Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing is a technique for marketing product or services through digital devices which transform the information in digital format such as computers, mobile, tablets, PDAs, Digital Billboard etc.
Digital Marketing channels
· Social Media Marketing
· Email Marketing
· Affiliate Marketing
· Online Video Marketing
· Slideshare
· Webinars or online events
· PR Release
· Pay Per Click
· SEO
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing is a marketing tactic for promoting products or services over the social media channels. Social media channels include:
1. Facebook
2. Instagram
3. Threads
4. LinkedIn
5. Twitter
6. Google+
Facebook is most widely used social media channel. A personal Facebook profile should not be used for promotion. A Facebook fan page needs to be created for carrying out business activities. A Company’s Facebook fan page helps in:
Ø Brand awareness and engagement
Ø Generation of leads or customer acquisition
Ø Sharing engaging content, relevant links, and blog posts
Ø Promoting upcoming events
Ø Engagment with influencers
Facebook Ads
Facebook ads enable us to reach our targeted audience. We can place a bid on the basis of our budget or the money we want to pay per click or pay per thousand people who will see our ads. Facebook ads can be linked to the website for their action, or to our Facebook page for getting “Likes”. Facebook ads can be targeted based on demographic criteria such as location, profession, industry, age, income etc.
We can create LinkedIn page for lead generation. The page tells the visitors who we are, what the company does, and why one should choose us. The page should be optimized with the keywords that visitors use to search on LinkedIn. General tabs to be included in company page are “Products”, “Careers”, and “Insights”. Optimize the “Products” tab to make it searchable by the users. Through LinkedIn:
Ø Add videos , customer testimonials and other media to the product pages for engaging the visitors.
Ø Sponsored posts and ads which enable to put paid promotions behind status updates. These updates are visible to followers and targeted customers outside our LinkedIn network.
Ø Create and join groups relevant to our business
Ø Monitoring and participating in Q&A
Ø Encouraging employee participation
Ø Promote forthcoming events
LinkedIn Ads
The information found on LinkedIn profile of the customer is helpful for businesses. This information includes the data we require from customers such as designation, job profile, company, industry, location etc. The company can customize ads that can be textual ads, images, or video ads for the customers. Adding an image can bring more visitors to our LinkedIn page.
Though twitter, company can generate leads and thought leaders discuss the topic relevant to the industry. Through twitter:
Ø Utilize pinned tweets and promoted tweets
Ø Set up Twitter Lead Generation cards
Ø Listen and respond to the conversations relevant to the IT industry (especially Cloud, Digital and Operations)
Ø Build reputation
Ø Segment influencers and create lists
Ø Brand awareness and engagement
Twitter helps the company to know the customers based on :
Ø Keywords in timeline
Ø Interests
Ø Geography
Ø Similarity to existing followers
Ø Gender
Ø Device
GOOGLE+
Google+ has an important role in SEO. Google+ facilitates in:
Ø Optimization for SEO and setting up Google rel=author tag
Ø Creating and promoting upcoming events
Ø Carrying out Google+ hangouts
About Us Page
The “About Us” page on Google+ enable us to give visitors a brief overview of your business. From this page, we can link to particular pages and services, directing prospective customers to key pages for our website.
Google+ Hangouts
Google+ Hangouts are also helpful in sharing and brand awareness. We can invite our customer and potential client base to attend hangout events. The hangout events to be promoted widely on social media.
Blog
Blogging allow us to share the information and content with the visitors. Blog can be about our recent events, contests and social media efforts.
Company’s blog facilitates in
• Increasing the brand awareness
• Generation of leads through blog subscription
• Comments and engagement from the visitors
What can be done?:
• Encourage employees to contribute in blog
• Social sharing icons to be added
• Tweet This button to be added
• Promote blog through social media channels
Website
We will lose visitors if the website is busy or takes much time to load. The website should be characterized by the following:
Ø Easy to read: Font must be easy to read without any distraction.
Ø Avoid bulky section: Visitors generally skip the long, bulky paragraphs. Break the content into smaller paragraphs.
Ø Menu items should be clear: Menu items should clearly indicate that to what kind of content it will navigate the visitors.
Ø Easy to contact our business : If visitors want to contact our business, there should be easy accessibility to the contact us page along with sufficient contact information.
Ø Finding owners and employees of the company: Visitors may be interested in knowing who are the persons behind the business. The information about the Founders, Directors and CXO officials can be included in the website.
Ø Customer personally feels connected: Through story-telling, we can make customers to feel connected with the website. Connection can be created by being honest, conversational writing style and including the customer testimonials.
Ø Written content is corporate or conversational: Write content in engaging, conversational style.
Ø Appealing offers: We can offer real tips, special deals, discounts and actionable advice by convincing them to provide their information .
Ø Presence of multimedia: Multimedia added to the website make visitors to engage with website for longer time. Podcasts , tutorials, videos, as well as other multimedia choices enable us to send our message in more appealing way.
Ø Links to social media: Social media enable us to communicate with our prospective clients, and also enabling them to communicate with each other. We can include link of company’s website to company’s blog, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts.
E-mail Marketing
E-mail marketing involves sending an e-mail for communicating the promotional message to the target and prospective customers. Through E-mails we can:
Ø Send people valuable offers likes educational content, discounts, or downloads which make people to share our emails with others.
Ø Give sharing tool. Add “Forward to a Friend” link or social media sharing buttons within each email so people are encouraged to share with others.
Ø Send messages to an existing or prospective customer that include ads, request business, and solicit sales or donations, and are meant for building trust, loyalty, or brand awareness
Affiliate Marketing
In affiliate marketing, we can have those people as affiliates, who own website that are relevant to our products and are frequently visited by our target customer base. For every conversion, the affiliate can be rewarded. The affiliate’s website can have banners or links for generating leads
Online Video marketing
Videos can be created describing our IT services and solutions . And those videos can be incorporated in our websites and other video sharing channels like youtube, vimeo etc. Video marketing helps in:
Ø Showcase company culture
Ø Brand awareness and engagement
Ø Viral sharing
Ø Post product videos and demos
What can be done?
Ø Choose a production agency
Ø Identify distribution channels
Ø Get partners, influencers and clients involved in creating video
Online Press Release
The company can make press release about the business, increasing its service portfolio, expanding client and location base. We can use progressive wire services such as PR Web, PR Newswire, Buinesswire and market wire to list the company’s news into popular news search engines like Yahoo news, Google news. The press release will help in driving more traffic to the company’s website.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization refers to the technique that makes the webpage appears higher in search results. It includes Blog writing , blog commenting, link building by submitting URLs into web directories and search engines , forum commenting, incorporating keywords in page URLs, headlines, sub headlines, title and meta tags.