Digital Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide || DIGITAL MARKETING || STEP BY STEP || CODERSCODINGS
Digital marketing. Just another one of those new, fancy buzzwords you should use to
sound smart in meetings or is it the real deal?
Maybe a better question is:
what is digital marketing?
This digital marketing guide
will show you what’s what.
First popularized as a term in
the early 2000’s, digital marketing has actually been around much longer.
Like, WAY longer. About 100 years longer, to be exact.
Definition
If you are wondering what digital marketing is… it’s is advertising
delivered through digital channels. Channels such as social media, mobile
applications, email, web applications, search engines, websites, or any new
digital channel.
Or a simpler version…
Digital marketing is any form
of marketing products or services that involves electronic devices.
That’s the reason it has been
around for decades (because electronics have) and why it doesn’t necessarily
have anything to do with content marketing, Google ads, social media or
retargeting.
Digital marketing can be done both online and offline.
And, both kinds matter for a
well-rounded digital marketing strategy.
Why
digital marketing matters
Remember billboards?
I do.
As a young kid in California,
my experiences from the back seat of our car mostly alternated between: “Mom,
when are we there?” and “Uh, look, McDonalds, can we go?”, whenever one of
those 10 foot billboards popped up on the side of the road.
Growing up with Indian parents,
the answer to both of those would, most times, be the same: “Not yet.”
Sometimes, big brands would even start a billboard war, like this one
between Audi and BMW, which got quite a few laughs:
Overview
The 2 main pillars of digital
marketing are online marketing and offline marketing. That said,
since I’ll talk about online marketing in a separate guide, I’ll only mention
the different areas of online marketing here, for the sake of completeness.
The 7 big categories of online
marketing are:
Unbounce created a great
infographic that sums up all kinds of online marketing in one neat chart
is a great place to get
started.
Okay, that said, what other
digital marketing is there? There’s plenty, actually.
Here are the 4 big categories
of digital offline marketing.
First, there’s what I
call enhanced offline marketing. This is a form of marketing
that is entirely offline, but enhanced with electronic devices.
visit our website : Purecoders
Enhanced
offline marketing
What’s the difference between a
billboard somewhere in the desert of Arizona and a billboard in New York City’s
Times Square?
The size? The product?
3 letters: LED. Light emitting
diodes.
Radio
marketing
Over 100 years have passed
since that original first live broadcast of the opera performance at the Met
and guess what – radio is still here.
Since radio did fairly well in
transitioning to the internet, it hasn’t taken as big of a hit as TV.
And, even old school radio still matters.
·
Radio still reaches 85% of the
US population every week
·
Listeners listen 2 hrs per day,
on average
·
40% of all radio advertising
expenses worldwide comes from the US
·
About half the population of
the US listens to internet radio at least once a month
Now, while profits have
shrunk, radio isn’t dead. Thanks to Pandora’s 80 million
users, there are still about $4 billion in profits made each year.
But, aside from creating a kick ass, creative radio
commercial that will do well, what
else is there?
Recently, internet radio made a
good move, doing what most podcasts do: advertise at the beginning of
shows.
If you host a show revolving
around a certain topic, like coaching, you can plug programs and
products in, right before and at the end of the show.
Since social media is the
marketing darling these days, it should be fairly easy to find a local radio
station, get on a show, be interviewed
or negotiate a deal with them.
Once you do, be sure to get some sponsorships,
to make sure that you’re a prime candidate for the station and that they give
you the premium slot and the best air time possible.
In most cases, doing well on
radio means being entertaining.
Cadillac and Dairy Queen are
two brands that come up with solid radio commercials on a consistent basis.
TV
marketing
Television marketing is such a
Goliath, it’ll likely never go away. It’s also easily the industry where the
most money is burned each year.
Ever since Google Video turned
into Youtube, the efficiency of TV ads has gone down rapidly.
Who wants to watch a crappy MTV
show host review a game that they have no clue about, when they can join 40 million subscribers (!) watching PewDiePie not only rock video games, but also deliver hilarious
comments.
All, free of charge, of course.
So, why are TV commercials
nearly worthless, when the average American still watches 4
hours of TV each day?
They aren’t specific.
TV ads are unspecific. In a
world of search engines, retargeting, social media and email marketing, we are
so used to being marketed around products we already care about,
that we blatantly ignore everything that’s not remotely relevant to us.
If we can even be bothered to
watch a movie on TV, because it’s not yet on Netflix, a company making $5 billion in revenue annually by now, then what do we do?
We record it and we fast
forward through all of the commercials.
We’re used to being in total
control.
Marketers have to be smarter
and smoother.
TV commercials just hit
everyone across the board.
You could see a hemorrhoid
cream commercial, followed by an Oreo ad and a burger spot, all while being
overweight, diabetic and 22 years old.
Such a person would be a
horrible target to be viewing these ads. But, with TV, you never know who
you’re going to reach, only how many eyeballs you’ll get.
So, apart from a few insomniacs
who watch infomercials late at night, ensuring that Dr. Ho still sells a few of his de-compression belts, is TV advertising dead?
Not entirely.
There is still one type of TV
ad worth running, but it’ll cost ya.
Remember I mentioned that
renting a billboard in Times Square, for a year, will set you back a million?
Thanks to their
cross-pollinating effect, the often viral and memorable commercials still pay
for themselves.
Roughly 10% of all TV
commercial-related shares on social media come from Super Bowl ads. So do about 8% of all views on
Youtube that go to TV commercial videos.
If your commercial makes it to
the blacklist (commercials the network decides can’t be shown on TV), the viral
effect is usually even stronger, like this one, from Carl’s Junior, that caused
a lot of noise this year:
Phone
marketing
We still don’t realize this or
give it nearly enough credit.
Smartphones are killing it.
Now, over 80% of internet users
own a smartphone and, in 2014, we crossed the tipping point where more people are accessing the
internet from their phone than
via a desktop PC or laptop.
Mobile marketing is here,
and, in 2016, the amount spent on mobile ads will first exceed the amount spent on desktop ads.
In 2020, there will be as much
money spent on mobile ads as there is now spent on TV advertising. How’s
that for fast growth?
But, before we look at the type
of phone marketing that you can do for smartphone users with an internet
connection, let’s look at some offline ways to market your products.
There are 2 apps that are
grossly underestimated, yet they are on every phone, smart or not:
Calling and texting.
Cold calling is the act of calling a person with no prior contact and trying
to sell them something.
While at roughly 3 sales per day (marketers call 52 people a day, on average, with about 17
calls until they find a buyer), it doesn’t have the scalability of social media
or email, it’s still a valid approach to marketing.
The tactic works, but doesn’t
scale very well when selling to end customers (B2C) and making contact before
trying to sell helps to close the deal (especially in B2B, which is all about
connections).
What works better is marketing
via texting, an “app” that is also available on each and every single phone out
there.
While the MMS obviously tanked after the web became available and mobile data usage costs
so little, texts are still a good way to reach people and bring value in 160
characters or less.
While you should definitely get permission first, for example, in the form of having your customers text a certain
word to a phone number, there are several providers that offer text marketing at scale.
Using text reminders as
customer service can also enhance your
mobile marketing, like Walmart does. They alert customers when their
prescription is ready for pickup. To date, they’ve sent over 1
billion text reminders.
Another option is to create
a loyalty program, where your customers can trade points
collected in an app or when paying via their phone. Only 13% of retailers have one, so it’s an option that can help you to stand out.
Since 98% of all text messages are opened, and 90% of them are opened within 3 minutes of arrival, text
messages are also a great opportunity to promote a giveaway that
you’re doing.
Using a tool, like Heyo, you can easily
create a giveaway that’s optimized for mobile and works well on Facebook and
other social media platforms, like this one
Conclusion
That’s the scoop on digital
marketing. As you can see, the internet is, by far, not the only place for
marketers to gather success, even today.
Of course, no one can afford to
miss out on the opportunities of the web and, eventually, every marketer will
have to master online marketing.
But, employing a few of these
offline marketing tactics can help you to not put all of your eggs into one
basket and diversify your lead generation beyond social media,
content marketing and the like.
Plus the offline and online world is colliding. Traditional devices such
as fridges, ovens and even billboards will all be modernized to leverage
digital media.
Here’s the breakdown of digital
marketing again:
Online marketing
1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
2. Search engine marketing (SEM)
3. Content marketing
4. Social Media Marketing (SMM)
5. Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
6. Affiliate marketing
7. Email marketing
Offline marketing
1.
Enhanced offline marketing
1.
Electronic billboards
2.
Digital product demos
3.
Digital product samples
2.
Radio marketing
1.
Radio commercials
2.
Show sponsoring
3.
TV marketing
1.
TV commercials
2.
Tele-shopping
3.
Super Bowl commercials
4.
Phone marketing
1.
Cold calling
2.
Text message marketing
(giveaways, coupons, loyalty programs)
3.
QR codes
I hope this guide expanded your
view a bit and showed you that digital marketing is more than Facebook ads and
social media blasts.
Will you use any of these
tactics in your business?
Which of these do you remember
from back in the day. Have I missed any?
Let me know your biggest
takeaways in the comments.
General
FAQ
What is digital
marketing?
Digital marketing is advertising delivered
through digital channels. Channels such as social media, mobile applications,
email, web applications, search engines, websites, or any new digital channel.
What’s the future of
digital marketing?
The offline and online world are
colliding. Traditional devices such as fridges, ovens and even billboards will
all be modernized to leverage digital media.
Why digital marketing
matters?
Google and Facebook generate more
revenue than any traditional media company because they control more eyeballs.
That’s why digital marketing matters, it is where the attention is.
What channels make up
digital marketing?
Search engines, social media, blogs,
online ads, affiliate marketing, emails, and mobile apps.
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