Sujith Kumar Feb 28, 2024
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Entrance Tips

What is Digital Marketing and How Does It Work?

Are you new to the term digital marketing? Do you want to know what digital marketing is, and would you like to start a career as a digital marketer? Here we go.  

Most of us have smartphones now. Data shows that the number of people going online for anything and everything has increased from 15% in the last three years. As this is the fact, there is a 5% increase in the number of adults using the internet constantly, the way people buy and shop online has consistently changed a lot. This means the need for online marketing is more than offline marketing, which is not as effective as it used to be. 

Marketing has always been about connecting with your audience in the right place and at the right time. The only change from the old way of marketing is, you need to meet them where they are and spend their time the most, which is on the internet.

What is Digital Marketing? 

Digital marketing consists of all the marketing efforts done using electronic devices or the internet. Digital marketers and businesses leverage various digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and other websites to connect with current and prospective customers.

Types of Digital Marketing

The types of Digital Marketing are many, but they can be mainly categorized as five. They are:

  • Search Engine Optimization or SEO
  • Content Marketing
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Pay-per-Click Marketing
  • Email Marketing

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a strategic way to deal with Search Engines. It is defined as the "art and science of making web pages attractive to search engines.” SEO requires research and weighs various contributing factors in achieving the desired results in terms of ranking. Google constantly updates its algorithm. As an SEO professional, one needs to monitor these changes and make adjustments accordingly closely. Here are the major factors you need to consider when optimizing a web page:

  • Quality of content
  • Level of user engagement
  • Mobile-friendliness
  • Number and quality of inbound links

2. Content Marketing

Being an integral part of SEO, Content Marketing is a strategy based on the distribution of relevant and valuable content to your target audience. The goal of content marketing is to attract leads and then gradually convert them into customers. It is a natural advertising method without using traditional advertising strategies. To accomplish the goals of content marketing, factors considered are: 

  • To produce entertaining and helpful content experiences.
  • Offer value for free in the form of informational written content.
  • Produce content daily. 
  • Create engaging content that ranks highly in search engine results.
  • Establish strong relationships through relevant content.

3. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is done through social media platforms to drive traffic and brand awareness. Nowadays, people are more engaged on social media. Therefore marketers see this as a place to create brand awareness by engaging people in discussion online. The most popular platforms for social media marketing are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and a few more. 

Social media marketing offers built-in engagement metrics to understand how well you are reaching your audience. Based on these metrics, you can decide which types of interactions (shares, comments, or clicks to your website)mean the most to you. 

4. Pay-per-click Marketing

Pay-per-click, or PPC, is posting an ad on a platform and paying every time someone clicks on it.

How and when people see your ad depends on many complicated factors. This depends on how we have set the ad, the demographics, the type of audience and few other factors. An algorithm prioritizes each available ad based on several factors, including:

  • Ad quality
  • Keyword relevance
  • Landing page quality
  • Bid amount

5. Email Marketing

Email Marketing is based on a simple concept that you send a promotional message and hope that your prospect clicks on it. The open rate depends on how you execute the message. Make sure that your emails are wanted by having the following:

  • Individualized the content, both in the body and in the subject line
  • State clearly what kind of emails the subscriber will get
  • Offer a clear unsubscribe option
  • Integrate both transactional and promotional emails
  • You want your prospects to see your campaign as a valued service, not just a promotional tool.

Other Digital Marketing Strategies

The other types of digital marketing include:

  • Affiliate Marketing- A kind of marketing where another person makes money out of your business by promoting it. 
  • Native Advertising- It is marketing in disguise to buy a product or service without realising it is advertising. 
  • Marketing Automation- Marketing is done with the support of software that automates repetitive tasks. 
  • Online PR- Much like traditional PR, online PR is accomplished through online coverage with digital publications, blogs, and other content-based websites.
  • Inbound Marketing - Inbound marketing is a marketing methodology using all the digital marketing tactics above to attract, engage, and delight customers at every stage of the buyer's journey. 
  • Sponsored Content - You pay another company to create and promote content that discusses your brand or service in ways through blog posts or articles, and videos on a public platform. 

Benefits of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing helps you reach a larger audience than through traditional methods (hoardings, Boards, Brochures, Print, Radio and TV ads). Digital marketing enables you to target the prospects who are most likely to buy your product or service. Additionally, it is more cost-effective than traditional advertising and enables you to measure success daily.

Digital Marketing offers numerous benefits. Here I have given the few significant benefits of digital marketing. Let us dive into them now.

  • Broad Geographic Reach
  • Cost-Effective
  • Target Specific Audience
  • Measurable Results
  • Personalization is Easy
  • Easy To Compete with Major Brands
  • Broad Geographic Reach

When an ad is posted online, people see it no matter where they are (it is possible only if you have not limited your ad geographically). This geographical reach gives your business a better market reach and makes it easy to grow. 

  • Cost-Effective

Digital marketing is cost-effective compared to traditional marketing methods such as newspaper ads, television spots, and other traditional marketing methods. Digital marketing also gives you control over whether your target audiences will see those messages in the first place. With digital marketing, you will need just one piece of content to draw visitors' attention as long as it is active online. You can add more relevant content or alter it whenever you want. 

You can schedule and reschedule an email marketing campaign that delivers messages effectively to your targeted customers. It gives you flexibility on your money. By and large, digital marketing is a more cost-effective solution and provides you unique opportunities to ensure you are getting the results for the money spent. Also, you have the option to choose budget-friendly methods such as blogging, SEO or social media rather than costly strategies such as paid ads or Pay per Click Ads. 

  • Target Specific Audience

Digital Marketing enables you to target only the most likely prospects to purchase your product or service. For example, in TV or print advertisements, billboards, although you can measure specific demographics, have minimal control over who sees your ad.  Digital marketing, on the other hand, allows you to identify and target a particular audience and send that audience personalized, high-converting marketing messages.

For example, in social media, you can take advantage of the targeting features to show social media ads to a specific audience based on variables such as age, gender, location, interests, networks, or behaviours. Similarly, for PPC or SEO strategies to serve the purpose of the ads, you can focus on users who have shown interest in your product or service or have searched for specific keywords that relate to your industry.

Ultimately, digital marketing enables you to conduct the research necessary to identify your buyer persona. It lets you refine your marketing strategy over time to ensure you are reaching prospects most likely to buy. 

  • Measurable Results

Digital Marketing has the tools and techniques to know whether your marketing strategy works. In addition, you have the means to find out how many customers it attracts and how much revenue it ultimately drives. While the traditional method needs to directly reach the customers for feedback, digital marketing software and platforms automatically track the number of desired conversions that you get, whether that means open email rates, visits to your home page, or direct purchases.

  • Personalization is Easy

Digital marketing allows you to gather customer data in a way that offline marketing cannot. Data collected digitally tends to be much more specific. According to the collected data, you can create different content or campaigns targeting the audience more precisely. For example, sending special offers on insurance products to two different people is easy by creating two separate campaigns. With digital marketing, the information required for targeting is at your fingertips.

  • Easy To Compete with Major Brands

If you are a small business, competing with major brands in the industry is difficult using traditional advertising methods, which require millions of dollars to invest in television commercials or nationwide campaigns. However, through strategic digital marketing initiatives, there are plenty of opportunities to outrank the big players.

How Digital Marketing Works?

Digital marketing works well when combining the different types of digital marketing strategies we have mentioned above. These strategies help to reach one key goal through different routes.  It is like a company with various departments working together to achieve one common goal: ROI or investment. It will help your business to be successful by reaching the target audience the right way and ranking high on search results.   

All the above-mentioned digital marketing strategies work together to generate traffic, create awareness and transform leads into loyal customers. 

How to Start A Career in Digital Marketing? 

Is a career in digital marketing right for you? If you think it is the apt choice, it is the right time to start a career in Digital Marketing! The good news is, you can learn digital marketing without following a digital marketing course at a college or university, although there are plenty of options available now. 

To start your career as a digital marketer and be a successful digital marketing professional, you need to follow specific steps. They are as stated below:

  • Learn the basics of digital marketing
  • Get started with your website (it will make learning easier)
  • Become an SEO Expert
  • Get Google Ads Certification
  • Master Facebook Ads Advertising
  • Learn Google Analytics and become an expert
  • Get a digital marketing internship
  • Get a digital marketing job 
  • Learn how to use digital marketing tools
  • Stay informed of new updates and keep learning

According to a survey, digital marketing is ruling the current upskilling market. 70% of the professionals from all the major cities have pursued courses in web development post-pandemic.

Roles and Responsibilities in Digital Marketing

The digital marketing field is growing daily and is coming up with immense more job opportunities for you. With the best digital marketing certifications, digital marketers will get a clear picture of how each digital marketing campaign supports their overarching goals. Depending on the goals of their marketing strategy, marketers can support a more extensive campaign through the free and paid channels at their disposal. Here, we have explained the digital marketing roles and responsibilities with a range of practical descriptions.

Roles Responsibilities
Digital Marketing Executive
  • Responsible for looking into the online marketing strategies for the organization.
  • Plan and execute marketing campaigns, and maintain and supply content for the organization’s website.
Digital Marketing Manager
  • Get the word about a brand out in the digital space.
  • Develop, implement, and manage marketing campaigns that promote the products and services of a company.
  • Enhance brand awareness in the digital space.
  • Drive website traffic and acquire leads.
  • Measure site traffic, identify and evaluate new digital technologies and optimize marketing campaigns, email marketing, social media, and display & search advertising using web analytics tools.
SEO Specialist / SEO Executive
  • Rank a website page on the search engine result page and to increase the website’s traffic.
  • Conduct on-site and off-site analysis of clients in various industries.
  • Compile performances report using Google Analytics program.
  • Keep attention to the updates of Google’s Algorithm.
  • Contribute to the company’s blog for on-page and off-page optimization.
  • Conduct keyword research according to the latest keyword research strategies.
Social Media Marketing Expert
  • Responsible for combining marketing and social media management to enhance the company’s social media presence, interaction with target audiences, promoting the brand’s engaging content, and expanding the opportunities for increasing the revenue.
  • Have understanding and knowledge of each social media platform, social media marketing strategies.
  • Optimize content to make it engaging on social media channels.
Content Marketer/ Digital Writer
  • Create a series of blog posts that serve to generate leads from a new ebook the business recently created.
  • Produce the written content for web pages.
  • Work either as a freelance content writer or as an employee of a company.
  • Help the content team to refine their content and words used to get more reception, help the search engine marketer to write a better ad copy.
  • Help the social media manager with better words for posting on social media channels.
  • Manage blog, marketing campaigns, ebook publications, guest blogging, email communications, video marketing, sales page copywriting, etc.
Conversion Rate Optimizer
  • Responsible for conversion rate optimization of a company’s conversion strategy and lead generation.
  • Manage, test, and implement conversion points in the digital marketing funnel.
Search Engine Marketing Specialist/SEM Specialist
  • Target the number of leads and clicks from the given marketing budget, manage bid, keyword research, analysis, ad copywriting, and to test ad campaigns.
Inbound Marketing Manager
  • Responsible for attracting traffic, and qualified prospects and converting them into customers and leads.
Analytics Manager
  • Responsible for the implementation of tools and strategies to translate raw data into valuable business insights.

Salaries of Digital Marketing Professionals

The beauty of digital marketing is that there are many roles you can explore if you’ve learned the basics of digital marketing. Most digital marketers evolve into niche categories depending on their interests and skill set. Here are just a few digital marketing job titles you can land, along with their average salaries.

Job Titles Salary
Digital marketing manager $73,114/year
Content marketing manager $81,087/year
Content strategist $72,742/year
SEO specialist $54,088/year
Social media manager $50,489/year
Paid ads manager $47,079/year
Partnership marketer $50,528/year
Partnership manager $81,078/year
Branded content manager $64,367/year
Audience development manager $77,646/year

Although, there are a diverse set of job titles. However, for the most part, they all require the same digital marketing skills. Once you have got those down, you can “specialize” in whatever area interests you most. A career in digital marketing will always be an exciting and creative pathway. 

Difference Between Inbound Marketing and Digital Marketing

Digital marketing and inbound marketing are easily confused. Digital marketing uses many of the same tools as inbound marketing, such as online content, email, etc. Both exist to capture the attention of prospects through the buyer’s journey and turn them into prospective customers. 

Digital marketing considers how each strategy can convert prospects. For example, a brand's digital marketing strategy may use multiple platforms or focus on its efforts on one platform. Inbound marketing is a holistic concept. It considers the goal first, then looks at the available tools to determine which will effectively reach target customers, and then at which stage of the sales funnel should happen.

The most important thing to remember about digital marketing and inbound marketing is that as a marketing professional, you do not have to choose between the 2. They work best together. Inbound marketing provides structure and purpose for effective digital marketing to digital marketing efforts, ensuring that each digital marketing channel works toward a goal.

Conclusion

The digital marketing field is growing day by day and is coming up with immense job opportunities for you. Are you excited to be a part of this booming field? Master digital marketing through Digital Marketing Certificate Courses. Join now to get a clear vision of all the roles of the digital marketing field and all digital marketing aspects.

He is a professional IT Faculty having more than 18 years of experience with Edoxi Training Institute Dubai. He schedules classes into facilities and provides software instructions.  He spends most of his free time learning new software skills and also interested in driving and reading.

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