How would you define digital marketing?
We have written numerous posts on digital marketing and recently covered how to select a digital marketing agency. First and foremost, every employee, client, and partner needs to understand what digital marketing entails.
So, what is digital marketing? According to businessdictionary.com, digital marketing is “the promotion of products or brands via one or more forms of electronic media.”
The benefits of digital over traditional marketing include the ability to promote and analyze campaigns in real time. Digital marketing focuses on identifying a customer's digital interests, pinpointing the customer’s stage in the buyer’s journey, and motivating leads to take action using digital platforms.
In 2015, digital marketing is not an option anymore. The brand needs to be where the audience is – which is often somewhere online – and even laggards will adapt to this requirement in 2015.
What are the components of digital marketing?
While I consider the content itself to be most important, the following aspects are required to stay on top of the curve. Digital marketing includes SEO, paid advertising, social media, email marketing, blogging, video, web design and analytics.
SEO
Search engine optimization is the process of getting traffic from the organic, unpaid search results on search engines. Local business will shift their SEO focus more toward ranking in local directories, maps and review apps.
Paid Advertising
Digital advertising consists of PPC and social ads. PPC stands for pay-per-click, in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked.
Personalized advertising will shift from luxury to necessity for businesses in 2015, as more customizable options are available. SEO strategy will also shift to mobile search, as mobile traffic is predicted to overtake desktop web traffic.
Social Media
According to WebDAM, 43% of marketers found a customer via LinkedIn and 52% of all marketers have found a customer via Facebook. Such statistics show again that companies need to go where the customers spend time.
In 2015, more companies will likely start to take advantage of employee relations by promoting their brand via their personal networks. Professional and personal brands are interweaving to add trust and build stronger relationships.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is already an essential tool for nearly every business. In 2015, segmentation and persona customization will be implemented from real-time data across platforms. Customers expect hyper-focused content that applies to their unique interests and lifestyles.
Blogging
Optimized blog posts can drive new visitors to your website. Companies need to focus on inbound content and provide educational information to viewers to keep them engaged.
Video
In a post from last month, we talked about the importance of defining a consistent brand voice across the various media channels. The rising trend of implementing video content will continue in 2015, as more businesses will offer explanations, how-to instructions and brand stories in visual form.
Web Design
Modern web design requires more than simply producing and maintaining a website; the bar of quality continues to rise. Every page needs to be responsive, and functionality should be the same among devices. More companies also tend to provide the option to navigate through their websites by scrolling instead of clicking.
Analytics
Tracking your digital marketing efforts is crucial. Various analytics tools enable you to measure your advertising ROI and track websites, video and social networking sites and applications as it happens. The focus to capture real time and capture detailed user information will increase in 2015.
What's your 2015 definition?
Change is happening as I write, which makes it challenging to define up-to-date digital marketing. What is digital marketing in your opinion? What will the landscape of digital marketing look like this year and in the future? Leave a comment to share your opinion!
