What is Digital Marketing? You Need To Read This First

Wondering what exactly digital marketing is?

Then you are at the right place.

In this post, I am going to reveal what digital marketing is, its history, why it is so important, how it works and the advantages of using digital marketing.

What is Digital Marketing?

Any communication that has been made to deliver your marketing message to potential customers through the internet is known as digital marketing.

It includes email marketing, SEO, social marketing, content marketing and others all are the types of digital marketing channels.

History of Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing first was used in the year of 1990s.

Then the web 1.0 was developed and it allowed users to find information on the web but they were not allowed to share the information with others.

This is the reason, marketers were confused whether their marketing strategies will work or not because the internet was not yet widespread.

Then in 1993, the first clickable banner was launched after which hotwired purchased more banner ads for their advertisement.

This was the beginning of the transition in the digital marketing world.

Because of this transition, in the year 1994 new technologies were introduced in the marketplace and in the same year the yahoo company was launched.

In the very first year, yahoo received 1 million hits.

This resulted in a huge change in the digital marketing space where companies started to optimize their website for higher search engine rankings.

In 1996, more search engines were launched like Hotbot, Looksmart and Alexa.

Finally, in the year 1998 Google took place.

Microsoft launched the MSN search engine and yahoo also brought in the yahoo web search engine.

After two years, all the small search engines left the space which left more big players in the market.

In 2006, the digital marketing space saw a huge growth when search engine traffic was reported to have about 6.4 billion traffic in a single month.

Then Microsoft set aside the MSN and launched Live search to compete with Google and Yahoo search engines.

After that web 2.0 was introduced where users became more active.

It allowed users to communicate with other users and businesses.

Super information highway labels began to be applied to the internet.

This resulted in increased volumes of information including digital marketing channels.

By the year 2004, internet advertising in the US alone brought in around 2.9 billion.

Social media sites began to emerge and the first myspace social media platform was introduced followed by Facebook.

Marketers realized all of these new sites are the new opportunities for them to advertise their products and services to potential customers.

With the use of new marketing resources, they needed new approaches to promote their business and benefit from social media platforms.

The first cookie was designed to record the user’s habits, tastes and preferences so that marketers can tailor their marketing strategies according to the needs of the targeted audience.

Importance of Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is an ever-growing industry.

If you have an offline business and do not utilise any mode of digital advertisement then you are going to lose a lot of potential revenue.

It is an important part of our society because anyone can get access to loads of information from anywhere with just one click.

Because of the power of digital marketing, customers know not only what buyers tell them or what a company tells about their brand but also what other people are talking about the product or service.

People trust a brand more when their friends, relatives, peers are talking about it.

This is because people would trust these interactions more than the brand itself.

The availability of digital content has given the consumers the most power that they ever had.

They now can research what they want to buy and then make decisions based on the information they have.

Digital marketing has made communication channels with product and service providers.

It helps brands to be more relevant towards consumers preferences.

Having a digital marketing strategy is essential for your company to grow at its highest peak.

According to the reports, the global digital advertising and marketing market is expected to reach $786.2 billion in 2026.

There’s a lot of potential here.

Also, due to the global pandemic, Nov-19 65% of businesses have accelerated their digital marketing.

How Does It Work?

Digital marketing uses a variety of strategies to meet the organisation goal.

It can be creating brand awareness, generating leads, getting sales, increasing traffic etc.

There are lots of digital marketing platforms that you can use to drive desired results.

Types of digital marketing:-

Pay Per Click

Whenever someone clicks on an ad and is diverted towards your website. Google ads are an example of the most common type of PPC Ads.

Social Media

It refers to promoting your brand, services or even content on social media platforms. The main purpose is to create brand awareness, generate traffic to your website and increase followers that can increase your customers base.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO is the process of optimizing the website to rank higher in the search engines to drive traffic and sales.

Content Marketing

Content marketing refers to the creation of content to promote products and services and promoting that content to increase brand awareness, traffic, and sales.

Email Marketing

Direct communication with your email subscribers to promote products, services, events, webinars etc. is called email marketing.

Affiliate Marketing

It is a performance-based marketing system. Affiliates who generate sales, clicks, leads for partners’ companies in return for a percentage of commission is known as affiliate marketing.

Video Marketing

Video Marketing refers to integrating engaging video content to promote products and services to increase engagement and sales.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

Search engine marketing refers to paid search engine marketing strategy to increase visibility. Companies pay for the ads to appear first at the search engines results.

Inbound Marketing

It uses the resources of digital marketing and the theory of push and pulls marketing. Online content is used to attract target customers to your website. It focuses on pulling customers rather than pushing them a message.

Online Public Relations

When digital marketers secure an online presence with publications, blogs or any other content-based activities. It is similar to traditional PR activities and the only difference is it occurs in the online space.

Native Advertising

Native advertising is the type of advertisement that is focused on content and present on the platform simultaneously with other content that is not paid.

Before investing your marketing budget in digital marketing channels first learn about the functions of each platform otherwise you will lose all of your money.

You do not have to go blindfolded to reach your goal.

Learn from marketing experts, free or paid resources online.

At the end of the day, you will have enough knowledge to get started with your marketing plan.

Advantages of Digital Marketing

Help Track Website Traffic

As compared to traditional marketing, it can be very hard to know how many people have interacted with your company until or unless someone makes contact with your company directly.

This is not the case in digital marketing. You can easily track how many visitors have clicked on your website, how many have purchased, website time, bounce rate etc. All of these metrics can be accessed through digital analytics data.

Generating Leads

When you create blogs or articles, you can track the performance and know exactly how many people have come to your page and consumed the content.

It helps in generating leads for your business because you can insert an opt-in form which helps in collecting the email address of the user.

These people are lifetime assets for your business. You can contact them whenever you want and promote your products and services to them.

Increase Sales

With an effective digital marketing strategy utilised with the right tools in place, you can track the number of sales back to the point when it started, rather than customers’ first digital point.

When you have this information you can identify the trends of your targeted audience and tailor your strategies according to their preferences which eventually result in increased sales.

Final Thoughts

Digital marketing is vital for your success. It is a dynamic space, so as a marketer you need to keep an eye on the latest trends and updates to get ahead of your competitors.

If you are just utilizing traditional marketing strategies then you should also include digital marketing which has a lot of potential in growing your online business.

It opens the door for hundreds of opportunities and you can target exactly the type of customers you want.

Learn about the basic tactics of digital marketing and implement them in your business plan. You will see amazing results.

Want more? No problem!

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