Digital Marketing Certificate India’s Top University

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing, also called online marketing, is the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the internet and other forms of digital communication. This includes not only email, social media, and web-based advertising, but also text and multimedia messages as a marketing channel.

 Digital marketing typically refers to online marketing campaigns that appear on a computer, phone, tablet, or other device. It can take many forms, including online video, display ads, search engine marketing, paid social ads and social media posts.

Digital marketing is often compared to “traditional marketing” such as magazine ads, billboards, and direct mail. Digital marketing considers how individual tools or digital channels can convert prospects. A brand's digital marketing strategy may use multiple platforms or focus all of its efforts on one platform. 

Why is digital marketing important?

Any type of marketing can help your business thrive. However, digital marketing has become increasingly important because of how accessible digital channels are. In fact, there were 5.45 billion internet users globally as of July 2024.

From social media to text messages, there are many ways to use digital marketing tactics in order to communicate with your target audience. Additionally, digital marketing has minimal upfront costs, making it a cost-effective marketing technique for small businesses.

B2B versus B2C digital marketing

Digital marketing strategies work for B2B (business to business) as well as B2C (business to consumer) companies, but best practices differ significantly between the two. Here's a closer look at how digital marketing is used in B2B and B2C marketing strategies:

• B2B clients tend to have longer decision-making processes, and thus longer sales funnels. Relationship-building strategies work better for these clients, whereas B2C customers tend to respond better to short-term offers and messages.
• B2B transactions are usually based on logic and evidence, which is what skilled B2B digital marketers present. B2C content is more likely to be emotionally-based, focusing on making the customer feel good about a purchase.
• B2B decisions tend to need more than 1 person's input. The marketing materials that best drive these decisions tend to be shareable and downloadable. B2C customers, on the other hand, favor one-on-one connections with a brand.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. A B2C company with a high-ticket product, such as a car or computer, might offer more informative and serious content. As a result, your digital marketing strategy always needs to be geared toward your own customer base, whether you're B2B or B2C.

Take a look at your current audience to create well-informed and targeted online marketing campaigns. Doing so ensures your marketing efforts are effective and you can capture the attention of potential customers.

Types of digital marketing

There are as many specializations within digital marketing as there are ways of interacting using digital media. Here are a few key examples of types of digital marketing tactics.

• Search engine optimization

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is technically a marketing tool rather than a form of marketing in itself. It is often called "an art and a science."

The "science" part of SEO is what’s most important. SEO is a science because it requires you to research and weigh different contributing factors to achieve the highest possible ranking on a search engine results page (SERP).

Today, the most important elements to consider when optimizing a web page for search engines include:

- Quality and uniqueness of content

 Optimization of key elements for the targeted keyword (URL, title tag, H1, sub headlines)

- Level of user engagement (time on page, bounce rate)

- Number and quality of backlinks

- Internal linking

In addition to the elements above, you need to prioritize technical SEO, which is all the back-end components of your site. This includes mobile-friendliness and loading times. Improving your technical SEO can help search engines better navigate and crawl your site.

The strategic use of these factors makes search engine optimization a science, but the unpredictability involved makes it an "art" that often requires experienced SEO professionals.

Ultimately, the goal is to rank at or near the top of the first page of a search engine’s result page or in Google's AI Overviews. This ensures that those searching for a specific query related to your brand can easily find your products or services. While there are many search engines, digital marketers often focus on Google since it's a global leader in the search engine market.

Google and other search engines change their algorithm almost constantly, so SEO is a never-ending progress. And your competitors most likely also invest in SEO. What you can do is closely monitor your page's performance and make adjustments as needed.

• Content marketing

As mentioned, the quality of your content is a key component of an optimized page. As a result, SEO is a major factor in content marketing, a strategy based on the distribution of relevant and valuable content to a target audience.

As in any marketing strategy, the goal of content marketing is to attract leads that ultimately convert into customers. But it does so differently than traditional advertising. Instead of enticing prospects with potential value from a product or service, it offers value for free in the form of written material, such as:

* Blog posts

* E-books

* Newsletters

* Video or audio transcripts

* Whitepapers

* Infographics

Content marketing matters, and there are plenty of stats to prove it:

- 84% of consumers expect companies to produce entertaining and helpful content experiences

- 62% of companies that have at least 5,000 employees produce content daily

- 92% of marketers believe that their company values content as an important asset

As effective as content marketing is, it can be tricky. Content marketing writers need to be able to rank highly in search engine results while also engaging people who will read the material, share it, and interact further with the brand. When the content is relevant, it can establish strong relationships throughout the pipeline.

To create effective content that’s highly relevant and engaging, it’s important to identify your audience. Who are you ultimately trying to reach with your content marketing efforts? Once you have a better grasp of your audience, you can determine the type of content you'll create. You can use many formats of content in your content marketing, including videos, blog posts, printable worksheets, and more.

Regardless of which content you create, it’s a good idea to follow content marketing best practices. This means making content that’s grammatically correct, free of errors, easy to understand, relevant, and interesting. Your content should also funnel readers to the next stage in the pipeline, whether that’s a free consultation with a sales representative or a signup page.

• Social media marketing

Social media marketing means driving traffic and brand awareness by engaging people in discussion online. You can use social media marketing to highlight your brand, products, services, culture, and more. With billions of people spending their time engaging on social media platforms, focusing on social media marketing can be worthwhile.

The most popular digital platforms for social media marketing are Facebook, X, and Instagram, with LinkedIn and YouTube not far behind. Ultimately, which social media platforms you use for your business depends on your goals and audience. For example, if you want to find new leads for your FinTech startup, targeting your audience on LinkedIn is a good idea since industry professionals are active on the platform. On the other hand, running social media ads on Instagram may be better for your brand if you run a B2C focused on younger consumers.

Because social media marketing involves active audience participation, it has become a popular way of getting attention. Social media marketing offers built-in engagement metrics, which are extremely useful in helping you to understand how well you're reaching your audience. You get to decide which types of interactions mean the most to you, whether that means the number of shares, comments, or total clicks to your website.

Direct purchase may not even be a goal of your social media marketing strategy. Many brands use social media marketing to start dialogues with audiences rather than encourage them to spend money right away. This is especially common in brands that target older audiences or offer products and services not appropriate for impulse buys. It all depends on your company's social media marketing goals.

To create an effective social media marketing strategy, it’s crucial to follow best practices. Here are a few of the most important social media marketing best practices:

- Craft high-quality and engaging content

- Reply to comments and questions in a professional manner

- Create a social media posting schedule

- Post at the right time

- Hire social media managers to support your marketing efforts

- Know your audience and which social media channels they’re most active on

To learn more about how Mailchimp can help with your social media strategy, check out the comparison of our free social media management tools versus others.

• Pay-per-click marketing

Pay-per-click, or PPC, is a form of digital marketing in which you pay a fee every time someone clicks on your digital ads. So, instead of paying a set amount to constantly run targeted ads on online marketing channels, you only pay for the ads individuals interact with. How and when people see your ad is a bit more complicated.

One of the most common types of PPC is search engine advertising, and because Google is the most popular search engine, many businesses use Google Ads for this purpose. When a spot is available on a search engine results page, also known as a SERP, the engine fills the spot with what is essentially an instant auction. An algorithm prioritizes each available ad based on a number of factors.

PPC ads are then placed at the top of search engine result pages based on the factors above whenever a person searches for a specific query.

Each PPC campaign has 1 or more target actions that viewers are meant to complete after clicking an ad. These actions are known as conversions, and they can be transactional or non-transactional. Making a purchase is a conversion, but so is a newsletter signup or a call made to your home office.

Whatever you choose as your target conversions, you can track them via your chosen digital marketing channels to see how your campaign is doing.

• Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a digital marketing tactic that lets someone make money by promoting another person's business. You could be either the promoter or the business who works with the promoter, but the process is the same in either case.

It works using a revenue sharing model. If you're the affiliate, you get a commission every time someone purchases the item that you promote. If you're the merchant, you pay the affiliate for every sale they help you make.

Some affiliate marketers choose to review the products of just 1 company, perhaps on a blog or other third-party site. Others have relationships with multiple merchants.

Whether you want to be an affiliate or find one, the first step is to make a connection with the other party. You can use digital channels designed to connect affiliates with retailers, or you can start or join a single-retailer program.

If you're a retailer and you choose to work directly with affiliates, there are many things you can do to make your program appealing to potential promoters. You'll need to provide those affiliates with the tools that they need to succeed. That includes incentives for great results as well as marketing tools and pre-made materials.

• Native advertising

Native advertising is digital marketing in disguise. Its goal is to blend in with its surrounding content so that it’s less blatantly obvious as advertising.

Native advertising was created in reaction to the cynicism of today's consumers toward ads. Knowing that the creator of an ad pays to run it, many consumers will conclude that the ad is biased and consequently ignore it.

A native ad gets around this bias by offering information or entertainment before it gets to anything promotional, downplaying the "ad" aspect.

It’s important to always label your native ads clearly. Use words like “promoted” or “sponsored.” If those indicators are concealed, readers might end up spending significant time engaging with the content before they realize that it's advertising.

When your consumers know exactly what they're getting, they'll feel better about your content and your brand. Native ads are meant to be less obtrusive than traditional ads, but they’re not meant to be deceptive.

• Influencer marketing

Like affiliate marketing, influencer marketing relies on working with an influencer–an individual with a large following, such as a celebrity, industry expert, or content creator–in exchange for exposure. In many cases, these influencers will endorse your products or services to their followers on several social media channels.

Influencer marketing works well for B2B and B2C companies who want to reach new audiences. However, it’s important to partner with reputable influencers since they’re essentially representing your brand. The wrong influencer can tarnish the trust consumers have with your business.

• Marketing automation

Marketing automation uses software to power digital marketing campaigns, improving the efficiency and relevance of advertising. As a result, you can focus on creating the strategy behind your digital marketing efforts instead of cumbersome and time-consuming processes.

While marketing automation may seem like a luxury tool your business can do without, it can significantly improve the engagement between you and your audience.

According to statistics:

90% of US consumers find personalization either “very” or “somewhat” appealing

81% of consumers would like the brands they engage with to understand them better

Marketing automation lets companies keep up with the expectation of personalization. It allows brands to:

- Collect and analyze consumer information

- Design targeted marketing campaigns

- Send and post digital marketing messages at the right times to the right audiences

Many marketing automation tools use prospect engagement (or lack thereof) with a particular message to determine when and how to reach out next. This level of real-time customization means that you can effectively create an individualized marketing strategy for each customer without any additional time investment.

Mail chimp's marketing automation tools ensure you can interact with your audience via behavior-based automations, transactional emails, date-based automations, and more.

• Email marketing

The concept of email marketing is simple—you send a promotional message and hope that your prospect clicks on it. However, the execution is much more complex. First of all, you have to make sure that your emails are wanted. This means having an email marketing provider that offers the following is crucial:

- Individualizes the content, both in the body and in the subject line

- An email signature that offers a clear unsubscribe option

- Both, transactional and promotional emails

You want your prospects to see your campaign as a valued service, not just as a promotional tool.

Email marketing is a proven, effective technique all on its own, but it can be even better if you incorporate other digital marketing techniques such as marketing automation, which lets you segment and schedule your emails so that they meet your customer's needs more effectively.

If you’re considering email marketing, here are a few tips that can help you craft great email marketing campaigns:

- Segment your audience to send relevant campaigns to the right people

- Ensure emails look good on mobile devices

- Create a campaign schedule

- Run A/B tests

• Mobile marketing

Mobile marketing is a digital marketing strategy that allows you to engage with your target audience on their mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. This can be via SMS and MMS messages, social media notifications, mobile app alerts, and more.

It’s crucial to ensure that all content is optimized for mobile devices. According to the Pew Research Center, Nine-in-ten Americans own a smartphone, so your marketing efforts can go a long way when you create content for computer and mobile screens.

How Can You Become a Digital Marketer?

Digital marketers need strong writing and social media skills, along with a good understanding of data analytics. A bachelor's degree is required for most digital marketing positions. You might also want to take digital marketing courses or participate in a digital "boot camp." In addition, completing an internship while in school can be useful.2 A master's degree in digital marketing may be useful but is not considered essential.

What Skills Are Needed in Digital Marketing?

Strong communication skills are essential if a marketer is going to be successful in telling a company or product's story to potential customers. Data analytics skills are also important for understanding how well a marketing campaign is performing and where it might be improved. Finally, social media skills are another must.

Benefits of Digital Marketing Over Traditional Marketing

The following are the top advantages of Internet marketing for businesses:

1. Better Brand Awareness

Out of all the advantages of digital marketing, brand awareness is the most significant, especially for newly established businesses. In fact, social media marketing helps businesses promote their products on various digital platforms, such as Instagram and LinkedIn, and collaborate with other brands to increase awareness. Moreover, SEO helps businesses rank higher on search engines, leading to increased brand awareness and visibility.

2. Wide Customer Reach

Traditional marketing, like print advertising and telecalling, can restrict customer reach. However, digital marketing strategies like displaying ads on YouTube, Google, or Instagram help businesses promote their products and services globally, thus expanding customer reach.

3. Increased Customer Engagement

According to a McKinsey report, customer intimacy helps foster business growth. Moreover, 71% of the consumers demand personalized content from brands. Therefore, digital marketing enables businesses to increase customer engagement through personalized ads and data analytics.

4. Real-Time Customer Feedback

The advantages of Internet marketing include real-time feedback from customers. As a matter of fact, businesses can use social media live streams, giveaways, polls, and other strategies to engage with customers in real-time. Therefore, digital marketing offers immediate insights into customer behavior and trends that help businesses offer better customer experience and even improve the quality of their products.

5. Data-Driven Decision-Making

Measuring campaign results accurately is a significant concern with traditional marketing. However, digital marketing tools like HubSpot, Hootsuite, MailChimp, and Google Analytics help businesses track website visits, time spent by visitors on each page, email, ad clicking, opening rates, and other relevant metrics. Thus, digital marketing helps measure the impact of marketing campaigns that result in informed marketing decisions.

6. Greater Market Share 

Digital marketing increases brand awareness and customer engagement. In essence, this helps build trust and improves customer loyalty. Evidently, this can lead to increased customer retention rates, positively impacting the business market share.

7. Cost-Effectiveness

The customer acquisition cost through digital marketing is lower in comparison to traditional marketing strategies. This mainly happens because companies can generate and nurture leads through free or low-cost channels like social media or email. In brief, this makes cost-effectiveness one of the most prominent advantages of digital marketing.

8. Competitive Advantage 

One of the most significant advantages of online marketing is that it allows businesses to collect customer data through websites and social media engagement. Evidently, this helps them analyze customer behavior and feedback. Moreover, it helps generate business insights that can be used to improve product or service quality and gain a competitive advantage.

9. Boosted Sales

The ultimate goal of digital marketing is to boost business sales and increase growth. Research shows that 38% of social media users purchase from online platforms. However, some people hesitate to shop online because of a lack of trust, insufficient product descriptions, and poor brand reputation. More often than not, digital marketing can aid businesses in overcoming these challenges and increasing their sales.

The Scope of Digital Marketing in 2024 

Digital marketing trends evolve each year as more companies enter the space and new technologies emerge. Looking ahead to 2024, here are some trends that will help continue to shape this space.

1) Analytics

Digital marketing analysis is typically done after the fact. Marketers will publish a piece of content, for instance, and then check to see how effective it was after a few weeks. This is certainly helpful, but real-time analytics is beginning to shake up the world of digital marketing. Conducting real-time analysis allows marketers to both individualize content for smaller subsets of consumers and respond much more quickly to their performance.

2) Social Media Influencers

Advertisers in all sectors are connecting with social media influencers to help enhance their brands. This is proving to be an effective digital marketing strategy, largely because consumers tend to trust other consumers more than companies advertising products. Expect more companies in 2024 and beyond to use these influencers to drive sales.

Also, expect to see fewer celebrities promoting products, as consumers have grown relatively weary of their endorsements. Instead, the trend is moving more toward influencers who have more direct relevance to the product. One great example is make-up artist James Charles, who has become a celebrity but also has expertise specific to cosmetics, which Cover Girl has tapped for its promotions. 

3) Video Remains King

Video will remain a top strategy in 2024, as digital marketers capitalize on users’ short attention spans and desire to view content instead of reading it. Since 74 percent of consumers in the United States watch online videos each week, this medium will continue to play a significant role in connecting customers and businesses. Most social media channels support video hosting and sharing.

One trend to watch out for is SEO for images and video. Typically, people type in keywords relating to a particular image or video, but this can be tedious. More and more users are discovering that they can use existing or new images to search for other, closely related images online. This profoundly increases the scope of digital marketing. By adding relevant keywords to the titles of their images and videos, including alt text in image descriptions, and using other such methods, advertisers will make it easier for potential customers to find them.

4) Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI)  enables digital marketers to better analyze user data so they can further customize the customer journey. AI helps companies understand a great deal about customers and how to best target audiences. 

AI also provides users with a more personalized experience, giving them customized assistance at each stage of the buying process. Businesses can achieve this customer experience by automating ads to targeted audiences using programmatic advertising. Programmatic advertising is expected to account for more than 72 percent of online marketing spend in 2021.

5) Augmented and Virtual Reality

Companies will continue to use augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) in their marketing strategies to enhance brand awareness and satisfy customer demand. Companies like Starbucks, Nivea, and Volkswagen have launched successful AR and VR campaigns to offer customers an experience that better connects them to their brands and products.

6) Omni-channel Marketing

While today’s consumer expects every business to at least have an online presence, using a variety of media to engage your target market in a seamless manner is ideal. Often referred to as “omni-channel” marketing, this approach does away with any barriers or “silos” that different media may impose. For instance, a product advertised on television should also have an online tie-in that’s optimized for both desktop and mobile users. 

The point is, consumers may use a variety of media to learn about and engage with your product (or service) before and after they buy. If there isn’t a smooth handoff among these different platforms, then it may hurt the experience and result in a lost sale.