To understand the growing trend and use of digital marketing, it is important to first consider the shift in consumer behavior toward online platforms. With the rise of the internet and the increasing use of mobile devices, more and more people are turning to the web to research products and make purchasing decisions. As a result, businesses of all sizes recognize the need for a strong online presence and investing in digital marketing to reach and engage with their target audience.
Features of effective digital marketing include:
- Identifying a target audience and understanding their needs and behaviors.
- Developing a clear and measurable marketing strategy.
- Choosing the right digital marketing channels to reach the target audience.
- Using analytics to track the success of campaigns and make data-driven decisions.
- Continuously optimizing and improving campaigns based on the results.
It is also necessary to be up to date with the latest digital marketing trends and technologies to remain ahead of the competition and effectively reach the target audience. This can include reading industry publications, attending digital marketing conferences and taking online courses.
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The number of people who go online each day continues to increase. In 2021, there were 4.9 billion global internet users. The way people shop has changed because of this trend. Marketing is about connecting with the audience at the right time and place. In today’s cultural climate, that means connecting with your customers on the internet.
Case study: Burger King
In Burger King’s 2019 Burn That Ad campaign, customers were asked to use the Burger King app to burn competitor advertisements digitally. Customers had to find advertisements, videotape them with their phone, and then see the AR (augmented reality) feature digitally burn up the advertisement. When the flames had gone, there would be a message offering the customer a free Whopper burger.
This is an excellent example of mobile digital marketing because it uses features that are unique to mobile phones, such as apps and mobile cameras. The campaign was a major hit worldwide. It boosted app downloads, encouraged people to have a Whopper, and spread brand awareness throughout social media. Customers liked the interactive element, as well as the free Whopper incentive.
This campaign also played on the idea of the taboo of acknowledging competitors. Consumers are bombarded with advertisements every day, most often unwillingly. Enabling Burger King customers to burn these ads virtually is both fun and cathartic while demonstrating an awareness of their customers’ frustrations with modern advertising.
The fast food restaurant demonstrated to their customers that they understand these frustrations, marking themselves as different from other fast food companies. In addition to serving as a positive advertisement for Burger King, it reinforced ideas that other companies’ advertisements were out of touch and lacked interest among their customers. The app was downloaded more than a million times and became the most downloaded app on the App Store.
Case study: Dove
The digital marketing campaign by Dove called Real Beauty Sketches consisted of an artist drawing two pictures of a woman: one based on her perception and the other when described by a stranger. In the pictures, the woman appeared more beautiful and her likeness was more accurate in the image defined by someone else compared to her own self-image. The campaign’s purpose was to tell women they are more beautiful than they may think.
The aim was to connect with women emotionally. The most successful digital marketing campaigns are often emotive and memorable and tackle a challenge the target audience faces. Like the Burger King advertisement, Dove acknowledged real-world problems their audience faces.
The campaign also subverts and opposes the advertising approaches used by their competitors in the industry. The beauty industry has historically used and created insecurities in women to sell them products. Flipping this on its head and instead suggesting that they care about their customers’ self-image was likely refreshing to many women who are used to comparing themselves to impossible beauty standards.
The video went viral and was viewed more than 114 million times in more than 110 countries in a month, making it the third most successful shared advertisement of all time. The video was shared 3.74 million times, making it the third most shared video ever.
Case study: BetterHelp
BetterHelp is an online platform that offers online counseling and therapy services. In 2021, they ran a digital marketing campaign across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok exploring the importance of mental health in men.
It begins with a man sitting on a couch and a voice off-camera asking, “What do you want?” The man tells his innermost feelings in an emotional monologue. The camera shifts to his friend, who simply wants to know what he wants to eat. The advertisement ends with the question, “Need someone to talk to?” followed by the BetterHelp logo.
BetterHelp recognized the need for mental health services for men and used a viral video to reach 50% of the population effectively. Descriptive analytics were used to research the demographic, and predictive analytics allowed the recognition of forecast trends to build a relevant campaign.
Facets of digital marketing
Digital marketing consists of promoting products, services or brands using electronic media. The most common forms of digital marketing include search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising (PPC), social media, email and content marketing. Marketing like this helps reach a larger audience than traditional methods and targets those who are most likely to buy the product or service. It is often less costly than traditional advertising and facilitates the measurement of success.
This type of marketing allows for the identification and targeting of a particular audience. For example, social media targeting can be used to show advertisements to a specific audience based on variables such as age, gender, location, behaviors, or interests. PPC and SEO strategies can help serve advertisements to users who are interested in or have searched with keywords related to your product or service. Research helps identify potential buyers and refine the strategy to ensure those who are most likely to buy are reached.
One major strength of digital marketing is its measurability. Data is generated that shows all the metrics, including shares, views, clicks, and time on the page. The ROI (return on investment) can be easily calculated. Being able to measure the effectiveness of each action helps in developing better strategies. Continually refining the methods that are used can improve the conversion rate.
Digital analytics software can indicate how many people have viewed a website’s homepage, how many pages they visited, what device they used and their location. This information can help prioritize which marketing channels to use based on how many people they drive to the website. It is possible to identify trends and patterns in people’s behavior before they decide to buy, which can help determine how to attract them to websites.
An effective digital marketing strategy can allow all sales to be traced back to a customer’s first contact with a business. This is attribution modeling, and it identifies trends in how people research and buy products and services, helping make informed decisions on marketing strategy.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
This is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page. It involves changing the website’s content and structure to help it attract search engines. This can include using keywords and phrases that are relevant to what people are searching for, ensuring the website is easy to navigate, and having high-quality, relevant content. SEO aims to increase the quantity of traffic to a website by improving its ranking in search engine results pages. Doing so will increase the chances that the website will be found by people who are searching for relevant products or services.
Pay-per-click (PPC)
This is an online advertising model in which the advertiser pays money whenever one of their advertisements is clicked on by a user. This can be a useful way of driving targeted traffic to your site, increasing brand awareness, and generating leads or sales.
The most popular form of PPC advertising is Google Ads, where ads are displayed on Google’s search results pages and other websites that are part of the Google Display Network. Other PPC platforms include Bing Ads, Yahoo Ads, and Facebook Ads.
In PPC campaigns, advertisers bid on keywords they believe their target audience will use to search for their products or services. When a user types in one of those keywords, the advertisement may appear at the top of the search results page. The advertiser is then charged each time there is a user click.
Social media marketing
This type of marketing promotes a product, service or brand on social media platforms. It involves sharing content, such as images, text and videos, on social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn to increase brand awareness, generate leads and drive sales.
Some of the key tactics used in social media marketing include creating a social media strategy, setting up and optimizing a business profile on various social media platforms, creating engaging content, running social media advertisements, and analyzing data to measure the success of a campaign. By building a community and creating valuable content, brands can increase customer loyalty, trust and advocacy.
Content marketing
Content marketing aims to develop a brand and educate and inform customers about products or services. It involves creating relevant content to attract and engage a specific target audience. Content marketing can take many forms, including blog posts, videos and social media posts. For content marketing to be successful, the specific needs and interests of the target audience must be understood, and then content should be created that aims to address those needs and interests.
Email marketing
This form of direct marketing uses email to communicate commercial messages to an audience. It promotes products or services, builds customer relationships, and drives website traffic through electronic mail. Email marketing aims to send targeted messages to a specific group of people to encourage them to take a desired action, such as making a purchase or visiting a website.
Email marketing can take many forms, including newsletters, promotional emails and automated email campaigns. It can help brands reach a large audience quickly and cost-effectively and allows for personalization and automation. The success of an email marketing campaign can be assessed through metrics such as its open rate, click-through rate and conversion rate.
Mobile marketing
This involves promoting products or services using mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. It is a form of digital marketing that is designed to reach customers where they are, which is increasingly on mobile devices. Mobile marketing can take many forms, including SMS (Short Message Service), text messaging and mobile apps.
The key to successful mobile marketing is creating a seamless customer experience. This can be achieved using tactics such as creating mobile-friendly websites, developing mobile apps, sending targeted SMS messages and using location-based marketing. These marketing campaigns can be tracked, analyzed, and optimized using various mobile analytics tools.
Marketing analytics
This is the practice of measuring, managing and analyzing data from marketing campaigns to improve performance and optimize the return on investment. It involves using data and statistical techniques to understand and interpret marketing performance, customer behavior and market trends to make decisions. It can also include using customer data from various sources, such as social media and websites, to better understand customer behavior, preferences, and interests.
Marketing analytics can be used to track website traffic and conversion rates. It can also measure the effectiveness of various marketing channels, such as SEO, PPC advertising, social media and email marketing. There are various tools and techniques used in marketing analytics, including data visualization, statistical analysis, data mining and machine learning.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliates are typically website owners or publishers with a large audience who want to monetize their traffic. They will promote a company’s products or services by placing banners, links or other forms of advertising on their website. The affiliate earns a commission when a visitor clicks on one of these links and makes a purchase.
Affiliate marketing can be a cost-effective way for businesses to reach more people and increase sales while providing a way for affiliates to earn money by promoting their products. Companies can track their affiliate program’s effectiveness through tracking links and analytics tools, which can help identify which affiliates drive the most sales and optimize their commission structure.
Conclusion
Advances in technology continue, and businesses need to make the most of them to survive in a competitive market. Digital marketing has become essential for businesses to advertise their products and services and reach their target audience. This type of marketing has many advantages over the traditional approach, such as using data analysis to continuously improve strategy.
