What is digital marketing?
In a nutshell, digital marketing refers to spreading awareness about products and services using digital technologies via the internet through display advertising, phone apps, and other forms. The role of digital marketing is to promote brands – and their products and services – by helping them reach out to their target consumers online.
What are the types of digital marketing?
There are two main types of digital marketing – online marketing and offline marketing. Offline marketing includes radio, television, and even phone advertising.
Online digital marketing is classified as:
- Search engine optimization or SEO
- Search engine marketing or SEM
- Pay-per-click advertising or PPC
- Content marketing
- Social media marketing or SMM
- Affiliate marketing
- Email marketing
What is eCommerce
eCommerce is a vital part of digital marketing. While digital marketing is a broad term and basically helps market products and services using new-age innovations, eCommerce falls under digital marketing. It is a way of buying and selling products over the internet.
Does this sound absolutely impersonal? Here’s a more straightforward explanation: Let’s say you are too busy to go Christmas shopping for your family. You get on Amazon or eBay – both eCommerce sites – and complete your purchase in a couple of hurried minutes.
Or, another example – you have unexpected guests over for dinner, and your cupboard is bare – eCommerce comes to your rescue again. You get onto Zomato and order a load of appetizers, dinner, and even dessert – all in a matter of minutes.
ECommerce is a type of business where buying and selling depend entirely on the internet. Here is where digital marketing comes in. Digital marketing is the only medium that can help an eCommerce business grow.
Today, with a myriad of eCommerce sites vying for business from the same pool of consumers, an eCommerce’s individual prosperity and success will depend on how well it markets its goods and attracts customers.
We have established that digital marketing is important to eCommerce. But how exactly is digital marketing helping eCommerce firms proliferate?
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1. Search engine optimization
Digital marketing is a blessing when you want your eCommerce business to show up on the first page of a search engine (in other words, you want your eCommerce website to be optimized for search engines).
Through unique content (created by digital marketers) that’s rich, reliable, and informative, as well as a website that provides an excellent user experience, you can ensure that your website is visible to your audience at all times.
Better quantity and quality of traffic are driven to your eCommerce business website through organic search results.
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2. Search engine marketing and pay-per-click advertising
Search engine marketing is all about gaining traffic by purchasing ads on search engines. Google AdWords is the most popular paid search platform there is today. Bing Ads is another well-known paid solution.
Any pay-per-click campaign created by your digital marketing team has three vital components – the advertisement, the offer, and the landing page. Each of these components is synchronized to work together.
A basic understanding of how the three work together is: The advertisement makes an offer that leads to the landing page, which delivers the promise of the offer. This is a fantastic way of obtaining good leads to an eCommerce website.
Both SEM and PPC advertising are carried out by search engines, which charge advertisers a predetermined fee whenever their ad is clicked. Search engines indeed profit from this, but site owners benefit as well since they can target promising leads.
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3. Email marketing
Emails play a vital role in providing customers with a superb shopping experience. Confirmation emails that are delivered when a customer buys a product assure the buyer that your company has received their order. Personalized emails help you connect with customers and build lasting relationships with them.
Emails can also be used to let your customers know about new offerings they can look forward to, information regarding discounts or offers, and even the amount of progress your company is making.
You can track email campaigns and get information on a particular customer, as well as information regarding the phase of the buying journey they’re in.
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4. Social media marketing
When you post information about your eCommerce business on social media sites, you are reaching out to a wide and varied pool of consumers. Brands use digital marketing to post about their business on social media – it becomes an easy and effective way for brands to reach out to their customers and potential clients. That’s because social media is an extremely strong and potent media to get noticed.
Social media can help an eCommerce site to reach out to industries, customers, and markets in a personal way. It can also be used to generate interaction and engagement, boost website traffic, and even develop a more extensive base of buyers.
Social media marketing is a great way for you to fulfill your objectives in terms of building brand loyalty, improving customer services, reaching out to potential customers, and even collecting feedback.
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5. Original content
Creating high-quality content that’s also original is a time-tested and guaranteed means to set up an eCommerce site for success. By promoting great content through digital marketing, you make a statement, get across a compelling idea, and leave a lasting impression on your user’s mind.
There is no doubt that the only way an eCommerce site can succeed today is through intuitive and elaborate digital marketing. Any eCommerce business that wishes to stay on top must ensure they build a reliable and worthy digital marketing team.
