead them to the bottom of the sales funnel, that is, the customer must buy something and generate sales.
When a customer completes his desired action, or when a customer who visits your site ends up getting what he needs, you convert the customers, these conversions are calculated through conversion rate. Higher the conversion rate the better your site’s performance.
Conversion rate is calculated as follows:
Conversion rate= (conversions / total number of visitors) X 100
For example, if your site has 10,000 visitors out of which 4000 visitors completed their desired action, or got what they want. That means,
Conversion rate= 4000 / 10,000 X 100= 40%
Here, 40% of visitors were converted from about 10,000 visitors. This percentage gives an insight into the number of conversions and also how your site is benefitting your visitors.
Google ads or google analytics will help you with the conversion rate if you set the right metrics and KPIs.
2. Cost Per Acquisition or Cost per Action CPA:
To determine the revenue impact of the ad campaign, Cost Per Acquisition is crucial. CPA is mainly associated with PPC and Conversion rate where we pay for each click. But through PPC we gain visitors but is that it?
As explained in the conversion rate, when a person completes his desired action he converts, but what exactly does it cost to convert apart from pay-per-click where we only pay for a click. Cost Per Acquisition or Cost Per Action helps determine the cost that leads a customer to conversion.
CPA is calculated as follows:
CPA= Total Campaign Cost / Total Conversions
For example, If you are running an ad campaign suppose, Google ads and you spent $2000 on it which generated a conversion of 200 sales, then the cost per acquisition would be calculated as follows:
CPA= $2000/ 200 conversions= 20
Here, 20 is the cost per acquisition. In simple words, for each person to convert, it cost you $20, i.e $20 per action.
3. Average Order Value AOV:
The Average Order Value AOV helps determine how or provides insight into the profit margin figures. Or to say, AOV does not determine gross profit but rather how those figures are what they are.
As opposed to CPA, AOV determines the sales per order and not sales per customer, as chances are one customer may purchase from your site multiple times. Hence, AOV helps in determining whether orders show a significant upward trend if there are any multiple orders placed.
AOV is calculated as follows:
AOV= Revenue / Total Orders Placed
For example, if your total revenue is $1000 and the total orders placed were 100. Then your AOV will be,
AOV= 1000/100= $10
Here, when $10 is the average order value, meaning, an average customer spends an average of $10 on his order, you as an owner must focus to surpass the amount of $10, for example, if you apply free shipping above $15, then chances are the maximum number of people would increase their cart amount which advertently increases your AOV.
There are so many other metrics to follow to improve your ROI. But, one cannot improvise without having a certain knowledge about the term, so, it is important to study all the relevant terms associated with a better ROI.
Above mentioned were some of the major metrics that help in understanding the ROI, but what could possibly help in improving the ROI?
1. Affiliate Marketing:
Ever heard of referral code? Where when a site offers you a referral code you get a commission for every person you used to the referred code. Same works for Affiliate Marketing but in a broad sense.
Affiliate marketing is the promotion or advertisement of other peoples brand or service on your site. Each time the customer visits the site promoted, or clicks on the service link, you get a commission. Affiliate marketing involves three parties Advertiser, Publisher, and Consumer.
A well-structured affiliate marketing programme could generate sales, increase traffic and of course maximise the ROI.
2. Marketing Automation:
Marketing Automation software and tools are the best way to generate traffic and boost the engagement of your site. Also, Marketing automation will help increase conversion rate and reduction in bounce rate as well as overheads. So what exactly is Marketing Automation?
One of the major digital marketing strategies is promotion and advertisement, for which online marketers invest in ad campaigns, email marketing, mobile commerce and so on. All these tasks are often repetitive, hence an automated software would come in handy to boost your engagement by managing them.
Marketing Automation is a software which automates your marketing tasks. Some of the top software for marketing software are Marketo, Prospect.io, etc.
3. A/B Testing:
A/B testing which is also referred to as split testing, help the user compare two versions of sites. If your strategy is email marketing, through A/B testing you can compare two versions of email and select the best one.
You can compare anything through A/B testing from landing pages to even deciding the subject line for your email. A/B testing maximises your ROI, reduces bounce rate and increases the conversion rate and also helps in redesigning your website.
Key Take-aways to improve your ROI:
- Set data-driven and marketing-driven campaign goals
- Set a value budget for the resources to be used, and most importantly direct the resources to your optimum
- Adapting marketing automation tools, A/B testing, Affiliate Marketing
- Leveraging through e-mail marketing, mobile messaging, social media marketing
Conclusion:
Constantly updating trends and emerging technologies are bound to change the face of the digital market in the next few years.
The strategies mentioned above or on the other thousands of website are just a guide for directing you towards the path of a better career because, after all, expert advice, self-practice and understanding of the topic through research, understanding consumer psychology will prove to be your ultimate kickstart.
All the Best!
Recommended Reads
Post Graduate Program in Digital Marketing by Henry Harvin®
Ranked #1 Amongst the Top 5 Trending Digital Marketing Course by India Today | Validate your professional skills in the field of Digital Marketing
View Course
.webp)
