What is Digital Marketing? Types, Features, and Scope

Marketing has always been about connecting your brand with your audience by being in the right place at the right time. In today’s world, the place to be is the internet as everyone spends time online. Every company is taking their business digital or at least promoting their business on various social media channels as it offers high growth potential. 

Did you know that there are about 5 billion global internet users as of 2022, which is a 400 million jump from 2021? About 89% of internet users go online at least once a day, and 31% are online almost constantly. 
This means that every time a person is using their phone they are away from the offline world of marketing and exploring the digital world of marketing from the palm of their hands. So today, let’s talk about this new form of marketing. Let’s learn about digital marketing, its types, its fundamentals, and more.

Introduction to Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is also known as online marketing. It refers to the use of digital channels to market products and services in order to reach consumers. This type of marketing involves the use of websites, mobile devices, social media, search engines, and other similar channels.

According to Google, about 88 percent of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a related store in the next week. Let’s understand the fundamentals of digital marketing with an example – 

For a minute, try to recall the last important purchase you made. It can be something big like a home or something small like hiring a plumber, or maybe you changed the lunch suppliers at your office.

Regardless of what it was, you probably began by searching the Internet to learn more about the available options, the businesses that provide the exact product or service you needed, and how much it would cost. Your ultimate buying decision was then based on the reviews you read, the friends and family you consulted, and the solutions, features, and pricing you researched.

The important thing to note through all this is – all of this was done online. In today’s world, most purchasing decisions begin online. This means an online presence is absolutely necessary—regardless of what you sell. So how do you create a presence online? 
Here is a list of different types of digital marketing to help you get started –

Types of Digital Marketing

Here are some of the different types of digital marketing

1. SEO

Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the quality of content in order to rank the website high. It also has the chance to convert organic traffic into potential leads using different types of SEO techniques. For example – You must have made a Google search and clicked on a webpage. Welcome to the Content World. SEO marketing can be summarized into an abbreviation – R.O.C.K.E.T

R- Research

O -Optimization

C – Content with quality

K – Keywords

E – Earn the social media support

T – Test the websites.

2. SMM

It stands for Social Media Marketing and offers a platform to reach out to new customers through advertisements on Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.. On a daily basis, people spend approximately around 4 hours on social media, especially youngsters. SMM also includes memes and it has only one target which is to make people aware of specific brands through social media apps. 

3. Email Marketing

Email Marketing is the process of sending commercial messages.  Attractive emails always win the hearts of the people. Emails that offer discounts to people have always proved successful in achieving the target. For example- Myntra, Urbanic, and SSS send emails to their customers to draw attention.

There are 3 types of Email marketing 

1. Email Newsletters
2. Transactional emails
3. Behavioral emails. 

4. Pay-Per-Click Advertising

In Pay-Per-Click or PPC, brands pay a fee when someone clicks on their digital ads. 

It enables them to pay for only those ads which have shown some interest and interaction rather than paying to run your ads on online platforms. It is helpful to increase the reach on a variety of digital platforms.

PPC campaigns can run on social media platforms and Search Engines to show relevant ads to the targeted users. Google Ads and Facebook Ads are the most popular PPC platforms today.

5. Content Marketing

Content Marketing is the creation and sharing of content online. Content marketing focuses on producing great relevant content for a target audience. It can be a blog or social media post, video, podcast, ad, or webpage. It requires strategy, planning, creativity, and analysis. However, Dedication and hard work are also important. 

Here are some of the facts about it –

• More than 80% of users expect interactive and engaging content when they read.
• 66% of marketers estimate their content marketing budget to increase more than their last one in 2022.
• More than 90% of marketers put content as a very important asset in measuring success.

6. Affiliates

Affiliate marketing is the biggest get-rich scheme where you can create as much money as you want. Let us see the process of it. 

You first have to create an affiliate account on apps such as Myntra and Amazon and you will be tagged as the seller. 

A link will be created to any particular product that you have to circulate on your social media apps and encourage people to buy it. If they buy stuff from your generated link, you will receive around 5-15% of the commission. 

It benefits everyone involved from seller to buyer, and of course the promoter as well. This network of affiliates can give a great business

Fundamentals of Digital Marketing

The online world has truly changed how we perceive the world, making digital marketing the skill of the future. It is safe to say that digital marketing can work for any business regardless of the industry or what the company sells. This is because digital marketing involves building buyer personas to identify your audience’s needs and creating valuable online content. This however does not mean that the same digital marketing strategy will work for all businesses. Here’s how different businesses mold digital marketing strategies to their advantage – 

B2B Digital Marketing –

Just like in traditional marketing, the first thing you need to do is define your goals for digital marketing. In case of business-to-business (B2B), digital marketing is done to generate online leads with the end goal being that a prospective customer will talk to a salesperson. 

B2C Digital Marketing –

If you are running a business-to-consumer (B2C) company, your digital marketing efforts will be spent on creating awareness and encouraging people to visit your website. Where they will convert from prospective leads to customers without ever needing to talk to a salesperson. 

In B2C business, you are less likely to focus on ‘leads’ in their traditional sense and more likely to build an accelerated buyer’s journey from when someone lands on your website to when they make a purchase.

Now that we understand a little more about the meaning of digital marketing and the fundamentals of digital marketing for various businesses – let’s look at the various features of digital marketing.

Features of Digital Marketing

Now let’s discuss about what are some features that make digital marketing widely popular.

1. Flexibility

 Digital marketing can be done in so many ways.

 For example – Email marketing, social media posts, content marketing, banner ads, etc. It completely depends on the user and their needs and they can choose the right medium accordingly. 

2. Affordability

The methods of digital marketing are reasonable as compared to other methods of marketing. The expenses of advertisements are also low in digital marketing. 

3. Expansion

Digital marketing attracts customers who mostly shop online. Your products and services can be advertised through paid campaigns which will help you drive relevant traffic to your website quickly.

4. Interactivity

Digital marketing allows you to receive reviews, comments, and feedback from the customer and you can respond to it as well. This will help you gain the trust of your customer as transparency can attract more customers. 

5. Tracking

It tracks the most successful campaign. So, it makes it easy for people to focus on the area which is bringing more traffic to the site and enhancing the efforts over there. It also gives you insight on communication. Rework can be done if the techniques are not beneficial. 

Importance of Digital Marketing

Do we humans give importance to anything which is not important? Here are some of the most amazing benefits of the digital marketing

1. Affordability

Digital marketing is much more affordable than other forms of marketing. It spends less amount of money on advertisements and sponsorships. 

2. High Reach

Digital marketing has an astonishingly high reach and it can help brands reach a global audience quickly.

3. Increases the ROI

Digital marketing helps to increase the ROI (Return on Investment). It helps you keep a track of the profits and losses that are generated from various digital marketing campaigns. These reports help companies to understand how well their digital campaigns are doing. 

4. Brand Awareness

Digital marketing helps to create brand awareness among the relevant audience. 

Traditional Marketing Vs Digital Marketing

Now let’s talk about traditional marketing vs digital marketing and which one you should choose for your business:

Parameters	Traditional Marketing	Digital Marketing
Cost	It is not cost-effective.	It is cost-effective.
Reach	It has local reach.	It has a global reach.
Brand Building	It offers helps help for brand building.	It is good for brand building.
Flexibility	The advertisements can’t be altered.	The advertisements can be altered even after they are posted.
Communication	There is only one way of communication.	There is two-way communication between the brand and customers.
Advertisement Type	The users have to watch the same ads repeatedly for a long duration of time.	The advertisements are innovative and you can skip them if you lack interest.
Tracking	Traditional marketing is difficult to measure.	Digital marketing is not difficult to measure.
Medium	It takes help from newspapers, pamphlets, and TV ads to advertise.	It uses social media, paid digital ads, influencer marketing, etc.

Tools of Digital Marketing

Tools? Do you remember watching the cartoon “Bob the Builder”? We all loved the line – Bob The Builder, Kar Ke Dikhayenge. He always carried a set of tools, and so did the Digital marketers. These digital marketing tools are amazing and some of the following are mentioned below-

1. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is one of the top email marketing tools in the world. It has more than 12 million customers. You can have 2000 subscribers for free on MailChimp. It has self-service support to make it easy to find all the answers to your questions.

2. HubSpot

The HubSpot CRM provides email tracking & notifications, prospect tracking, meeting scheduling, and a live chat option. HubSpot CRM tool is also free of cost.

3. Ahrefs

It is the best when it comes to brainstorming the keyword ideas or opportunities. This tool allows you to check any URL’s top organic keywords. It also estimates the traffic a competitor can receive for any given search term. You can also identify a site’s top-performing content with it.

4. SEMrush

SEMrush tracks the volume of your priority keywords and suggests new keywords for better reach.

5. Screaming Frog

It is an advanced SEO site audit tool. It crawls websites and gives on-page SEO elements. You can review the website’s optimized title tags and meta descriptions and improve SEO drastically with this tool. It diagnoses URL errors in real-time. You can crawl up to 500 URLs for free using this tool.

The 5 D’s of Digital Marketing

Here are the 5Ds of digital marketing which make it attractive and easy to understand.

1. Digital Devices

These are the main assets of the digital services. You can freely access the services available online if you are equipped with digital devices such as television, desktop, laptop and smartphones etc. 

2. Digital Platforms

Digital platforms such as social media applications like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter have broadened the reach of digital marketing at a brisk pace because they have been used daily by the masses. These platforms act as a medium between companies and customers.

3. Digital Media

Digital media or electronic media uses electronic devices for distribution. 

4. Digital Data

 It is a type of electronic representation in a format language that only machines can understand.

5. Digital Technology

It is the electronic tools, devices, systems, and resources which generate and store data or are able to process the data.

Digital Marketing Career Scope

Digital marketing offers a huge career scope. According to the Goldman Sachs report, companies will invest more than $160 billion in digital marketing by the year 2025. Following is a list of jobs you can pursue after completing a digital marketing course –

1. Digital Marketer
2. SEO Executive
3. Google Ads specialist
4. Email Marketing Specialist
5. Web Analyst
6. Paid Advertising Manager
7. Social media manager
8. Digital Branding Head

Salary in Digital Marketing

Do you know your salary can vary from company to company even if you are in the same location? Yes, it’s true! Check out this digital marketing salary data from Google to understand this better:

• The future in digital marketing is incredible, and so is income.
• The average salary of Google digital marketing Managers in India is ₹ 18.9 Lakhs per year.
• The salary of a digital marketing Manager at Google is between ₹ 4 Lakhs to ₹ 36 Lakhs per year.

Conclusion

Digital marketing makes gathering customer data easy which ultimately helps organizations to easily understand buyer behavior and make accurate forecasting decisions. Digital marketing is a vast subject that goes beyond the points discussed above. You should learn digital marketing to develop a digital marketing strategy that puts you in all the places where your followers are already hanging out. Digital marketing is one of the primary focuses of almost any business as it is vital for a company’s growth.