Global digital marketing

Definition

Digital marketing is a form of marketing for promoting and selling products or services
on the Internet. It’s the process of leveraging different online marketing channels like
search engines, social media networks, and email to reach your target audience.

Through Global digital marketing, you can find people interested in your offering,
interact with them, and build trust with your brand globally.

Global digital marketing has a number of types, the most important are website
marketing, search engine optimization, content marketing, PPC advertising, social media
marketing, email marketing, video marketing, and affiliate marketing.

How does it works?

The way digital marketing works is simple. First, you need to specify your digital
marketing goals i.e. what you want to achieve with digital marketing. Some common
examples are: to increase brand awareness, to make more sales, or to grow your
community.

Then you need to decide which marketing channels can help you achieve your goals. For
example, if your goal is to make more sales then running paid campaigns on Google and
Facebook is a good starting point.

To make the whole process easier to manage, you can create a plan specifying how
much money you’ll spend, define your target audience, define your performance
metrics, and other information that will help you control the process.

This is what a digital marketing campaign is all about. Don’t worry if it’s confusing now,
there is a more detailed example of how to create a successful digital marketing
campaign towards the end of this post.

Before creating your first digital marketing campaign, you need to know the different
marketing channels and how they work.

Channels

Digital marketing has a number of channels grouped into two major categories.

Online marketing channels and offline marketing channels.

The main difference between the two is that online marketing channels are based solely
on the Internet while offline marketing channels have to do with digital devices that are
not necessarily connected to the Internet.

Online Marketing Channels

 Website Marketing
 Search Engine Optimization
 Pay-Per-Click Advertising
 Content Marketing
 Email Marketing
 Social Media Marketing
 Affiliate Marketing
 Inbound Marketing
 Mobile Marketing
 Video Marketing

Website Marketing

A website is the focal point of all digital marketing campaigns. By itself is a very powerful
channel but it’s also the medium to execute most of the other online marketing
campaigns.

Your website should represent your brand, product, and services in the best possible
way. It should be fast, mobile-friendly, and easy to use.

Once you have a website your next step is to come up with a digital marketing strategy
to promote your website and content with the purpose of getting more traffic and
customers.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website for search engines.

The main goal of SEO is to help a website rank higher in search results and get organic
traffic from search engines.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC advertising gives you the ability to reach internet users on a number of networks
through paid ads.
You can set up PPC campaigns on Google, Bing, Linkedin, Twitter, Pinterest, or Facebook
and show your ads to people searching for terms related to your products or services.

PPC campaigns can segment users based on their demographic characteristics (age,
gender, etc) or even their particular interests or location.

Every time a user clicks on your ads, you pay a fee to the provider (and thus the
term pay per click).

The most popular PPC platforms are Google Ads and Facebook.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is all about the content. The digital world is a huge collection of
content in different forms like text, images, audio, and video.

The goal of a content marketing campaign is to reach potential customers through the
use of content.

Content is usually published on a website and then promoted through social media,
email marketing, SEO, or even PPC campaigns.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is the medium to get in touch with your potential customers or the
people interested in your brand and this entails that these people want to hear from you
and you are not hijacking their inbox.

In fact, many successful online businesses and marketers use all other digital marketing
channels to add leads to their email lists, and then through email marketing, they create
a number of funnels to turn those leads into customers.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing has to do with reaching people in the various social networks
either through content marketing campaigns (postings), paid ads, or both.

The primary goal of a social media marketing campaign is brand awareness and
establishing social trust but as you go deeper into social media marketing, you can use it
to get leads or even as a direct sales channel.
Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing that has grown considerably
with the rise of Internet usage.

Basically, with affiliate marketing, you promote other people’s products and you get a
commission every time you make a sale or introduce a lead.

Many well-known companies like Amazon have affiliate programs that pay out millions
of dollars per month to websites that sell their products. When designing your digital
marketing strategy, you should include affiliate marketing as a way to get people
involved in your brand and sell your products for a commission.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is another fancy term that refers to how you can use various digital
marketing channels to reach new customers mainly through the process of content
creation and how to ‘push’ them through a funnel until they convert.

Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing refers to the process of reaching customers in the different mobile
app stores such as Google Play, Apple app store, or Amazon marketplace.

These app stores have thousands of apps and millions of users per day. With mobile
marketing, you can promote your apps either through paid advertising or through other
methods (cross-app promotions, etc.), so that they can be seen and installed by more
users.

Video Marketing

Video marketing is something relatively new but recently it has become so popular that
you simply cannot ignore it.

YouTube has become the second most popular search engine and a lot of users are
turning to YouTube before they make a buying decision, to learn something, or just to
relax.

Offline marketing channels

 TV Marketing
  SMS Marketing
 Radio Marketing
 Billboard Marketing

TV Marketing

TV marketing is not dead, on the contrary, is a marketing channel that will experience a
boost in the coming years.

Currently, TV advertising is not 100% targeted. Marketers can only make assumptions
based on the statistics they have from a limited amount of people.

SMS Marketing

SMS marketing is still an option to get in touch with potential customers, although not
among the most powerful.

There are better alternatives these days like push messages on the web and mobile and
also on Facebook messenger.

Radio Marketing

Radio marketing is another tool you can utilize but not so effective as other methods.
The main issue with radio marketing is that you don’t know exactly the return on your
investment.

When you pay for a radio ad, you can only assume the number of people that heard the
ad, based on the number of listeners the particular radio station has.

Billboard Marketing

Billboard marketing is considered to be part of digital marketing. Electronic billboards

are available in a number of public places (think Times Square billboards or Super Bowl
commercials) and it’s another more traditional channel in your digital marketing arsenal.

B2B versus B2C digital marketing

Digital marketing works for B2B as well as B2C companies, but best practices differ
significantly between the 2.
  B2B clients tend to have longer decision-making processes, and thus longer sales
funnels. Relationship-building strategies work better for these clients, whereas B2C
customers tend to respond better to short-term offers and messages.
 B2B transactions are usually based on logic and evidence, which is what skilled B2B
digital marketers present. B2C content is more likely to be emotionally-based,
focusing on making the customer feel good about a purchase.
 B2B decisions tend to need more than 1 person's input. The marketing materials that
best drive these decisions tend to be shareable and downloadable. B2C customers,
on the other hand, favor one-on-one connections with a brand.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. A B2C company with a high-ticket product,
such as a car or computer, might offer more informative and serious content. Your strategy
always needs to be geared toward your own customer base, whether you're B2B or B2C.

Strategies

Although each and every digital marketing strategy is unique and based on the specific
needs and goals of a business, you can read below an example to help you understand
how all marketing channels can work towards a common goal.

Step 1: Website – The first step is to create a website that is fast and mobile-friendly.
The website should have several landing pages (or sales pages) to present the company
and its products.

Step 2: SEO – The next step is to perform an SEO Audit and identify which areas need to
be optimized for SEO. Technical SEO should be tackled first, then On-Page SEO, and last
Off-Page SEO.

Step 3: Content Marketing – Based on the results of thorough keyword research and
findings of the SEO Audit, you should create a content marketing plan that will include:

 What kind of content to create for the website (text and videos)
 When to publish it (publishing calendar)
 How to promote it (can include social media channels, email, and PPC
campaigns).

Step 4: Social Media Marketing – Utilize all social media marketing campaigns to
promote brand awareness and sales. Identify which social media channels are suitable
for marketing your business (based on customer profiling) and create a schedule for
publishing content on those networks.

At the same time, start creating lists of influencers and other people that are most likely
to be interested in your products or share your content on social media.
Step 5: Email Marketing – Start building an email list using several CTA areas on your
website and social media channels.

Your initial goal is to get people to sign up for your newsletter or register to download
free material or register for free trials.

Create several email marketing funnels to get ‘push’ your subscribers from the
awareness stage to the conversion stage.

Step 6: Pay-Per-Click Advertising – In parallel to the above activities set up an AdWords

Campaign to target people searching for product-related keywords on Google and
remarketing campaigns on Facebook to go after users that visited your website but did
not convert.

Step 7: Video Marketing – Part of step 3 above is to identify which topics/keywords you
can create video content. Publish your videos on a dedicated YouTube channel, on
Facebook, Instagram, and any other platforms you are targeting in your campaigns.

For each video create a blog post on your website and embed the video with text
content.

Step 8: Mobile Marketing – Consider creating a mobile app that users can download
from the App Stores that will include your latest news and ways for people to access
your courses through your app.

Step 9: Measure and Analyze the results – Ensure that you have Google analytics
installed and configured correctly and that you can accurately measure the effectiveness
of the above campaigns.

Create an excel sheet and add for each campaign details about the cost, number of
visits, number of conversions, people reached, etc.

The above it’s just a summary of what your digital marketing strategy should include. If
you are a small business with limited resources then it’s normal that you won’t be able
to execute the whole plan from the very beginning.

What you should do is to follow a step-by-step approach starting with your website,
SEO, and content marketing.

Once you manage to have these in place for a number of months, you will gradually
experience an increase in traffic and revenue and then you can add the other tools to
the mix.
Benefits

Digital marketing has become prominent largely because it reaches such a wide audience of
people, but it offers a number of other advantages as well. These are a few of the benefits.
A broad geographic reach
When you post an ad online, people can see it no matter where they are (provided you
haven’t limited your ad geographically). This makes it easy to grow your business's market
reach.

Cost efficiency
Digital marketing not only reaches a broader audience than traditional marketing but also
carries a lower cost. Overhead costs for newspaper ads, television spots, and other
traditional marketing opportunities can be high. They also give you less control over
whether your target audiences will see those messages in the first place.
With digital marketing, you can create just 1 content piece that draws visitors to your blog
as long as it's active. You can create an email marketing campaign that delivers messages to
targeted customer lists on a schedule, and it's easy to change that schedule or the content if
you need to do so.

When you add it all up, digital marketing gives you much more flexibility and customer
contact for your ad spend.

Quantifiable results
To know whether your marketing strategy works, you have to find out how many customers
it attracts and how much revenue it ultimately drives. But how do you do that with a non-
digital marketing strategy?

There's always the traditional option of asking each customer, “How did you find us?"

Unfortunately, that doesn't work in all industries. Many companies don't get to have one-
on-one conversations with their customers, and surveys don't always get complete results.

With digital marketing, results monitoring is simple. Digital marketing software and
platforms automatically track the number of desired conversions that you get, whether that
means email open rates, visits to your home page, or direct purchases.

Easier personalization
Digital marketing allows you to gather customer data in a way that offline marketing can't.
Data collected digitally tends to be much more precise and specific.

Imagine you offer financial services and want to send out special offers to people who have
looked at your products. You know you'll get better results if you target the offer to the
person's interest, so you decide to prepare 2 campaigns. One is for young families who have
looked at your life insurance products, and the other is for millennial entrepreneurs who
have considered your retirement plans.

How do you gather all of that data without automated tracking? How many phone records
would you have to go through? How many customer profiles? And how do you know who
has or hasn't read the brochure you sent out?

With digital marketing, all of this information is already at your fingertips.

More connection with customers

Digital marketing lets you communicate with your customers in real-time. More importantly,
it lets them communicate with you.
Think about your social media strategy. It's great when your target audience sees your latest
post, but it's even better when they comment on it or share it. It means more buzz
surrounding your product or service, as well as increased visibility every time someone joins
the conversation.
Interactivity benefits your customers as well. Their level of engagement increases as they
become active participants in your brand's story. That sense of ownership can create a
strong sense of brand loyalty.
Easy and convenient conversions
Digital marketing lets your customers take action immediately after viewing your ad or
content. With traditional advertisements, the most immediate result you can hope for is a
phone call shortly after someone views your ad. But how often does someone have the time
to reach out to a company while they're doing the dishes, driving down the highway, or
updating records at work?
With digital marketing, they can click a link or save a blog post and move along the sales
funnel right away. They might not make a purchase immediately, but they’ll stay
connected with you and give you a chance to interact with them further.
Challenges

1. Targeting your audience will be more important than ever in 2022 and beyond. As SEO
and paid advertising get more competitive, you can’t afford to waste time or money on
content or keywords that are too broad or poorly targeted. One of the best tools for
targeting the right audience is a buyer persona, which lets you visualize and better
understand your typical customer. HubSpot has a useful tool called Make My Persona that
simplifies the process of creating buyer personas. Also, you can learn more about your
customers by polling and asking them questions on your blog and social media pages.

2. Every business thrives on leads. In 2022, you can expect a competitive market as many
service-based businesses attempt to gain more targeted leads. Paid ads such as Facebook
Ads and Google Ads are likely to rise in cost. Savvy marketers will learn to leverage less
costly lead generation strategies like networking on LinkedIn, using video marketing, and
developing interactive channels such as webinars and virtual conferences. As lead
generation gets more competitive, it becomes necessary to deliver solid value to prospects
before you can expect to close a sale. Check out this guide to lead generation strategies to
get a great overview.

3. During economically challenging times, businesses may suffer cash flow problems. For
example, if the 2020 holiday season becomes profitable, a long dry spell might follow as
consumers pull back on spending. Business owners and marketers will have to be extra
careful about managing their cash flow. Getting lean and cutting back on unnecessary
expenses can help. Fortunately, moving part or all of your business online often saves you
money on expenses such as renting office or retail space. Businesses with regular, steady
customers may want to consider creative financing options like invoice factoring.

4. Content marketing will continue to evolve and will remain as crucial as ever for digital
marketers. Customers and prospects are always hungry for fresh content that educates
them and points them in the direction of a solution. Content that will be especially popular
in 2022 includes short-form videos, live-streaming content, podcasts, and Instagram and
Facebook stories. Audiences are embracing content that’s interactive as it gives people a
chance to express their opinions.

5. Rules such as GDPR aren’t going away. If anything, we can expect more such legislation
around the world. Because a website can potentially attract visitors from any country, you
need to be compliant with any laws covering a population in your target audience. Make
sure your website is transparent about its policies on cookies, data sharing, and privacy. Be
mindful about staying compliant in areas such as storing data. GDPR, for example, limits
how long you can hold onto visitors’ data.

6. Accessibility is another fast-growing issue that all website owners need to understand. An
accessible website can be used by people with visual, hearing, or other impairments. There
are several steps you can take to make a site accessible. For example, when you post an
image, be sure to have alt text so visually impaired users can understand it. This is also good
for SEO. Additionally, it would be best to make sure users can navigate your site with only a
keyboard, as not everyone can use a mouse. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) provides
comprehensive information on web accessibility.

7. People are browsing and shopping from smartphones and tablets more than ever. Several
years ago, marketing experts were advocating a mobile-friendly approach. This is rapidly
turning into a mobile-first strategy. If you want to capture your share of the ever-expanding
mobile market, make sure your website is set up for mobile users. Test all features on
multiple devices. Be especially vigilant that customers can easily place items in their online
shopping cart, check out and pay using mobile devices. Be mindful that large images and
videos may take longer to load for mobile users as well.

8. Customers are increasingly active on multiple devices and platforms. It’s no longer
enough to focus all your efforts on a single strategy such as email or Facebook. You want to
make it easy for your followers, subscribers, and customers to connect with you wherever
they go. This doesn’t mean you need to maintain a presence everywhere. Focus on the
platforms where your audience is active. The key is to provide a seamless experience so
people can easily get from one channel to another. For example, link to your social pages
and website in your emails.9. You want your customers to see you as an authoritative voice
in your industry. You also want to establish a unique brand presence that helps to create
loyal customers. In a competitive environment, you need to go beyond offering quality
products and services. Follow the lead of brand-building experts like Apple and Nike, whose
customers seek them out and don’t even compare them to other products. Identify and
emphasize your unique selling proposition (USP). Be consistent in your voice and style
across channels and platforms.

10. One thing that’s unlikely to change in 2022 is Google’s dominance as the largest search
engine. If anything, Google is continuing to expand its digital empire. To compete, you need
to pay close attention to the latest features, rules, and algorithms released by the search
engine giant. Businesses with a local presence need to make sure their Google My Business
listing is accurate and current. Another crucial area to watch is ranking for Google Snippets,
also known as Position Zero among Google’s search results. The best types of content for
this coveted area are numbered lists and FAQs that answer your customers’ most pressing
questions.