What Is Digital Marketing and Its Important Elements?

The rapid growth of ecommerce has transformed the traditional marketing landscape. If you are running an ecommerce business and you have not put in place a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, you are on the verge of losing a competitive edge. The opportunities for client acquisition, brand visibility, and revenue generation would also be jeopardized.
Therefore, incorporating a solid online marketing strategy is vital for your business and your survival. But what is digital marketing and what digital marketing elements we should implement to have the right marketing strategy? This blog addresses all these questions precisely and comprehensively. Right for digging in?
Let’s get things rolling!

In simple words, digital marketing is the utilization of digital channels and strategies to promote products, services, and brands. The marketers attempt to connect, engage and interact with the target audience through online channels.
This form of marketing involves various channels, methods, and tactics to engage with the target audience such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), social media, emails, pay-per-per (PPC) advertisement, and more.

Digital marketing strategy brings about numerous benefits no matter the size, domain, or niche of businesses.

Digital media can provide enormous access to a global audience.  With various digital channels and communication methods, businesses can expand their reach outside the geographic constraint, and target very specific demographic groups or customer segments.

Cost-effectiveness is also a major advantage. Compared to traditional marketing mediums such as TV or print, internet-based marketing is very cost-effective. Paid digital marketing such as PPC, social media ads, or email marketing offer very flexible budget options, that enable businesses to allocate resources as per their needs.

You can set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and track the performance of your digital marketing campaign. This allows businesses to optimize the campaigns and ensure maximum Return on Investment (ROI).

Digital marketing techniques such as retargeting ads, email nurturing campaigns, and personalized user experience help businesses convert leads into customers and improve conversion rates.

Digital marketing tools and platforms can be integrated into in-house platforms such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, and other automation software. This integration brings about efficiency and reduces the need for human interference.

These benefits, among many others, are compelling businesses all over the world to invest in one or multiple elements of digital marketing. For instance,

These are some facts and figures that indicate the widespread acceptance and deployment of digital marketing strategy.  Hopefully, you can now understand how important is it for your businesses to switch to digital marketing.
Now, we move to the next part of our discussion which is what are components or elements of digital marketing.

Typically, rock-solid digital marketing could have the following elements for successful ROI and achieving other marketing and branding targets.

First thing first, your website should be mobile responsive, it should work optimally across smartphone devices and operating systems. Search online and know what is the most appropriate strategies to tap into the potential of mobile-based ecommerce. Every aspect of your digital marketing campaigns should reflect the growing trends of ecommerce through mobile phones.
Secondly, almost 90% of your prospective customers’ impression is driven by the design of your website. therefore, it is imperative to keep the people engaged and interested to convert leads into actual buying customers.
You should implement a custom design that makes a website easily navigable and intuitive. It should be optimized for both speed and performance. Furthermore, there should be easy steps for customers to contact you so that leads can be turned into real-time sales.

You may have the best-designed website, but if it does not appear on the top of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), people will never know even the existence of your website. Multiple studies reveal that more than 70% of people don’t bother to look past the first page of the result. What should you do to rank your website higher? The answer is Search Engine Optimization.
SEO is the art and science of making web pages attractive to search engines. SEO is one the most important element of digital marketing and it has a key role to play in securing your marketing objectives.

For making web pages attractive, you must consider

Furthermore, the backend components of your website or technical SEO should also be optimized. For instance, URL structure, loading times, broken links, etc. need to be given serious consideration.
The higher your website appears on SERPs, the more chances you have to find qualified leads searching for products and services you offer. The higher SEO, the better.

The quality of content is a key component of your optimized web page. It is key to ranking your website higher, turning leads into customers, establishing the authority of your brands, and ensuring customer engagement.
The content of your website allows you to address commonly-asked questions, and target keywords and key phrases related to your domain. You can add Call-to-Actions to convince visitors to complete your intended tasks such as completing the checkout process and subscribing to newsletters. If the content is interesting and compelling, it will push visitors to the next stage in the sale funnel which is signing up or contacting a sale rep.
The content on the website can be of various forms, for example:

And more.
Keeping in place an industry-best content marketing strategy is essential for your ranking, leads generation, customer acquisition, and sales. The content should be free from mistakes, grammatically correct, informative, easy to read and digest, relevant, and interesting.

Email marketing is one the most effective digital marketing element available for lead nurturing and generation and improved conversion rates. Some studies maintain that it has $42 ROI for every $1 spent, which is a staggering 4,200% return on investment. Just mind-blowing!
But email marketing strategy is not simply sending promotional emails and hoping that prospects would jump into action. Successful email marketing is a systematic method. You need to make sure that:

Automation can be added to email marketing strategy. It will enable you to

Overall email marketing is an integral part of any digital marketing and it should be incorporated and pursued vigorously and systematically.

When 4.9 billion people are spending their time on social media, it is worthwhile to invest in attracting their attention to your brand, products, services, and culture. Here social media marketing comes in handy. It helps you drive traffic and promotes brand awareness among social media users.
Social media marketing involves preparing and sharing content suitable for each platform such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and more. Which platform best serves your interest? It depends on the business goals and the targeted audience. For instance, if you want to promote your high-tech product, targeting LinkedIn would be a great idea as most industry experts are active on this platform.
You can also use social media listening tools- Hootsuite, Brand watch, Sprout Special, etc.- to know the latest trends and social media users’ opinions about your products, services, culture, industry, competitors, and more. This invaluable insight would help you design products that offer personalized user experience.
You can also run paid social media campaigns that are highly effective. furthermore, social media can also be a great platform for offering excellent customer service.
For putting in place effective social media marketing, you must consider

Hence, social media marketing is an unavoidable element of digital advertisement and you should design and implement effective strategies to tap into its potential.

PPC is a highly effective and valuable online marketing element. It is a form of digital marketing in which an advertiser pays whenever someone clicks on your digital ads. In this way, PPC is different from other digital marketing forms because you don’t need to pay for everyone included in the target audience.
PPC is a very quick way to rank your website higher. You instantly get qualified leads the minute your ads go live on a search engine, say Google. Not only PPC is highly cost-efficient, but it also has advanced targeting options to target audiences based on their behaviors, demographics, location, and even the type of device they are using.
The most common PPC advertisement is search engine advertising. For instance, Google Ads are used for this form of marketing. When there is a spot available on SERPs, this spot is auctioned automatically. PPC marketing professionals design ads to appear on this spot.
There are a few factors that search engines consider before letting it appear on the top of the result pages. The quality of ads, the relevance of keywords and key phrases, the quality of landing pages of a website, and the number of bids are factors that should be optimized for helping search engines prioritize your ads.

Web analytics is also the most crucial element of digital marketing strategy that plays a key role in the ultimate success or failure of digital advertisement campaigns. It is the collection, reporting, and analysis of website data so that you can measure how effective the online advertisement campaign is in achieving your goals.
Some of the best available web analytics tools are:

And more
Web Analytics tools have gained prominence due to their crucial support in digital marketing efforts. For instance

Online marketing has become a matter of life and death in this age of digital-first business atmosphere. Competition is fierce and you have to stand out in the market to ensure the financial viability and profitability of your ecommerce firm. Here, digital marketing comes in handy.
Putting in place an effective online advertising strategy involving all elements such as email marketing, content marketing, PPC marketing, social media marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Web Analytics, and more is sure passport to remain a profitable entity. You make sure digital marketing experts are leveraging the potential of all these channels holistically and organically.
We conclude this blog with Bill Gates’ quotation
“If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business”