Digital Marketing: A field with high potential but still under explored.

Digital Marketing: A field with high potential but still under explored.

There must’ve been times when you must’ve come across the word Digital Marketing and wondered what exactly it is. To understand its depths, we need to first understand what exactly is "marketing".

Assuming that you are an entrepreneur, and you have this product or service that you think people will love. But for your customer to buy your product or service, they should first hear about it. 

So, the underlined question is, how would you let your prospective customers know about your product or service? This is where marketing comes into the picture.

Marketing is the process or action of promoting products and/or services which involves understanding your market through research and then advertising to your market to create awareness to sell your product or service.

In the olden days, this spreading of awareness or "marketing" was done predominantly via four channels:

  • Print - newspapers, magazines, newsletters, and other printed materials intended for distribution,
  • Broadcast through television and radio advertisements,
  • Direct mail through postcards, brochures, letters, catalogues, and fliers sent through postal mail to attract customers.
  • Telephone and telemarketing to get the message across to the customers directly.

 

However, with the internet taking over the world and large scale digitization everywhere in the world, the 5th channel of marketing has emerged- Digital marketing.

Digital marketing is a broad term that includes all marketing channels and methods you can use to promote products or services on the Internet but also electronic devices such as TVs, mobile phones and electronic billboards.

(Source: bearfoxmarketing.com)

 

The Major Advantages of Digital Marketing Over Traditional Marketing

Although traditional marketing has been getting success in the past, there are some disadvantages of traditional marketing too due to the increasing use of the internet in recent years. The beginning of the enormous use of the internet, use of smartphones, iPods, tablets, and social networking sites, small businessmen are also able to advertise their products using websites and web pages through banners, social sites such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, podcasts. These cost less compared to traditional marketing

Let’s understand the advantages of digital marketing over traditional marketing. Consider a company with real estate brand advertising through traditional marketing v/s digital marketing.

Cost-Effective: Consider a company with real estate brand advertising through traditional marketing v/s digital marketing. In Traditional Marketing, let us assume Newspaper as a targeting method. Then the cost of this would be 7-10 Lakhs/day. But in digital marketing paid Ads would cost 2-5 thousand/ day.

Flexible Content Distribution: While the person X likes to read a blog post, another person Y likes to watch a YouTube video. Traditional marketing doesn't give the audience a choice while digital marketing does.

Higher Engagement: In digital marketing, with the use of social media, the interaction with the audience is encouraged vastly. Traditional marketing methods don't leave much space for audience interaction. You can encourage your prospects, clients and followers to take action, visit your website, read about your products and services, rate and review them, buy them and provide feedback which is visible to your market.

Vast Audience: In digital marketing, you can target a vast number of audiences based on their age, gender, location, occupation, interests etc., 

Easy to Connect: The rise of social media and other digital platforms have connected the whole world. Since everyone is connected through one network, it’s easier to connect.

Real-Time Analytics: With digital ads (both paid and organic), you can measure your ad performance daily. You can measure how many people have seen your ad, how many of them clicked on your ad, what is the cost spent on the ad, the most active time of the day, conversion rate etc.,

Real-Time Engagement: Online marketing allows you to engage your audience in real-time. You can chat and discuss a lot about your brand or Company with a live audience anytime.

(Source: pixelweavers.com)

 

Let’s See the Various Channels in Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is a very vast area and includes supporting fields like:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): It's an unpaid Digital Marketing Technique which is used to increase the visibility of a website to rank higher organically in search engine result page (SERP). 

Search Engine Marketing (SEM): It includes both organic and paid marketing. In this technique, we can place our ads in SERP.

Pay-Per-Click: As the term refers the advertiser pays each time a potential customer clicks on the ad. 

Social Media Marketing (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,): Social Media Marketing involves creating, sharing content and creating appealing ads on social media to fulfil the marketing objectives.

Content Writing: In digital marketing, content is the king. Content is the main factor which drives more traffic to websites, only if the content is relevant, informative and engaging. 

Video Marketing/YouTube Marketing:  You may have seen video ads that are played on youtube while you watch youtube videos. These videos appear either in the beginning, in the middle or at the end of videos. 

Mobile Marketing:  Targeting an audience through mobile devices via SMS, apps, display banners etc.

Google AdWords: It’s an advertising platform provided by Google to help online businesses advertise themselves online by placing image or banner ads, mobile text ads, and video ads.

Google Analytics: A free tool by Google which tracks and records all information on the website.

 

Scope and potential

  • Almost all companies have their digital presence. 
  • New and Fast-growing Industry. 
  • Almost 30 to 35% of the total Indian population have internet access. 
  • While the other sectors are growing at the rate of 5-6%, digital marketing is growing at 40%.
  • India will cross 500 M Internet Users Mark by 2020.
  • The E-commerce market will increase by 65% in the upcoming years. 

.

Pre-requisite

There’s no minimum education and no degree in digital marketing but for the job market, companies may look for a degree holder.

 

Career Options in Digital Marketing

Since digital marketing has multiple fields hence you can readily explore lucrative digital marketing opportunities in the following fields:

  • Digital Marketing Manager or Digital Director
  • Social Media Executive and Social Media Manager
  • SEO Executive/Expert.
  • PPC/SEM Expert.
  • Content Writers and Copywriters.
  • AdWords Expert. 

(Source: Digital Vidya)

 

How Much a Digital Marketer Gets Paid in India

(Source: LinkedIn)

 

Future of Digital Marketing in India

  • Do you know that job portals like naukari.com, Freshers world, Times jobs and many others have 30-35% jobs in digital marketing? Naukari.com alone displayed 1.8 Lakhs jobs in the field in 2019.
  • 25 lakh job opportunities until the end of 2022, hence the future of a career in this industry looks promising.
  • If we look at our digital marketing industry in India, there are more job openings in this sector but less digital marketing experts to fill those jobs. 
  • According to a report of Digital Advertising in India, jointly published by IAMAI and IMRB, the value of the ‘Online Advertising market in India is increasing at the rate of 30% per year.

Written By



Karthik KS

Karthik KS works as a Senior Digital Marketing Executive and Technical Content Writer for Skill At Will. He enjoys writing about different technologies and career trends. He is an expert in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Google Ads, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. He has done Masters in Marketing and PG diploma in Digital Marketing.

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