What is digital marketing? Gaining a clear view

FAJAR
Duhur
Asr
Maghrib
Isha

°C,

Recently, the internet has become ubiquitous and integrated into everyone's daily lives. This widespread accessibility makes it the prime platform for reaching people as screen time has surged to unprecedented levels. Consequently, entrepreneurs have turned to new marketing methods to keep pace with this development, aiming to reach a broader audience quickly and effectively to promote their products and services. This shift has given rise to digital marketing. So what is it, and what are its key aspects?

What is digital marketing?

E-marketing, also known as digital marketing or online marketing, is the promotion of products or services over the internet using various digital techniques, tools, and modern technologies to build a customer base and create brand awareness.

Digital marketing advantages

Digital marketing is becoming increasingly popular due to its importance and benefits, including:

Global reach

Digital marketing allows businesses to connect with anyone, anywhere in the world, as long as they have internet access. This global reach helps businesses expand their customer base beyond geographical boundaries and limitations. In contrast, traditional marketing methods are limited and restricted, and expanding them is often very costly compared to digital marketing.

Identifying the target audience

Digital marketing helps businesses extract data to identify the most suitable audience for their products and services. Through analysing demographics, interests, behaviours, and preferences, businesses can target their marketing efforts to the appropriate audience. Moreover, digital marketing helps businesses monitor changing customer behaviours and adjust their marketing campaigns accordingly. This ability to swiftly respond to changing customer preferences is crucial to achieve success.

Lower cost

Digital marketing is often less expensive than traditional marketing methods, such as television, print, or radio advertising. It uses more cost-effective digital channels, including email marketing, social media advertising, and search engine optimisation (SEO). This makes digital marketing affordable for all small, large, or medium-sized businesses. Additionally, the ability to track and measure digital marketing campaigns allows businesses to optimise marketing strategies and allocate budgets more efficiently.

Effective communication with the audience

Digital marketing enhances the ability to communicate and interact with customers through various digital tools. Unlike traditional marketing, it allows businesses to create engaging content that fosters two-way communication and nurtures customer relationships. Furthermore, digital marketing facilitates the integration of interactive elements into marketing strategies, such as quizzes, surveys, and competitions, encouraging user engagement and building brand trust and support.

Measurable results

One key benefit of digital marketing is the ability to directly measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns using various tracking mechanisms and analytics tools. Businesses can obtain data on user behaviour and engagement with their product or service, helping them make informed decisions, improve their strategies, and constantly optimise their marketing efforts.

Keeping pace with market changes

Digital marketing enables businesses to respond immediately to customers’ behaviours and the constant changes and developments in the market. Businesses can quickly adjust their offers to market trends, competitor actions, and customer feedback. This flexibility allows businesses to stay relevant in the market, take advantage of all available opportunities, and adapt efficiently to the dynamic market environment.

Digital marketing methods: varied and effective

Digital marketing can be applied through many different ways, including:

Social media marketing

With the vast number of social media users, it has become essential for businesses to promote their services and products. This can be achieved through paid advertisements, creating promotional content on the brand’s account, or leveraging influencers across various platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, etc. Moreover, using social media platforms for marketing has proven to be one of the most successful marketing tools due to its broad audience and the trust customers place in them.

Content marketing

This type of marketing entails creating distinctive written content, visual content, engaging short videos, or even audio content such as podcasts. These are then distributed across various digital platforms to promote products or services smartly and engagingly, thereby building customer trust in the brand.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

This marketing method involves creating a website to display detailed information about the products or services while ensuring it ranks high on search engine results to reach the desired customers and meet their needs. To achieve optimal results, businesses should adhere to general search engine guidelines and utilise keywords, links, and images.

Email marketing

Email marketing is one of the first and most cost-effective digital marketing methods. It involves launching marketing campaigns and sending emails to users that provide comprehensive information about the product or service offered.

Mobile marketing

In mobile marketing, target customers are reached through smartphones or tablets via text messages, social media, frequently visited websites, emails, or apps downloaded to their smart devices.

References

[1] digitalmarketinginstitute.com, What Are the Most Effective Digital Marketing Strategies?
[2] snhu.edu, From SEO to Social Media: What Are the 8 Types of Digital Marketing?
[3] indeed.com, 11 Cost-Effective E-marketing Types
[4] simplilearn.com, Top 14 Benefits of Digital Marketing
[5] semrush.com, What Is E-Marketing?—Definition, Types, & Examples