Digital Marketing is saturated!
Is it so?
There was a day when Digital Marketing was in everyone’s mouth. I hope you remember the year 2020. The whole world was under the pandemic of Covid-19. Covid shut down the whole world. Many businesses went shut, and most of the business owners went broke.
This pandemic taught us how to prepare for the upcoming challenges or, I should say, how to adapt according to the changing situations.
During the mid of 2020, every small and medium business owner struggled to earn and make a living. Most Students lost their jobs. Students were also hunting for part-time job to make their living. All schools and colleges were shut down. And this was the moment a digital revolution came. Yes, it was the entry of Digital Marketing.
Everything went digital. There was no choice left with us. All the job holders were given work from home. Schools and Colleges started conducting their classes online. All the hotels started merging with the cloud kitchen Giants such as Zomato and Swiggy for the online delivery of their food items.
Those who didn’t believe in online shopping started ordering all their daily needs from E-commerce stores.
So! Are you still offline?
Are you waiting for the world to be back in the same situation?
Please open your eyes and see. Digital is the future. If I tell you about marketing, then Digital Marketing is the future. If all the items are available online, as a marketer you are bound to use digital platforms for marketing. And if marketing is done digitally, imagine the scope ahead- for students, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and anyone who sees the future in the realm of digital marketing.
And you are here reading this article shows that you are looking for some spicy stuff in Digital Marketing. I will try to deliver all my experiences and knowledge related to this field. If you are a beginner looking to build a career in digital marketing, this article will provide you with most of the fundamentals of digital marketing, which many starters ignore at the beginning of their career.
What is Digital Marketing?
Before getting into what digital marketing is, first, let us understand what marketing is.
Marketing can be defined as providing information about a product or service to a particular group of customers to generate sales. In the early 1950 and 1960, marketing was done using traditional techniques.
These techniques were: –
- Direct mail
- Telephone marketing
- Print Publications
- Billboards
- Televisions
- Radios
Slowly and Slowly, technology got advanced, and in 1991, for the first time, the Internet was made public. Even the common person can access the internet now. Here comes the word “Digital Marketing.”
From the name, you can understand that we call it digital marketing when we do marketing digitally or on different online platforms. It is basically doing marketing of products using all the online media and all the online tactics.
What are Digital Marketing Platforms?
Some of the online Platforms are: –
- Bing
- Yahoo
- Quora
In the 1950s, You used to pay newspapers, televisions, etc., to run your ad campaigns.
And you can run your Ad campaigns on Facebook, Google, Instagram, etc.
Some of the shortcomings of Traditional Marketing:
- Communication with your potential customers could not be personalized.
- No scope of Deep Marketing Automation.
- No chance of natural sales.
But using the online platforms of marketing, you can reach every corner of the world where humans exist. Because nowadays, almost everyone has a cell phone, and everyone has access to the internet. That’s the reason why marketing has become so easy today. You need the internet and a device such as a cell phone or a laptop/desktop.
Types of Digital Marketing
There are various ways in which you can take advantage of online marketing:
- Social Media Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Content Marketing
- PPC
- SEO
Let’s discuss all of these in a nutshell.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social Media Marketing is that type of Digital Marketing in which you use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc., to engage with your potential customers.
You can use Social Media Marketing to drive traffic to your business organically. Yes, it is mostly used for organic marketing.
Social Media Marketing is a very important type of marketing for your business.
Why Social Media Marketing?
Social Proof is one of the most important factors in selling. We, as human beings, are easily influenced by people around us and at the same time make our purchase decisions based on others.
Social Media gives the power to reach billions of people from your office or home.
Social Media Marketing plays a vital role in personal branding and as you know personal branding is very important to sustain your business in this highly competitive online world.
It also plays a critical role in paid advertising and content marketing.
How to do Social Media Marketing?
You can do SMM using various platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Quora, etc.
You can use platforms like Facebook to build your own community for engagement and nurturing your tribe.
You can use Instagram and Twitter for increasing your followers and as a result directly impact your personal branding.
You can use a video platform like YouTube to give immense value and boost the online presence on the internet. People are hooked more on videos rather than any other form of content.
The above are platforms that play a vital role in generating leads for your business.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a way of Digital Marketing in which you attract, engage, and retain your target audience by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and other media.
Why Content Marketing?
Advertising needs attention. Attention needs content, and without content, you can’t create ads. Advertising exists because brands don’t produce content.
Instead, they leverage publications that produce content. Today every brand has become a publisher. When you get attention to your brand with quality content and marketing, there is no need for advertising. You can advertise your content instead of a product.
You can use Facebook ads or Google ads for advertising your content.
Most people don’t click on ads nowadays, and content marketing comes into play here.
Media companies that advertise are dying. Ads alone are not enough to generate good revenue because people hate ads, and the internet gives people options to block ads. People want to consume content.
How to do Content Marketing?
You have to first set your goals and objectives, whether for your business or your personal brand.
Then you have to understand your audience, where they hang out on social media.
Then you can create content as per the demand of your audience and distribute the content across various social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Quora, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. There are various types of content: –
- Article
- Videos (long-form & short-form)
- Podcasts
- Infographics
- Slides
I highly recommend you create a content calendar for the whole year. Using this calendar you will maintain the consistency of your content publishing.
Affiliate Marketing:
It is nothing but promoting someone else’s product or service through your channel or platform. In exchange for promotion if anyone purchases from your channel then that company whose product or service you were promoting, will pay a commission.
Why Affiliate Marketing?
If you have an affiliate program for your business, you allow your affiliates to promote your products or services on your behalf. So you don’t have to spend a single dime on advertisements.
Since your affiliates are promoting your business, they will send their traffic to your website or sales page. And also there is less risk of loss because you only pay commission to your affiliates only when a conversion happens.
You can also become an affiliate with some big companies and earn some passive income as a commission.
How to do Affiliate Marketing?
Well, there are a lot of ways to do affiliate marketing.
If you have a good amount of traction across any social media platforms, you can apply as an affiliate for other big companies and start promoting their products or services.
You can start writing blogs around a certain product or service and start promoting that product or service on your site.
And if you don’t want to spend money on advertising then you can start affiliate programs for your business, where other affiliates will promote your services or products and bring you sales.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing is the most important and most underrated type of Digital Marketing. It is the most personalized type of marketing.
It is more of a relationship-building mechanism rather than an advertising mechanism.
Why Email Marketing?
There are basically four important types of emails send in email marketing: –
First, Sales Promotion emails: Here you send emails to your existing list of potential customers or paying customers to buy your products or services. They are a great way to drive sales, signups, and new product offerings for your small business. You can use this type of email to engage with your subscribers or potential customers by sending them exclusive offers, products, or services and cross-sell products to your customer base.
Second, Lead Nurturing Emails: Here you send a series of emails to your potential customer list or your existing customers. In these emails, you share immense value with them so that you can create a good relationship with your list of customers.
Third, Email Newsletters: It is one of the most common and popular email marketing campaigns. You can send email newsletters to stay on top of your recipient’s mind. You can educate customers and prospects about your business.
Fourth, Transactional Emails: These are the direct emails to take some action, such as buying any service or product or subscribing to any channel or platform. Your prospects receive these emails if they sign up for any of your programs. The advantage of this type of campaign is that you get a high CTR, but you have to be careful with your email sequences as it can sound salesy. To avoid this, you can first nurture them by giving immense value, and then you can send these direct transactional emails.
No one can restrict you from reaching your audience in this type of marketing.
How to do Email Marketing?
First of all select your target audience.
Create a way for your prospects to sign up for your lead magnet. You can use lead magnets such as e-books, newsletters, etc.
Choose an email campaign as mentioned above. Make a schedule for how often you want to send them emails and what type of emails. Make sure you share immense value first and if they see the value, then you can promote your service or product.
To create an email campaign, you can use email marketing tools like convertkit, active campaign, etc.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is a purely organic way of Digital Marketing. In technical terms, SEO is a process in which you rank your site on the first page of Google so that if anyone searches on Google for that particular product or service, your website displays on the first page.
Why is SEO Important?
SEO is a long-term game in any business. It is not like paid advertising where you have to spend a lot of money on advertising on a regular basis.
It takes a minimum of 3-4 months to see results in SEO and it is worth waiting. If you have a tight budget for your business you have no other way but to go with SEO.
Organic search is the primary source of any website traffic.
Any experienced SEO aims to establish a strong foundation for a website with a practical user experience that is easily discoverable in search. This creates trust and credibility.
SEO is the best way to understand your potential consumers using some factors like Search query data, SERP analysis, analytics data, and AI insights.
Once you attract a good amount of traffic to your website using SEO, you have to update your content regularly, and your business is good to go.
How to do SEO?
There are about SIX different ways of doing SEO.
Keyword Research: This is the most important part of SEO. In fact, 50% of SEO is keyword research.
On-Page SEO: You use this tactic on the contents of your website. It is all about relevancy.
Technical SEO: Here you make your website crawlable and indexable, therefore improving its speed and credibility to rank better.
Off-Page SEO: This is the type of SEO technique carried outside your WordPress website. Creating backlinks, link juices, anchor text, etc., all these tactics come under Off-Page SEO.
Local SEO: If you have a local business you can optimize your local store (online or offline) using local SEO.
YouTube SEO: You can optimize your YouTube videos for ranking using YouTube SEO.
For detailed knowledge in SEO, you can check out my article on SEO.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
PPC is a type of Digital Marketing in which marketers pay a fee to the advertising platform each time someone clicks on their ads. Here you try to buy clicks to your website rather than to earn those visits organically.
Why PPC is Important?
It is the fastest way to reach your target audience.
You can quickly validate your product or service using PPC. You have to run a campaign and check the analytics.
If you want to launch your product as soon as possible, PPC is the fastest way to do it. In PPC, you can measure results very quickly.
As a marketer, I will recommend both PPC and SEO for any business to start.
How To Do PPC Campaigns?
Set your goal first. You want to run lead generation, engagement, or brand awareness campaigns.
Then choose a platform for running Campaigns. Google Ads is the largest pay-per-click platform.
Choose the right kind of keywords.
Set your daily or monthly budget accordingly, and you are good to go. Next, you can track all the data, and as per the results, you can improve your campaigns.
Why is Digital Marketing Important?
Times have changed as Digital Marketing has taken a giant leap. Especially after covid, almost every business has moved to online space.
Around 4.6 billion people (according to Statista) out of the total population are on the internet, so it’s easy to market any product or service through Digital Marketing rather than traditional marketing.
Through Digital Marketing, you can target global customers very quickly, which is not possible through traditional marketing like TV, Newspapers, etc.
Digital Marketing is the ultimate medium to reach the maximum population in India.
With Digital Marketing, you can personalize the communication with your potential customers.
And also, Digital Marketing is more affordable than traditional marketing.
You can measure all the data and analytics of your business quite easily through Digital Marketing.
Who is Digital Marketing for?
- Students.
- Small and medium business owners.
- Entrepreneurs.
- For those jobholders who either want to quit their jobs for side hustling or want to start something on their own/any business.
- For those who want to provide freelancing services by being on their jobs.
What are Digital Marketing Skills?
This industry is a large ocean.
You can’t master all the skills at once. It will be best if you go one by one.
Some of the highly demanded skills are:
- Website Design (I have written a blog on how to learn website designing and how to monetize it. Feel free to check it here.)
- SEO
- Content Writing
- Content Marketing.
- Performance Marketing- Running ads on Facebook and Google
- Copywriting
- Affiliate Marketing
- Blogging
- Video Editing
- Graphic Designing
- Funnels Building
- Landing Pages
How Can I Learn Digital Marketing?
Well, this is a very overhyped topic.
There is no age barrier and no requirement of any degree to begin your career in Digital Marketing.
Some say you need to go and take admission to very well-known institutes for a year or two.
I was also in the same dilemma at my initial stage. I did a lot of research on all prominent digital marketing institutes—their fee structures, their criteria, curriculum, etc., everything. And trust me, they were costly. I will share my back story in another blog on how I landed in this industry. Anyhow, to cut a long story short,
At that time, I had no money to spend on these institutions. I had no other choice but to learn about digital marketing at a minimal cost. I started my research on YouTube and Google. Some training institutes delivered courses at an affordable price, and the duration was also short, around 6 to 7 months. But for this also, I have to move to those locations and take some PG to reside there.
Then, suddenly, while browsing on Facebook, I saw a webinar on Digital Marketing. And then my journey started.
There is one question that I find everyone asking on the social media platform–
Which is the Best Digital Marketing Course?
The best way you can learn any skill is by practically implementing it.
There are many online courses; some are free, while some will charge you money.
Some are affordable while some are premium.
The free courses which are available on YouTube are good, but they are not in a structured way.
After spending one entire year in this field, I recommend you go for an internship program.
Some internship programs give cashback (more than 50%) for completing all the assignments. And also, they provide certificates.
These internship programs are the most effective because you get cashback, stay motivated, and learn everything practically here.
If you are interested, you can check here.
There is another one; feel free to check this out.
How Can I Earn Through Digital Marketing?
There are four ways to monetize your Digital Marketing skills:
- Freelancing and Consulting.
- Start an Agency.
- Apply for a Job.
- Digital Mentoring.
It’s always best to start with freelancing because you will get a fair idea of which area to focus. Also, you can join a Digital Marketing Agency and work there to gain some experience. After working for one or two years, you can start consulting small businesses on marketing strategies.
Once you have mastery of a particular topic under Digital Marketing, you can start one-to-one or group coaching.
So, I recommend you to join an internship program to get your hands dirty on all aspects of Digital Marketing and then start freelancing or enter an MNC or an agency at your convenience.
For me, I decided to go for Website Design and SEO. Look, website design is a mandatory skill because, without a website, no business can exist for a long time in this online world. So, demand for website design will always be there.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Digital Marketing a Good Career?
Digital Marketing is the future of marketing. At least for the next six years, the digital marketing space will be booming. There are five ways in which you can build a career in Digital Marketing:
- Digital Freelancing
- Digital Mentoring
- Digital Marketing Jobs
- Affiliate Marketing
- Digital Marketing Agency
After spending at least two years in this space, you can also become a Digital Marketing Trainer.
After having experience of three years, you can also provide Consultancy Services.
How do I become a Digital Marketer?
You need to learn Digital Marketing skills to become a Digital Marketer.
It would be best to have a system (laptop) and an internet connection to learn Digital Marketing skills.
You can join any reputed Digital Marketing institute and start learning.
There is another way of learning Digital Marketing— You can enroll in different digital marketing online courses. Or you can enroll in any of the Internship programs out there. In the Internship Programs, you will also implement everything practically. Some internship programs also offer cashback after the completion of the program.
How can I start Digital Marketing?
These are the following steps I would recommend for you to start Digital Marketing: –
- Join an internship program of 3-4 months.
- Have a basic knowledge of all the skills under Digital Marketing.
- Master any one skill for about 3-4 months.
- Build your portfolio.
- If you want to apply for a job, join online forums.
- If you want to become a freelancer, start building your online presence on social media. And then begin approaching clients.
Where Can I Find Free Digital Marketing Courses?
How Do I Start A Digital Marketing Agency?
- First, you must learn all aspects of Digital Marketing through a free course or an Internship program.
- Then select a specific skill under Digital Marketing.
- Master that one skill.
- Provide freelancing services to clients with that one skill.
- Create your portfolio.
- Build a personal brand around a specific niche.
- Then partner with other freelancers or digital marketers who are experts in other areas of Digital Marketing.
- Then create your agency.
- Name your company and register it.
Conclusion:-
This article was just a beginner’s guide for all the freshers.
Make sure you don’t do mistakes as I did in my earlier stage.
There is a lot more.
Stop worrying; start learning and implementing as there is no age barrier and no requirement of any degree to begin your career in Digital Marketing.
Digital Marketing is the future.
It will be there forever because marketing will never die. People have to buy something or the other at least for survival.
For more informational articles like this, feel free to visit my page.
Any questions?
Feel free to put them in the comments below.