Digital Marketing and its Techniques for Online Businesses

Digital Marketing and its Techniques for Online Businesses Dr. Mukul Burghate HOD, MBA Dept, DNC, RTMNU, Nagpur BE, MBA (PUMBA), SET (Commerce), FIE Abstract Digital marketing is how to present a business case for increasing your online activities, and the benefits of doing — Sell, Serve, Speak, Save and Sizzle. Website for a business is a need of an hour as the marketplace migrates into the electronic marketspace and the way through which we communicate and reach to the audience from it is digital marketing. Internet is continuing to grow swiftly and seamlessly across borders and into an online world already inhabited by over three billion customers. Giving its scale and the benefits it offers to these customers and businesses, which is a big benefit for the future of all businesses. It also gives excellent opportunities to enter and grow a business. This study shows how digital marketing is widely used in marketing space which is more targeted, interactive and measurable. It emphasizes Internet marketing techniques, such as search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), and link building. Not just limited to intenet it has swollen to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such as short messaging service (SMS), multimedia messaging service (MMS), call-back and on-hold mobile ring tones, e–books, optical disks and games. The study explores the different types of digital marketing techniques such as SEO, SEM, SMM, PPC, Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing, Content Marketing. It also gives digital marketing tips for businesses. Keywords: Digital Marketing, SEO, SEM, SMM, PPC, Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing, Content Marketing 1. Introduction Marketing has been around forever and has always been for generating demand and awareness. The traditional ways of marketing has been newspaper ads, flyers, magazines, posters & banners, events, door to door marketing, word of mouth, radio ads, television ads etc. In this day and age with the explosion of digital, there are lot more ways highly effective and cheaper to reach the masses. Digital Marketing, in simple terms, is the promotion of your products, services or your brand via one or more forms of digital or electronic media. There is a proliferation of digital media and day by day we see intuitive ways of marketing Some of these include channels like email which is still extremely popular, web, search marketing, mobile, social media and so on. What is digital marketing? Digital marketing or Virtual marketing, refers to the promotion of goods and services over internet which happens to spread across everywhere these days. The digital world acts as a medium to communicate what business has to offer to its potential clients / customers. Digital marketing in simple terms can be defined as “advertising using power of internet”. It is also essential to be understood that Digital marketing is neither secondary over traditional marketing; nor its a complimentary service that can be used to increase marketing efforts on other mediums. However, Digital marketing is a way to promote a business over internet and make it known to targeted & intended audience on defined scale. The digital marketing takes advantage of the digital medium to create a unified, focused and measurable communications methodology which can help companies in getting their right audience. Using an integrated approach to digital marketing provides a better response rate and building iterative relationships. Digital strategy and campaigns can push forward brands in the consciousness of their audience and lead to a lasting adoption and loyalty towards brands. Moreover, digital medium allows the model to change from being a monologue to a dialogue for audience. Digital marketing is done with the use of electronic devices such as tablets, PCs, mobile phones and games consoles to communicate with the customer. Communication methods the Internet, apps, emails and social networks. There are two types of digital marketing: a) Pull digital marketing The individual seeks the marketing effort, tor example through web searches or streaming media. The main focus is to pull viewers in and turn them into customers. b) Push digital marketing The individual is sent the marketing message directly, for example by seeing an online advert on another website or being sent an email text message without requesting it. The main focus is to advertise the organisatioin to as many people as possible and turn a reasonable percentage of recipients into customers. However, consumer perception is the most important factor for all business entities since it helps in developing their brand awareness and perception. Thus, both for online and offline marketing it is essential for management to understand consumer perception more effectively and efficiently. Hence the last stage of the inbound marketing cycle often gets the least attention. Delighting existing customers and boosting their loyalty to turn them into brand evangelists is almost an afterthought in customer relationship management. Most of the marketing's attention often goes to attracting prospects and converting and nurturing qualified sales leads. Thus before purchasing or experiencing products and services, customers have a tendency to develop certain perception. Perception usually changes from customer to customer, product and service quality as well. Hence, from business or marketing point of view, it is essential for them to track down the customer behavior pattern and their perception and therefore need to address with the same effectively and efficiently. Social media sites Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other help to target larger community and thus it becomes easy to interact with the audiences more effectively. Amalgamating all the digital marketing activities and developing customer perception helps the organization to develop the consumer awareness. Also, it helps in redefining brand awareness and brand image. Today, Website creation is easier than ever. And if you go online, it seems as if almost everyone has: more than a billion websites occupy the internet today. But how many of those billion-plus websites actually make money directly? A small minority. For instance, Forbes reports that there are only 102,728 e-commerce retailers in the U.S. generating sales of $12,000 a year or more each—a tiny fraction of the total online retail sites. As for non ecommerce websites, an astounding number of these marketers don't even know how much or whether their site is contributing to the bottom line. A main reason why lots of sites just sit there on a server rather than making money is that most businesses have not figured out how to monetize the web, meaning use their site to make more sales. Having even a small slice of the online-sales pie can make you rich beyond the dreams of avarice. According to eMarketer Daily (12.6.2017), 3.47 billion people use the internet regularly. What's more, CBRE Retail says that total e-cornmerce sales in 2017 exceeded $453 billion. up 14.4 percent over the previous year. The revenues created by websites of conventional brickand- mortar businesses—which specially use the web mainly for branding, conveying product information, and lead generation—are more difficult to measure. The first step in making more money from your websites is not to just have a bunch of pages with content but to build your websites using one of several online business models proven to generate web revenue. Moreover, being the first step, picking the right e-commerce business model is the most important step in making more money from your websites for two reasons: first, without the right model, you may get plenty of traffic, clicks, impressions, page views, downloads, and even opt-ins. But you won't make lots of money if any at all. Second, once you build a site and program it, changing to a different model is extremely difficult, costly, and time-consuming. So if you can, choose the right model first, and then build the site. Definitely for your existing sites, you will have to retool them to follow a proven business model. 2. Techniques Used for Digital Marketing The two major pillars of digital marketing are online marketing and offline marketing. Online marketing has seven big categories of online marketing are Search engine optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM), Payper- click advertising (PPC), Affiliate marketing, Email marketing, and Content marketing. 2.1 SEM (Search Engine Marketing) SEM is has two extremely different elements Search engine optimization (SEO), firmly it is about upgrading your natural search engine rankings through tweaking your site. Pay-per-click (PPC) programs on opposite side are based on the ability to pay for placement. Even Google has divided the two on its search results, with natural search results appearing on the left side, and paid search results appearing on the right. But, there is a lot of confusion around paid inclusion and when it should be used. Very often, paid inclusion is confused with paid placement. There are very different strategies. When you hear about paid inclusion, you may well hear it called Pay for Inclusion (PFI) or Pay per Inclusion (PPI). Those two terms have differences in meaning. Pay for Inclusion is a strategy whereby you pay a fee simply to be included in a search index. This fee doesn’t guarantee your rank in the index it’s a simple flat fee that’s usually paid annually. Pay per Inclusion is also a strategy in which you pay a fee to be included in a search index, but the fee that you pay in PPI is based on the number of clicks you receive as a result of that inclusion such as PH, PPI still guarantee your rank in the search engine. Your only guarantee is that you will be included and that per-click fee can often be comparatively more, in the range of $30 per click. The service that guarantees your rank in a search index is paid placement, which is also known Pay for Placement (PFP).When you pay for placement, you are guaranteed that your site will not only be listed, but that it will place in a specific rank consistently as long as you’re willing to pay the fee for that rank. There are some other “pay-for- strategies that you might consider. Paid directory review (PDP services will guarantee that a review for a directory will take place in a guaranteed length of time (usually much faster than it would otherwise), but again, this is no guarantee of inclusion or placement. XML inclusion is is a strategy to ensure that the dynamic content on your site is included in search results. Because some sites have constantly changing content, XML inclusion may be a requirement for them. The different types of inclusion and what your payments will buy you can be confusing. . 2.1.1 SEO (Search-engine optimization) Search-engine optimization (SEO), is the process of setting up your web site so that it ranks well for particular keywords within the organic search results of major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Unlike paid search marketing, which requires you to pay for every click sent to your web site from a search engine, traffic sent to your site from a search engine’s organic results is free. In the early days of SEO, the process of gaining top ranking for keywords was much easier than it is today. In those “good old days,” search-engine algorithms were easy to crack. All you had to do was include the keyword you wanted to rank for in the title tag of your web page and sprinkle that keyword throughout the content of your page, and chances were you would rank within the top ten results of your favorite search engine. Not surprisingly, over the years search-engine algorithms have become increasingly complex, which has resulted in web site owners either outsourcing SEO to professional firms. Google and Yahoo became popular from long before, search engines such as AltaVista and InfoSeek were pioneers at providing search results to users within a fraction or a second. Search results in the early days were nowhere near as relevant as they are today. However, search-engine users in the millions began relying on Web Sites like AltaVista more and more frequently to retrieve information about everything from health abnormalities to pricing on the latest gadget. Search-engine optimization found its Start in 1997 through public reports and commentary provided by search-engine experts, including Danny Sullivan and Bruce Clay, among others. Early reports about SEO looked at search-engine algorithms and how the various search engines ranked search results. Inspired entrepreneurs and Web site owners began studying these reports and testing strategies for how they could rank well within the search results. Before long the profession of search-engine optimization emerged and individuals were offering services to help rank Web sites on major search engines. As the World Wide Web grew at a remarkable pace the popularity of AltaVista and Infoseek started to wane. Other search engines came and went, but no company has had more of an impact on search-engine marketing than Google. 2.1.2 PPC (Pay-per-Click) Pay-per-Click (PPC) is part of every web business’s life. It is linked with the way that online marketing is progressing, and over the past decade it has replaced in revenue the banner advertising that had taken the Internet by storm during the 90ies. PRC is part of everybody’s life. We advertise with PPC, we buy with PPC, we learn with PPC. Marketing in the 21st century is a hard science. Marketers today have the opportunity to use high level mathematics, statistics, various methods of data analysis and sociology to understand their data, extrapolate for the near future and plan for the near and remote future either by reversing a trend or by adding to it. Unfortunately, very few marketers and business owners follow all the possibilities that PPC offers. It is quite common to see online businesses that collect gigabytes of data every day that just represent to them the number of visitors that their website gets and nothing more. Log files 'encrypt' an enormous amount of information that is, unfortunately, in most cases left 'hiding' in the noise. Pay-per-click advertising is remarkable in the fact that it allows for the easiest possible tracking of Is results in ways that even a rather novice marketer can follow, so that she can understand the progress of her current PPC campaigns, correct the ones that seem to be going badly and improve the ones that are already giving excellent results. And this is just a matter of following methodically a certain number of steps. 2.2 SMM (Social Media Marketing) What Is Social Media Marketing? Social media is best defined in the context of the previous industrial media paradigm. Traditional media, such as television, news-papers, radio, and are one-way, static broadcast technologies. For instance, the magazinepublisher is a large organization that distributes expensive content to consumers, while advertisers pay for the privilege of inserting their ads into that content or you’re sitting down, watching your favorite sitcom, and suddenly you’re interrupted by commercials (luckily, you have a DVR, so you can fast-forward through them). If you disagree with something you reading the newspaper, you can't send the editorial staff instant feedback. Latest web technologies have made it simple for everyone to create and, most importantly distribute their own content. A blog post, tweet, or YouTube video can be produced and viewed by millions virtually for free. Advertisers don’t have to pay publishers or distributors huge sums of money to embed their messages; now they can make their own interesting content that viewers will flock to. Social media comes in many forms such as blogs, microblogs (Twitter), social networks (Facebook, Linked n), media-sharing sites (YouTube, Flickr), social bookmarking and voting Sites (Digg, Reddit), review sites (Yelp), forums, and virtua worlds (Second Life). 2.3 Affiliate Marketing Affiliate marketing is use to increase sales, generate revenue, and use the power of the Internet to increase your customer base exponentially. When you think about affiliate marketing, there are two main ideas you need to understand. Your perspective on these ideas will drive how you deploy affiliate marketing for your Web site or business. Affiliate marketing is simply defined as: A Webbased marketing practice, often using automated systems or specialized software in which a business rewards their affiliate for each visitor, customer, or sale which is broughtabout as a result of the affiliates marketing efforts. In most cases, the reward is monetary in the form of a monthly commission check. Most well-designed affiliate programs are easy to implement, require little or no setup, are free, and can instantly generate a new source of revenue for you. Essentially, you have two affiliate marketing options. Host an affiliate program on your Web site so others can 1. join your affiliate network and sell your products on their Web sites. They will earn a commission for each sale, and you will sell more products through them. This is the ultimate solution for those who have products to sell — imagine your products advertised for free on thousands of Web sites across the world. 2.Join an affiliate network and sell other products on your Web site for which you will earn a commission on each sale. You do nothing and pay nothing. The setup is simple — all you do is keep the content updated with what you want to advertise on your Web site, and cash the monthly commission check. 2.4 Email Marketing It is generally one message sent to one person, or one message sent to small group of people. E-mail marketing, when designed and implemented correctly, can be one of your most effective advertising, marketing, and sales tools as shown in the image 4. It can also be one of your most cost-efficient means of disseminating large amounts of information, promotional materials, advertisements, special offers, coupons, new product announcements, and relevantnews to a large audience for ow costs when compared to traditional print media advertising and marketing campaigns. Nowadays, everyone has e-mail, and most access e-mail daily at both work and home. E-mail marketing allows you to distribute information instantly and globally, While providing detailed tracking and reporting not possible with other forms of advertising and marketing. e-mail marketing can help you to achieve the goal and increase your global Web site visibility in search engines. As you know, having high search engine rankings is a combination of many factors, starting with overall Web site design and crowning with an effective Web site marketing strategy. This strategy increases your potential for high2.5 Content Marketing the marketing and business process for creating and distributing valuable and compelling content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable customer action is Content marketing. Content marketing strategy can leverage all story channels (print, online, in-person, mobile, social, and so on); be employed at any and all stages of the buying process, from attentionoriented strategies to retention and loyalty strategies; and include multiple buying groups. Content marketing aids in brand recognition, trust, authority, credibility, loyalty, and authenticity. Content marketing can help accomplish these tasks for a variety of constituencies, and on several levels: for the organization it represents, for a company’s products and services, and for the employees who represent the business or service. Content marketing creates value and helps people. It answers questions and provides foundational information. It makes customers and clients more educated and informed, so that they feel they can make purchase decisions, or, in organizations, to recommend purchases to colleagues or superiors. It's used by marketers large and small and by those selling business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C). Some are using content to augment traditional advertising campaigns. Others are leveraging content to completely replace more traditional forms of advertising and marketing. Content can spark customer engagement at all stages of the buying cycle, including helping to establish an ongoing relationship when a prospect becomes a customer. Content can reinforce an existing relationship, inspire upselling, cross-selling, renewals, upgrades, and referrals. ROI= (Gain from investment — cost of investment) / Cost of investment Here You calculate return on investment by subtracting the amount of money spent on a project from the amount of money made on a project, then dividing that number by the amount of money spent on the project. If the result is a percentage more than 100 percent, you have positive ROI. 3. Findings and Conclusions Digital Marketing is the most cost-effective tool of marketing. It lets us to market the desire product or service to desired customers at desire location at desired amount. It helps us in sustainability by saving the paper and other resources, speed up the marketing trend and can reach to the individuals at remote locations. By getting involved with social networking and managing it carefully, you can build customer trust and create a reputation for being easy to engage with, also by giving exclusive offers to your customers, you are rewarding and reminding them that you’re not only the brand to engage with but also to buy from. By taking advantages of such strategies can help you to make your marketing more effective. Also, you can attract new customers and build healthy relationship by using content marketing. We can say the digital marketing is on the whole positive development for businesses and that despite certain dangers its impact upon business has been largely positive. 4. References [1] The Future of Artificial Intelligence in Digital Marketing: The next big technological break By Maria Johnsen [2] Digital Marketing By Sudhir Sreedharan [3] Digital Marketing For Dummies By Ryan Deiss, Russ Henneberry [4] Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation By Damian Rya [5] Digital Marketing Excellence: Planning, Optimizing and Integrating Online Marketing By Dave Chaffey, PR Smith [4] The Ultimate Guide to Search Engine Marketing: Pay Per Click Advertising Secrets Revealed By Bruce C. 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