Digital Marketing Tutorial for Beginners [Updated 2024]

A vast number of concepts are covered under the Digital Marketing domain. So, this blog is going to be vast as well.

Check out this YouTube video to go through a full course on Digital Marketing:

Introduction to Digital Marketing

With the growing user base of social media websites and the increased accessibility of the Internet, Digital Marketing has become a very viable mode of communicating your product to the general consumer. The best thing about Digital Marketing is that you get a tonne of flexibility and customization options to maximize your marketing efficiency, more than any alternative method of marketing. Therefore, many traditional marketers are pursuing programs of digital marketing course to start a career in it.

Marketing is a result-based profession. The companies that hire marketers evaluate a marketing effort based on the number of conversions or sales achieved through marketing channels. So, it doesn’t matter how good your marketing campaign looks on the outside, or how good the material is.

If the targets aren’t being met, the blame will fall on you and your lack of expertise. Thankfully, with Digital Marketing, you have all the right tools at your disposal, with just a click of a button, to determine your target audience and the channel of online marketing that you would want to choose for that particular group.

Considering the fact that people around the globe statistically spend a large amount of time on social media, video streaming websites, blogs, and emails, you are essentially getting a guaranteed user base of active leads or potential customers.

As discussed earlier, Digital Marketing comprises many technical substudies. In this Digital Marketing tutorial, we are going to explore the Digital Marketing examples such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SMM (Social Media Marketing), email marketing, video marketing, Affiliate Marketing, and paid marketing. So, let’s begin with this Digital Marketing tutorial for beginners.

Why choose Digital Marketing?

Non-Digital Marketing, which is the traditional means of marketing, includes the usage of physical means of marketing. These are generally in the form of physical prints such as posters, flyers, newspaper advertisements, and billboards. Even at the first glance, it is quite apparent why almost every business is choosing to get into Digital Marketing.

The primary and the most fundamental reasoning for this is the amount of reach that is possible with it. There are smart devices everywhere, from televisions, laptops, computers, and tablets to smartphones. Even cars have smart systems enabled in them where you can access the Internet. All of these facilities present a blank canvas for advertising your brand. Let’s see why Digital Marketing is so crucial:

• Due to rampant social media and e-commerce service usage, we have ample data about consumers based on their age, gender, likes, and region, among many other data points. With this data, we can determine their category and cater marketing toward only those people who fit the category and demographic of the product that we are trying to sell.
• With personalized contact options, along with immense customization options through automated and manual means, we can craft specific marketing material for specific individuals. These attempts, when done genuinely and craftily, present the customers with the benefits of personalization. The customers may appreciate the special care and may be more inclined to subscribe to your service.
• Marketers can perform detailed technical analyses of their target audiences and determine buyer personas. With the help of tracking tools, they can also get a very precise idea of the success rate of their marketing campaign.
• The ‘viral’ feature is a great addition to the social media playground with regards to getting noticed among consumers. If your marketing campaign includes material that, due to particular reasons, starts getting mass attention and publicity, because of users sharing it with other users or interacting with it, it can serve as an extremely efficient free ad routine.

How does Digital Marketing work?

There are two ways in which Digital Marketing is implemented by brands and businesses:

• B2C (Business to Customer)
• B2B (Business to Business)

B2C (Business to Customer)

As the name suggests, this sort of Digital Marketing is conducted when a brand or a company has to sell a product or service to individual customers. In fact, 95 percent of the time, the ads and marketing that you see online are examples of B2C campaigns, e.g., an ad for a candy bar, a promotional video for a safety razor, or a movie trailer. All of these marketing efforts are targeting individual consumers and not organizations. Since most traditional means of B2C marketing are far too redundant in the digital era, Digital Marketing is easily the best way to go about in this area.

Let’s get into the B2C Digital Marketing tutorial:

• Analyze and profile your customers
• Create activities for attracting customers and engaging with them. Games and contests are generally a great idea to promote your brand. By giving the customers something of value or challenge and via the means of entertaining them, you are ensuring to stand out from the usual direct marketing crowd, which people are annoyed by.
• Use Search Engine Optimization or SEO to optimize the content on which you are basing your marketing.
• Time-limited offers like discount codes or free store credit can help boost your sales. By providing discounts to an Internet user, you may be swaying them from where they usually would have bought that product and turning them into your own customer.
• After segmenting the crowd and singling out your target audience, tailor your marketing campaign completely around their needs and desires through emails, videos, and social media posts.
• Once you have narrowed down your customer segment, try to find out which social media influencers or the category of influencers they tend to follow. Then, you can contact that influencer and offer them a sum of money, a free sample, of your product, or some other forms of incentives, to promote your product. Keep in mind that this sort of marketing is on the expensive side, and you really need to be wise about your budget and target case to hire influencers.

B2B (Business to Business)

B2B is conducted for very specific products. You wouldn’t generally see B2B products being advertised on platforms with traffic from the everyday crowd. These marketing campaigns are low profile, professional, and in most cases, marketed directly (or pitched) to the client. This client can be a small business or a corporate giant. We can take heavy-duty cooking machinery used in big fast-food restaurants as an example. What would be the point of running a TV ad for an industry-level chimney? None. This sort of marketing is done through B2B-specialized salesmen who use custom-made marketing material, PowerPoint presentations, and word of mouth to pitch their product.

B2B campaigns are highly custom-made and catered to a very small group of people and their needs. A lot of times, an entire marketing campaign and presentation will be created for a single client organization. Let’s look at the process:

• Study the marketspace and analyze your competitors’ offerings, price points, and marketing material
• Identify and study the businesses that you are going to target. For example, imagine your analysis finds out that the biggest complaint about industrial chimneys is blockage. Then, you need to advertise your product in a way that offers a solution to that particular problem or conveys how your product deals with that particular issue better than your competitors
• Have a professional-looking website or landing page
• Perform SEO
• Whenever you successfully transact with a business, make it a point to request them to refer other potential clients to your organization.
• Use paid Ads
• Make and use custom-made video ads (pitches)
• Share your professional brand identity through social media

Digital Marketing Channels

As previously discussed, the digital landscape is extremely large, and there are several channels through which we can perform Digital Marketing. Let’s go through these channels in this Digital Marketing tutorial for beginners.

Paid Marketing

Paid marketing generally refers to the process of publishing advertisements on the Internet, which promote your brand or product. The most common way of executing this methodology is through SEM or Search Engine Marketing.

In SEM (which traditionally operates on a Pay-per-click (PPC) payment model), ads are displayed in search engine results upon searching a particular keyword or a string of words that matches the advertiser’s selection of words. So if you type in ‘microwave’ in the Google search engine, in most cases, there will be ‘sponsored’ ads of product pages on top, and then there come product pages that are organically ranking for the searched term.

Now, depending on the platform you are using, you can create and run various types of ads:

• Search engine sponsored ads
• Multimedia ads that include pictures, videos, and logos
• Social media ads on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter
• Ads targeting a consumer who has visited a particular product page or has bought something from your website
• Instagram, Whatsapp, Facebook, Youtube, and LinkedIn story sequences or image sequences

Let’s look at what these ads look like on search engine results:

In the above example, we can see the following:

• The keyword has been SEO optimized to match the commonly searched keyword or key-phrase (here, ‘food near me’). Hence, these two ads are coming at the top of the Google result page.
• You can see how ‘Delivery’ and ‘24/7’ search results come automatically in the description. This might appeal to the user’s urgency.
• You can incorporate user ratings in your metadata.
• You can highlight all the points that your organization can provide better than your competitors.

Pricing Management in Paid Marketing

It is important to carefully manage your marketing budget in such a way that all the requirements of your marketing campaign are fulfilled without having to compromise in any way. So, to run ads, you naturally need to pay for the service that runs your ad on their website or search engine. This payment can be transacted on three criteria:

• Rule-based bidding
• Portfolio-based bidding
• Positional bidding

Optimizing Your Landing Page

Make sure your website and the landing page linked to your marketing ad are extremely professional and easy to understand and use. This factor directly correlates to how many people who click on the link actually end up buying something from the respective product page. There are a few things that you can ensure to make your landing page a great marketing tool:

• Keep it simple (Avoid fancy website design or heavy code that requires a lot of RAM and slows down the snappy experience of the website).
• A very conveniently placed ‘buy’ option should be visible to the user.
• Use a good color scheme.
• Include promo codes.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

The concept of SEO is relatively straightforward. Search Engine Optimization refers to the process of writing or editing your text-based content in such a way that it is optimized enough to rank high on Google search results. The higher it ranks, the better it is for you, from a revenue/exposure standpoint.

The SEO work involves finding out the keywords that are most frequently searched for, and after finding them out, those keywords are subtly inserted in the content that is being written.

After the content is published, based on the quality and audience retention of the content, as time goes by, the page begins to rank at a specific position on the Google search results. When a lot of people click on a particular article, it will start coming up higher in the rank on SERPs. This, in turn, might help you market the website where the article has been written, or it may promote the product that you are trying to advertise through the article.

Some Best Practices:

• Keep the title length limited to 60 characters.
• Use the primary keyword frequently (compare with the competitor’s usage).
• Write good quality content that keeps the reader interested and engaged.
• The H1 tag should always contain the primary keyword once.
• Use H2 tags for subsection headings.

Digital Marketing Tutorial: Content Marketing

One thing is for sure—you can never go wrong with a good content marketing strategy. Not only is it a tried and true medium of marketing, but it has worked for both offline and online marketing equally and is considered one of the Digital Marketing basics. Whether you are focusing on SEO or SEM, if you don’t pay attention to the quality of the content you produce, then they can’t come to your rescue.

A fresh piece of quality content can prove valuable and informative to anyone online. Take this blog for example. Along with giving you the information and knowledge you seek on Digital Marketing, it can also direct you to more related reading materials so that you gain more. For instance, here is a blog on the best Digital Marketing Tools. Your content can also include CTAs (or Call to Action) to direct the readers to something that requires a response or action from them. Below comes an example of a CTA:

What is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing is a strategy used in marketing that primarily focuses on the creation, publication, and distribution of consistent, informative, and relevant content to attract and retain a defined target audience and drive profitable customer action.

Content marketing generates new leads, increases customer loyalty, and strengthens customer-brand interaction. Learning how to do Digital Marketing without learning content marketing is an incomplete approach.

Importance of Content Marketing in Business

1. Brand image

Consistency in well-distributed and relevant content establishes a business as a reliable authority and builds a brand image.

2. Organic searches

Content that is unique, informative, and relevant is considered valuable by search engines and positioned high on SERPs.

3. New leads

Being a trusted brand and having a higher ranking in the SERPs eventually become a direct and organic way for netizens to find you on the web and introduce new leads to the business both quantitatively and qualitatively.

4. Attracting prospective buyers

Identifying a target audience and building highly personalized content for the specific demographic increases the chances of attracting prospective buyers.

5. Backlinks and network

Creating quality content means that others in the field will inevitably want to direct their followers to that content, which will create a backlink and further expand the user network.

6. Sharing of content on social media

Once established as an industry expert, your loyal customers of the business will gladly share the content in their circle through different social media channels.

Types of Content

Here are some of the popular types of content that can be used in content marketing:

• Blogging
• Videos
• Infographics
• Longform content
• E-books
• Case studies
• Whitepapers
• Template and checklist downloads

An ideal content marketing strategy will include different content types while focusing more on the ones that generate the most leads and sales. A great way to map out a strategy is by tracking customer journeys. This way, it is easier to see which part of the strategy is working and which requires a change.

Digital Marketing Tutorial: Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing solely focuses on creating a marketing strategy that utilizes the power of social media to connect with the target audience on platforms/channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. It helps boost brand awareness, web traffic, sales, and more.

Social media marketing strategies may include:

• Fixing a social media budget
• Creating profiles on the relevant channels
• Establishing a diverse and engaging content marketing strategy
• Building a community for your audience
• Designing a personalized experience for your customers
• Paying attention to what people are saying
• Running cross-channel campaigns
• Using brand advocates
• Going live to tell a story
• Using chatbots
• Monitoring and evaluating analytics reports

Facebook Marketing

Facebook is still one of the most popular social network platforms in the world, which makes it the perfect platform to capitalize on content and increase user engagement. The platform can be used as a communication tool and a place for customer-brand interaction and engagement.

Both individual and business profiles can promote a brand and develop a fan base. By brainstorming an actionable Facebook marketing strategy, businesses can find ways to connect with their customers and encourage engagement.

Twitter Marketing

Twitter is a powerful social media platform if one is looking for any kind of information. It is ideal for brand promotions and quick customer service. Twitter also works as a great search engine to check out competitors’ content and as an engagement tool with which one can interact with their followers and share the latest updates. Some effective Twitter marketing strategies involve Twitter lists, Twitter moments, and Twitter chats.

LinkedIn Marketing

LinkedIn is one of the most used social media tools by aspiring entrepreneurs, professionals, and established businesses worldwide. LinkedIn marketing is all about building a professional network to promote your brand and business or even as an individual professional. The platform is good for publishing engaging content as well as interacting with an active community of professionals. The LinkedIn marketing strategy also includes ad campaigns once a business has worked out its goals and objectives of the campaign and the overall business.

YouTube Marketing

You must be already aware of how big YouTube is. It is now at par with Google for searches, which is why businesses and brands are now using the platform for the promotion of their products and services. In fact, the competition is so high that one will have to use YouTube optimization best practices to stand out in the crowd. A good strategy can be to utilize the video description, custom thumbnail images, video categorization, cards, annotations, and end screens to optimize the viewing experience and increase viewership.

Check out this video on Digital Marketing Course in 2024:

Digital Marketing Tutorial: Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing involves businesses paying commissions to other websites or third parties to promote and advertise their products in the form of referrals. Some of the channels used in affiliate marketing are bloggers, influencers, email lists, paid search-focused micro-sites, and large media websites.

One thing to take note of in affiliate marketing is that you should always keep track of the affiliate links like how many clicks are they getting and what the conversion rates are. Although it can be time-consuming to set up, this is crucial information that one should know for doing affiliate marketing the right way. Understanding what’s happening to each of the links can help one gauge what works and what doesn’t.

The Process of Affiliate Marketing

A marketer mapping out an affiliate marketing strategy can consider:

• Targeting the right affiliates
• Competitive analysis
• Affordability
• Tracking
• Types of creatives
• Text present in the advertisements
• Image specifications
• Referral links
• Commission percentage

Digital Marketing Tutorial: Video Marketing

Video ads for marketing are more eye-catching and thus have a higher conversion rate than text advertising. Video ads are able to garner the interest of viewers tremendously, and not only that, video ads rank high on the SERPs as well. This is due to the descriptive tags that are present. It is a medium through which one can create quick publicity.

Video Marketing Strategy and Process

A video marketing strategy may include the following:

• Adding video links to the official blog
• Sharing on social media platforms
• Providing catchy titles and compelling content
• Asking a third party to approve the video descriptions
• Adding a custom thumbnail
• Including annotations
• Using call to action
• Creating a playlist of your videos
• Being active on the comments section

Now, forgetting the maximum benefit from video marketing, you can:

• Promote it on your blog or website
• Include videos in your emails, status, stories, etc.
• Have a noticeable presence on social media
• Try and make it viral on all video channels

Digital Marketing Tutorial: Email Marketing

One of the ways to reap huge returns in Digital Marketing is through email marketing if done right. While it may work wonders, it is also very likely that if your content is not compelling, you will lose the interest of prospective buyers. Always remember to be polite and respectful in your email, and deliver value to your subscribers.

Some common ways to entice people to subscribe to your email list is by providing:

• Email series
• Free downloads
• Update lists like new releases and product updates
• Free e-books
• Free whitepapers

Email Marketing Strategy

The first thing to do in your Email Marketing Strategy is to start email marketing is to build your recipient list. The next step is to create enticing content with an attractive offer or incentive that the audience can’t refuse. This way your call to action will draw a lot of traffic to your website or business. The next part of the process is analytics and segmentation.

Using segmentation and creating dynamic content will ensure that each and every recipient receives the content they prefer and is relevant to them, thus driving them to make purchases. This is the reason that email is a cost-effective medium, significantly outperforming other channels as far as ROI is considered.

What is a Digital Marketing campaign?

A Digital Marketing campaign is the execution of a marketing strategy across digital platforms, typically aimed at optimizing a business’s conversion rate. Through Digital Marketing campaigns, brands create a way for consumers to engage with them and their content. However, the objective may vary from campaign to campaign. For instance, a campaign can be created to build a bigger follower base, increase engagement with existing customers, create a brand image, sell a product or service, etc.

Once you have identified a platform that is conducive to your campaign objectives, it is time to start the Digital Marketing campaign on that platform. The campaign should focus on the following three primary aspects:

1. SEO

A good SEO score is a sign that your marketing campaign is going well.

2. Brand awareness

Brand awareness is key to getting your products/services easily recognized.

3. Social media followers

The number of followers determines the audience’s interest in the business.

Steps to Build a Digital Marketing Strategy

A Digital Marketing strategy is a plan that is specifically designed to meet business goals and objectives with the help of online Digital Marketing. This type of marketing is achieved through relevant online marketing channels and aims for optimized returns and performance.

While creating a Digital Marketing strategy, it is very important to understand that not all marketing channels will work for all businesses. For instance, the best platform for a photography business is Instagram, Behance, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. unless it has photography tutorials it wants to share on YouTube.

Likewise, an educational institute like Intellipaat will have no use for Pinterest unless they have interesting infographics to share. Instead, they will benefit more from their tutorials and video lessons on YouTube. It all depends on where a business will find its target audience.

It is crucial to have the ability to identify the platforms that can deliver a larger crowd of prospective buyers. Otherwise, the effort put into advertising in the wrong place is as good as the money and effort wasted. All successful enterprises know how to apply the right strategies to identify their target audience and convert them into leads. So, as per this Digital Marketing step by step tutorial, the first step to Digital Marketing is always to identify your business goals and then to figure out the right Digital Marketing tools to fulfill them.

A Digital Marketing Tutorial for Beginners

Not every business will have the same Digital Marketing strategy. Following are some popular Digital Marketing methods that you can apply to your business.

1. Understanding Your Audience

Designing a strategy around your customers is the quintessential starter pack in Digital Marketing. To build a marketing strategy that will draw in customers, it is crucial to understand who your core customers are. You have to identify what aspect of your product or service they like. Where are these customers mostly from? What is the age group that your business is catering to? Knowing so will help you identify your demographic. In that regard, Google Analytics is an excellent tool to carry out your research.

Additionally, you can also try and explore what social and cultural aspects matter to your audience. Once you have locked these down, you will have an easier time coming up with ideas for your marketing strategy.

2. Not Losing Sight of the End Result

Usually, the spotlight is on the business offerings so much so that the key goal of the business is easily forgotten. It is important to be aware of how your product or service is positively affecting your customers. Not only will it remind you of your end goal but also help your customers remember why they loved your brand in the first place.

A Digital Marketing strategy should be designed keeping in mind a reason for your customers to keep coming back to your products and services. Again, Google Analytics is a great way to explore the areas that are more popular with your audience.

3. Content Marketing

As already mentioned, content is core to marketing and should be fairly included in your Digital Marketing strategy. Create resourceful and relevant content to draw in and engage your audience. Publishing and distributing content that can be useful to your audience will increase brand awareness and help establish a relationship with them as they progress through the sales funnel. Besides, it is a less costly strategy. However, it can take some time for your content library to grow and reach a larger audience.

Content that is personalized to the buying journey of customers at each stage shows them that you value their preferences and decision-making in the matter. A successful content marketing strategy hits all the stages of a customer’s buying journey.

4. Digital Marketing Campaigns

A Digital Marketing campaign requires utmost dedication and attention to detail throughout its entire duration— from conception to its execution. Devising a campaign involves a lot more than simple advertising or branding on social media or other websites. It involves realistically assessing the campaign budget, defining goals, as well as coming up with a detailed persona of your ideal customer, which includes information such as age, occupation, and any variable that may determine how likely they are to spend on your product or service. SEO and social media play a big part in this too.

5. Live Events and Meetups

Live events, meetups, and webinars are a great medium to encourage connectivity with the business or brand. Attendees of such events eventually become valued contacts if they find your content to be resourceful. It is also a great way to reach out to your existing followers. According to a ReadyTalk survey, around 20–40 percent of the webinar attendees convert into leads.

6. Mobile Marketing Strategy

Using mobile phones for everything, from shopping to reading reviews on products and places, has become the new norm. A smart Digital Marketing strategy leverages this by:

• Having a mobile-optimized website
• Working on the website’s loading time
• Reviewing social media ads or ads on other mobile-friendly platforms
• Connecting the contact details to a map app
• Using addresses, contact numbers, and clickable CTAs (e.g., see below):

7. Personalized Experience

A personalized experience makes your business more approachable to prospective customers and helps build trust. Relatable content has proven to draw in more people. Videos are one of the top conversion factors as it is an effective way to appeal to the masses through a simple yet touching video. Interactive elements can also be introduced during the experience.

8. Reflecting Company Values and Vision

A marketing strategy that is not reflective of who you are as a company will fail to make a lasting impression on people’s minds. Share the content that reflects your company’s vision and its values. This way, you can give a reason and purpose for your customers to come back and regain the trust that they have in your brand.

9. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Every business should set up its own key performance indicators, depending on the insights that are best reflective of its performance. Time and again, it comes down to identifying business goals and objectives. You can take the following few points into consideration:

• Avoid focusing on vanity metrics, i.e., the numbers that are not reflective of long-term success
• To handle negative performances, isolate critical metrics and analyze them
• Be flexible with your KPIs
• Set up regular intervals for the evaluation and analysis of performance reports

Digital Marketer: Roles and Responsibilities

The Digital Marketing field is highly result-driven and provides the opportunity to learn a lot on the job itself. Depending on different Digital Marketing skill sets and responsibilities, there are many different job roles in the market.

Digital Marketing Executive

Digital Marketing Executives work with the online marketing strategies of their organizations. They are responsible for the planning and execution of marketing campaigns and the management and supply of content. Their roles and responsibilities include:

• Development and management of Digital Marketing campaigns
• Management and upkeep of the official website
• Content optimization on all marketing platforms
• Tracking the traffic flow of the website and providing reports on a regular basis
• Fixing errors in the content
• Organizing webinars and webcasts
• Attending networking events and other events
• Keeping up with the updated Digital Marketing trends and ensuring that the brand is ahead of the competition
• Managing SEO
• Editing and posting content, videos, podcasts, and other content online
• Planning promotions for products and services
• Using social media to improve likes, shares, tweets, KPIs, etc.
• Developing SMS and email-based marketing campaigns

Digital Marketing Manager

A Digital Marketing Manager is in charge of getting the word out about the brand online. Following are the roles and responsibilities of a Digital Marketing Manager:

• Development, implementation, and management of marketing campaigns
• Creating brand awareness online
• Driving website traffic
• Generating leads
• Assessing website traffic
• Staying updated with and implementing new digital technologies
• Marketing campaign optimization using web analytics tools

Search Engine Optimizer – SEO Executive

SEO Executives are in charge of ensuring that a web page is well-ranked on SERPs and that web traffic is increased. SEO Executive roles are mostly seen in large companies that have their own marketing departments. This role requires relevant experience and high-level technical skills. Following are the roles and responsibilities of an SEO Executive:

• On-site and off-site analysis of clients across industries
• Compiling performance reports with Google Analytics
• Keeping themselves updated on Google’s latest algorithms
• Blogging for on-page and off-page optimization
• Performing keyword research using the latest keyword research strategies

Social Media Marketing Expert

A Social Media Marketing Expert seamlessly combines marketing with social media management to create a strong social media presence for a brand, business, or company. These professionals mostly aim to achieve interaction with the target audience, promote content, and find ways to grow revenues.

Social Media Marketing Experts have strong knowledge of each social media platform, social media-related strategies, and content optimization. They have the following roles and responsibilities:

• Creating a social media marketing strategy and campaign (budget planning, conceptualizing content, schedules, etc.)
• Execution of social media marketing strategies through competitive and market research.
• Promotion of products and services on social media
• Company page optimization with each social media platform and increasing the visibility of social content
• Increasing website traffic, audience engagement, and revenues through social media marketing

Digital Marketing Copywriter

A Digital Marketing Copywriter produces written content for online marketing either as a freelancer or as an employee. Copywriters help the content team refine their content and text; they aid Search Engine Marketers to write better ad copies, and they assist Social Media Managers in posting better content on social media. Following are the responsibilities of a Digital Marketing Copywriter:

• Writing blogs, web pages, social media content, video scripts, slogans, and e-books
• Tailoring the writing style and the content according to the purpose
• Understanding the interests of the target audience
• Coordinating with different teams to ensure overall quality
• Bringing in fresh angles for articles
• Assisting to win new clients and projects during business pitches
• Providing digital content for infographics, images, videos, etc.

Conversion Rate Optimizer

A Conversion Rate Optimizer works on conversion rate optimization and lead generation. They are in charge of the management, testing, and implementation of conversion points in the Digital Marketing funnel. Following are some of their responsibilities:

• A/B testing
• Performance measurement of CTAs
• Conversion rate and conversion path optimization
• Management and optimization of landing pages, CTAs, and lead generation forms
• Collaboration with teams working on social media posts, blogging, and email
• Increasing the efficiency of the marketing funnel
• Increasing leads and conversion rates for the sales team

Search Engine Specialist/Marketer – SEM Specialist

SEM Specialists target the number of clicks and lead within the given marketing budget. They are also responsible for the management of bids, ad copywriting, analysis, keyword research, and the testing of ad campaigns. SEM Specialists are responsible for:

• Targeting maximum ROI in paid search campaign’s data collection and analysis
• Tracking, reporting, and analysis of PPC campaigns and website analytics
• Landing page optimizations of paid search engine marketing campaigns
• Research and analysis of competitors’ advertising links
• Campaign expense and budget management
• Website analysis

Inbound Marketing Manager

An Inbound Marketing Manager is responsible for attracting traffic and qualified prospects and converting them into customers and leads. Here is a brief description of the Digital Marketing roles and responsibilities of an Inbound Marketing Manager:

• Creation and management of blogs, infographics, reports, webinars, whitepapers, e-books, etc.
• Optimization of marketing automation through social channels, content, etc. and performing the lead nurturing process
• Introducing updated and improved inbound marketing campaign ideas
• Creation, execution, and management of marketing campaigns that leverage SEO, email campaigns, customer acquisition events, and Inbound Marketing

Content Marketing Manager

A Content Marketing Manager looks after the content marketing of a business, including the management of blogs, guest blogs, marketing campaigns, video marketing, email communications, ebook publications, sales page copywriting, etc. Below are some of the roles and responsibilities of a Content Marketing Manager:

• Creation and improvement of content and the optimization of the path to conversion
• Delivery of an effective content marketing strategy and an editorial plan
• Understanding SEO, content development, categorization, and the structure
• Distribution and management of the content
• Regular analysis and optimization to drive traffic, leads, and engagement
• Integration of content programs into campaigns
• Creation of an editorial calendar
• Taking customer feedback into account and coming up with ideas to increase customer engagement
• Web traffic metrics analysis

Analytics Manager

The Analytics Manager implements tools and strategies to derive valuable business insights from raw data. Mentioned below are some of the responsibilities of an Analytics Manager:

• Understanding business objectives and requirements
• Designing the right strategies for efficient data analysis
• Defining metrics and the right data sources
• Selection, configuration, and implementation of analytical solutions
• Leading and developing a team of Data Analysts
• Extraction of reports from multiple sources such as customer feedback, operations, and IT
• Using statistics and data models for the transformation of raw data into valuable insights
• Presenting analytical findings to senior management

Now that you have got a detailed idea of what Digital Marketing is, let’s move ahead and learn how to differentiate between Digital Marketing and traditional marketing.

Why is Digital Marketing better than traditional marketing?

Traditional marketing is the everlasting form of marketing that has been in use for many years. Digital marketing, on the other hand, though not an entirely new way of marketing, is comparatively a recent addition. It came into the picture soon after the 90s when the Internet made a breakthrough. Until then, traditional marketing was the only means of marketing.

The main difference between the two marketing methods is the medium with which they aim to reach out to their target audience and generate leads for organizations.

Traditional marketing is a marketing method that aims to promote the brand and market it, reaching a section of the target audience through offline advertisement techniques, such as ad prints in flyers, billboards, newspapers, etc., mailing through catalogs and postcards, phone calls, radio and television broadcasts, etc. Now, Digital Marketing uses the Internet, social media, and other digital platforms to market products and brands to reach out to their respective audience.

Now, let’s discuss some other differences between the two marketing methods, Traditional Marketing vs Digital Marketing, and learn why Digital Marketing is much better compared to the traditional forms of marketing.

After reading in detail about some of the major differences between traditional and Digital Marketing, let’s take a look at the types of businesses that can leverage Digital Marketing to reach out to their customers in the best possible way.

Which businesses can leverage Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing is a popular marketing method, and all types of businesses from all industries and sectors can adapt it. Digital Marketing methods and techniques work across numerous sectors, and it aims to promote an organization’s brand via digital platforms, reaching out to its customers and gaining their loyalty toward the brand.

Organizations always have a specific set of audiences for the products and services they offer, irrespective of the industry. They can get in touch with their target audience with the help of blogs, interactive online video and other content, advertisements, campaigns, and more. However, every company has its own ideas for implementing its Digital Marketing strategies such that they can attract customers using innovative and appealing ways.

As mentioned earlier in this blog, B2B companies must adopt Digital Marketing strategies that focus on providing data that is relevant to the respective industry and meets the needs of the clients and audience who are often tech-savvy. These companies aim to address significant issues of their clients rather than focusing on promoting their brand. Unlike B2B companies, B2C organizations use strategies that are entertaining, eye-catching, interactive, and informative as they need to target the clients that require great details of the products they are trying to sell.

Yes. The main Digital Marketing tools and techniques remain the same irrespective of the type of industry you belong to, but the way they are adapted and implemented changes with the type of business you have and what you expect from Digital Marketing.

How does Digital Marketing benefit a company?

There are several ways in which Digital Marketing benefits a company and ensures that it grows and thrives. For this, organizations need to keep updating themselves and implementing new ideas, strategies, and techniques, especially in this technologically dependent world. Besides, with years passing, the Digital Marketing field keeps bringing new strategies as it evolves, requiring organizations to be dynamic to be able to implement such changes on the go. If you wish to move forward and stay ahead in the race, you need to invest in and implement various Digital Marketing techniques and methodologies in your company. You must give your customers a reason to keep coming back by avoiding Digital Marketing mistakes for better results.

Now, let’s read about some of the significant advantages of Digital Marketing in organizations.

Increasing Web Traffic

SEO, otherwise known as Search Engine Optimization, is a crucial part of any Digital Marketing endeavor as it helps in increasing website traffic, which can ultimately generate more leads for the company. As a Digital Marketer, you must figure out what your company needs and how it can match up to the demands of your customers. You need to use the necessary tools and techniques of Digital Marketing such that the web traffic reaches heights.

For organizations to increase their traffic, Digital Marketers need to take the following steps:

Step 1: Build up your ads

You need to advertise your brand well to attract the target audience using different mediums such as social media advertising, influencer marketing, paid search, content marketing, email marketing, and more.

Step 2: Connect regularly on social media platforms

You must connect and start communicating with your audience and customers through social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.

Step 3: Create informative content

One of the most crucial things in Digital Marketing is to create useful, informative, and readable content so that it adds value to the users. The content can be witty with punchlines and tags so that the users who are attracted to it can relate.

Step 4: Work on SEO

For readers to actually read your content, you have to do on-page and off-page SEO Optimization for the same. For this, you need to research the keywords, target significant and long-tail keywords, and use them in your content to gain visibility and a higher rank. This is among the best practices when it comes to increasing website traffic and getting more people to read your content.

Step 5: Create content for guest blogs

Most companies today write content for well-known websites and get them published. This is one of the best ways to drive traffic from various websites directly to yours.

Step 6: Generating Leads

Generating leads is the most important part of a company and also the most difficult one. This process can be categorized into three stages: Generating traffic to the website, converting visitors to leads, and converting the leads into long-term and loyal clients and users. There are numerous ways to generate these leads, including performing regular checks on the website, running A/B tests, publishing blogs regularly, optimizing the website, customizing the content to meet the persona and demand of the users, building and posting video content on social media platforms, creating lead magnets using various SEO tools and techniques, and so on.

Step 7: Attribution Modeling

Attribution modeling aims to understand the marketing channels that help in converting business leads. It is a framework comprising several methods and technologies that allow Digital Marketers to analyze various channels and assign the lead conversion credit to the respective channel. This process makes it possible for professionals to figure out how a particular user turned into a lead and purchased the product from the company.

Attribution models can largely be divided into the six categories as mentioned below:

• Time-decay model
• First interaction model
• Last non-direct click model
• Last interaction model
• Position-based model
• Linear model

All the attribution models distribute the value of conversion across distance marketing channels in a different manner. The process of attribution modeling is to simply identify the various events that made the customers act in the way the company desired, like purchasing from the organization or becoming a loyal customer.

After reading in detail about the ways in which Digital Marketing tools, techniques, and concepts can benefit an organization, you will now read about the various types of Digital Marketing content that you can create to gain more customers and generate potential leads for your organization.

Types of Digital Marketing Content

There are several types of Digital Marketing content that you can use to build and represent your brand to attract the users’ attention and generate leads. You can either create and use one form of content or use a mix of different types to make the content more interesting.

Now, you will read about the various types of Digital Marketing content.

1. Blogs

When it comes to creating content for Digital Marketing, blogs are the most substantial form, mainly when it comes to small businesses and startups that aim to spread brand awareness. As per a report by Forbes, websites with blogs have about 434 percent higher indexed web pages compared to the ones that do not. However, this does not mean that blogs are a one-stop solution to getting higher ranks and generating all the potential leads. There are other mediums that you must work on as well.

A blog that resonates and informs the users about the products and services you offer, giving them a reason to become your customer, is the best way to solve various problems and gain customers. Blog content can increase organic traffic at minimum cost, improve SEO, and attract users.

A few things that you need to remember as a Digital Marketer while writing blogs to get the best possible result are as follows:

• Optimize the content with SEO
• Organize the topics in your blog using cluster or pillar models
• Ensure that the content you write is relevant, to the point, and explains in detail what you offer

2. Infographics

It is very much evident and also scientifically proven that we human beings grasp things more easily from visual and pictorial representations than from some alphanumeric posts. Infographics are the best tool as it makes it possible to create such content for the users so that they get fascinated and attracted by the content you create. These types of informative and innovative infographics will help in engaging the audience and allowing them to understand the statistics easily.

These types of content are eye-catching, bright, and can captivate the audience through static and other data of the organization. Infographics make it easy for readers to identify and understand whatever is presented before them faster and more easily than they would have figured out through text and other mediums.

3. Case Studies

Case studies are nothing but stories of the users, i.e., the client success stories that have allowed the business to flourish. Digital Marketing Case studies aim to showcase the unique services and products of your organization so that the customers can get an idea of the ways in which you and your organization can be of use to them.

This type of Digital Marketing content is perfect for those potential leads who are curious to learn more about your company directly from your customers. They help buyers understand the journey of customers from the beginning to the end.

4. Social Media Posts

Posts on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are the fastest and most effective methods of building relationships with customers and promoting your brand. If you create posts that are well-drafted or amusing and witty, there are chances that they can go viral and reach millions of users rather than the mere target audience.

5. E-books

They contain long-form content that is specifically targeted toward leads and potential customers. These online books are shared with the readers only once they provide their basic data to access it, making it a good method of collecting users’ information that can further be used for conversion. These are not novels or multiple-page ads but more or less long-form blogs.

6. Videos

Videos are the easiest visual method to engage users. Ask your HubSpot, over 54 percent of the users often want to see videos from the companies they support compared to any other form of content. Video content is a flexible medium and can engage an ample amount of users and marketers, demanding more for the same.

Videos often engage the users as compared to blogs, e-books, and other similar Digital Marketing content allowing the need to reach out to a larger volume of users and generate more leads.

7. Checklists

Checklists are a type of worksheets that include a things-to-do list in a step-by-step format that allows individuals to reach the desired outcomes and accomplish the necessary tasks. These checklists are extremely simple and understandable, and you can feasibly adapt them in your blogs and social media posts. They add significance to potential customers and offer them easy-to-follow, stepwise guidance to accomplish specific tasks.

8. Memes

In recent years, memes have gained a lot of popularity among youngsters. Memes are nothing but images that are set together and combined with relative text to sound amusing and grab the attention of the user. Digital Marketers must know how to align and use them correctly and connect with the users, shooting off the website traffic. To create viral memes, they must know the latest trends that have been going on the social media platforms and figure out where their organization can fit in.

9. Whitepapers

Whitepapers are a type of long content, similar to e-books. However, they are different from one another. While you have a basic idea of what e-books are, let’s briefly try to understand whitepapers. Whitepapers contain comparatively more data that is densely packed. They pay more attention to the details and are a significant part of any research.

Although the content can be pragmatic, whitepapers can be interesting if you design it well and format the page layout in an appealing and attractive manner using readable fonts, formatting, images, etc.

10. Paid Ads and Influencers

Influencers are in high demand today especially when it comes to getting out your brand name and informing the public about it. They are extremely beneficial when companies are looking for marketing campaigns. Influencers with enough popularity have the potential to attract large numbers of users who are difficult to reach otherwise.

To reach out to the users of your industry so that they actually become your customers, you need to get in touch with influencers who are from the same industry. You can connect with these influencers through email or contact their managers directly asking if they could collaborate with you and your brand. This method of marketing through content reaches out to a much larger group of people.

Now that you know in detail about the various types of Digital Marketing, let’s get insights into what Digital Marketing budget is.

Digital Marketing Budget

Like all business operations, Digital Marketing requires some amount of budget allocated to the department. The current generation spends a considerable amount of their time online, so Digital Marketing is a must. To meet the latest needs and demands of the users, companies must increase their budget for Digital Marketing. While doing this, they must keep in mind the result they expect from Digital Marketing and how they can distribute their resources accordingly.

Often companies invest about 10 percent of their business revenue in marketing so that they spend enough money yet not too much. More than half of this allocated amount goes into Digital Marketing. It is necessary for organizations to spend more on Digital Marketing than the traditional marketing method as most businesses are shifting online, and they will be able to generate more leads through online marketing than through offline methods.

1. Setting up the Digital Marketing Budget

It is important for marketers to know about the 70-20-10 rule when they are setting up the budget for Digital Marketing so that it is distributed efficiently. Let’s understand what this rule is.

According to the 70-20-10 rule, you must spend 70 percent of the revenue and time on the present Digital Marketing strategies that will definitely work well for your organization. You will only get the desired results if you spend enough on areas that are proved to be better for the business, irrespective of what drives the revenue for the company. You should use this budget to optimize the processes that you know will improve your business.

Further, 20 percent of your time and money must be allocated toward spending on the upcoming strategies you have planned for your company, such as introducing new services, expanding your market share, etc. This will allow your business to grow and flourish, which can help in reaching out to new leads for conversion.

Now, the last 10 percent of the budget must be kept aside and invested in the new and unknown territories of Digital Marketing, such as experimental Digital Marketing strategies, latest technologies, etc. prudently. This step is important as it gives room for your business to grow, show its potential, and stay ahead in the competition.

Although the 70-20-10 rule is not set in stone, it can be a good reference point. Depending on your business, budget, goals, etc., you can allocate the budget to fit your business needs.

Some steps that you can follow to create the Digital Marketing budget for your organization are mentioned further.

Steps for Creating the Digital Marketing Budget

• Set your business goals
• Understand and analyze the past strategies
• List down the top marketing channels that can drive in the most amount of leads as per the past data
• Jot down the branding requirements and choose the respective platform for each of them
• Measure the company’s marketing analytics

Now, you will read in detail about conversion rate optimization.

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a Digital Marketing process that focuses on increasing the number of web page visitors who click or perform necessary actions as requested, such as giving details through forms, buying products, opting for memberships, and so on. CRO is responsible for figuring out the manner in which users go about your website, where they linger, what actions they perform, what prevents them from turning into customers, etc.

This is just an overview of the term. To get a better insight into it, let’s try to break it down and understand.

Conversion is a term used for denoting individuals who have become customers and completed the desired aim of the website. If the goal of your company and website is to sell products, the main aim of the website is to attract users to make the purchase. This is referred to as macro-conversion. Now, if a user has subscribed to your newsletters via emails and other mediums, created an account with you, etc., this is called micro-conversion.

Conversion rate is nothing but the number of times any user achieves the company’s goal that is spread out by the website’s traffic. The rate can be calculated by dividing the number of times a user converts into a customer by the number of distinct and unique times any user visits your website.

CRO takes place after users visit the website. It is not the same as paid ads or SEO conversion optimization. Instead, it is focused on those who click on your pages organically, the number of clicks your website receives, etc.

CRO is a significant process to learn in any Digital Marketing online tutorial. It aims to optimize the design of the website, blogs, sponsored search ads, etc. to shoot up the rate at which the users convert.

Listed below are some of the steps Digital Marketers can take for CRO:

• Implement pop-up ads in your blogs
• Use text CTAs in your blogs to get users to click on them and visit your other web pages
• Create a well-built automated workflow to save time for your sales team
• Convert leads into MQLs or marketing-qualified leads
• Perform necessary tests like A/B tests on your pages

It is time to read about the main elements of CRO.

6 Elements of CRO

There are six main elements of CRO, and let’s try to understand briefly what they are and how they can be of use.

1. Design of the landing page

The design of the landing page is the first and most significant element defining the website’s usability. The more aesthetic the site design, the better the pull users will have toward it.

2. Website copy

Even though attractive websites can generate traffic for your website and keep it flowing, words and content are what can keep them hooked and convert these leads into customers. This section can largely be divided into two categories, the headline, and the body content. While the headline is the first impression that your visitors will see once they visit your website, well-written content in the body will keep them engaged. For both these sections, the formatting and the writing style must be intuitive and fit to grab the attention of the users.

3. Call-to-action (CTA)

CTA is a call to action that the users can take, like subscribing to membership newsletters, purchasing a product, booking a slot for an event, etc. The better and more attractive the CTA is, the more chances it has of generating leads.

4. Site and navigation structure

Your website must have an easy-to-navigate structure. Site structure is basically a graph that depicts how the various pages of your website communicate with each other and pass on the necessary information. The users begin their navigation from the home page, move onto various categories and subcategories, and browse through them until they land on the desired page. This process can only go smoothly if the structure of the website is easy to navigate, and if not, the users can get lost and abandon the site, causing you to lose potential customers.

5. Forms

Forms play an important role in collecting the information of the users. The sales team of your organization can use this data to pitch in their ideas to the leads and offer them services that they cannot refuse through mail and messages. This can rapidly improve the rate of conversion, increasing the efficiency and profit of your organization.

6. Page Speed

The page load time has a massive impact on the entire website’s performance. If the web pages load slowly, it is likely that the visitors will go past them without any acknowledgment. If the pages load soon, it will definitely help the page to rank higher on the search engines and hence will increase the conversion rate.

How to get started in Digital Marketing?

This best Digital Marketing tutorial is mainly for individuals who wish to gain in-depth knowledge in this field and are aspiring to become professionals in this domain. Here, you have learned in detail about Digital Marketing, the reasons why you should opt for it, how it works for businesses, various Digital Marketing channels, types of Digital Marketing, the Digital Marketing campaign, and the steps you need to follow to build Digital Marketing strategies.

Further, you came across who Digital Marketers are and their responsibilities in an organization. You also briefly learned about the differences between the traditional mode of marketing and Digital Marketing. This online tutorial for Digital Marketing then discussed how it benefits an organization, the different types of Digital Marketing content, how to allocate a Digital Marketing budget, CRO, and much more.