What Is Digital Marketing And Why It Is Growing?

Have you heard the name of companies like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Ask, AOL, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Yahoo, Bing or Baidu? Some of you might be using them regularly.

These are world-famous companies whose websites/homepage we use to search, buy or entertain ourselves on the internet. These companies are known as “expert companies” in the field of digital world. They are working in the field of Technology, Cyberspace, IT, Digital Marketing etc.

As per reports, the Digital Marketing Industry is worth $300–310 billion in 2019. Furthermore, it is expected to grow up to $380 billion. And due to coronavirus and lockdown, whereas all industries are facing a financial crisis, the online education and online entertainment industries are booming like anything. Now everyone wants to be part of Digital Marketing.

So, let’s understand what is Digital Marketing, what it all includes and some of its core benefits.

Those of you who are reading my article might be active on YouTube or Facebook, or Instagram. Then hey you’re part of Digital Marketing industry. And come on man don’t say you don’t know anything about Digital Marketing.

Well in simple words, Digital Marketing means promoting goods, services or ideas by using digital online platforms to achieve business goals. To do Digital Marketing we have to use the internet. So, when you use platforms like Facebook Advertising, YouTube Ad, Google Ad etc then you’re doing Digital Marketing.

For example, someone owns an eCommerce website and he wants to sale his t-shirts online. So, to achieve this if he uses social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram Advertising, then this is the example of doing Digital Marketing. Furthermore, since he made one eCommerce website he has been using the digital platform i.e website.

To understand Traditional Marketing just understand this sentence - anything which is not online and where the internet is not being used are the examples of Traditional Marketing. So, when you see and hear advertisements in televisions, radio, billboards, leaflets, bus sticker, standee, newspapers, word of mouth, direct selling etc are all example of old Traditional Marketing. Now, let’s understand some benefits of Digital Marketing.

There are so many benefits of Digital Marketing. Let’s understand one by one.
1. Highly Cost-Effective
Newspapers industry which is part of Traditional Marketing charges advertiser based on the number of circulation and readership they have. Higher the circulation and readership, the higher will be the cost of advertising. So, if you want to publish your advertisement on the front page of Times of India in Lucknow edition then cost is around Rs. 9 lakh = $11,800/-. This is the cost of just one advertisement in the newspaper.

Now, if you want to use Facebook and Instagram Advertising (Digital Marketing) to show your ads in front of people based in Lucknow, India, then the best part is you can decide the cost, duration and location as per your requirement. In fact, even if you have a budget of Rs. 15000/- or $ 198/- per month, still you can get far better results then newspaper ads. And you can save a huge amount of money.

2. Focus Audience
By the help of Digital Marketing, you can laser target your audience. During the paid advertising campaign you can select a particular country or state or region or even city. Not only that you can even target people as per their language, gender, occupation or interest etc. Whereas if you use Traditional Marketing platforms you cannot laser focus your audience like this.

3. Local And Global Reach
By using Digital Marketing alone we can reach all the people how are using internet in one go. As per data in India, there are 525 million people who are active online. And there are 4.57 billion people active worldwide. This is the power of the internet.

We cannot reach so large number of people by using Traditional Marketing and even if we can reach then the cost will be too high as we cannot decide the cost.

4. Better User Engagement
There are better chances of user engagement in case of Digital Marketing. Suppose you run one advertisement in the Facebook platform. When your target audience will see your ad they can do many things i.e like, share, text, comment, visit your website, purchase the product and call you. Such options are not available when you use traditional platforms unless you give some options to them.

If the target audience don’t like those advertisements then through comments advertisers can learn and make changes as and when required. Again that is not possible in traditional formats.

5. Real-Time Metrics
By using Digital Marketing techniques we can know everything which is going on after we launch our campaign or we do some work. We can track almost everything. Suppose you run a blog, then you can find out the following information about your blog visitors.
1. The exact number of people visiting your blog
2. Their locations including their states
3. Which device they are using
4. Current number of active users
5. Which pages they are visiting the most
6. Source name from where you’re getting visitors and much more

Now before we end our article let me share the name of a few topics which comes under Digital marketing. Some of them are:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Email Marketing
• Video Marketing
• Website Designing
• Content Marketing
• Social Media Marketing (SMM)
• Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
• Affiliate Marketing

Each topic contains many sub-topics within itself. For example, under SEO, there are topics are On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, Technical SEO, Local SEO etc. So, each topic of Digital Marketing contains the vast ocean in itself.

It is true that Digital Marketing is a recent trend in India. But many Westen and European countries are using it effectively for many years. So, it is the right time that we start learning this skill.

Even if you’re from a small town this skill can help you to earn money. Like any other skills learning Digital Marketing takes times and effort. There is no short cut. But I will highly recommend to learn. And because of all these reasons, it is growing and by sitting anywhere in this world you can do Digital Marketing.