An SMS from a bank or a QR code in a newspaper are digital marketing tools. We tell you about its features, advantages, disadvantages and differences from online advertising.
What is digital marketing and why is it needed?
Features of digital marketing
Pros and Cons of Digital Marketing
Main channels of digital marketing
How to evaluate the effectiveness of digital marketing
Expert advice
What is digital marketing and why is it needed?
Table of Contents
Marketing in a broad sense is studying customer needs, creating advertising with an attractive message to buyers and getting a target action to increase the company’s profits.
Digital marketing is based on traditional marketing, which specialists implement through digital communication channels. For example, this is advertising that can be seen on social networks and websites. Digital marketing tools are used when a viewer in an online cinema is offered to go to social networks to participate in a competition, or scan a QR code and win a prize.
Digital marketing differs from traditional marketing in the platforms on which marketers promote products and a wider range of tools for evaluating results. For example, in advertising accounts, you can find out exactly how many users saw the ad and clicked on the ad, how much the advertiser paid for each click, and even what combination of image and text attracted the right customers.
Before digital television, it was almost impossible to check how many people were watching TV and seeing advertising. Marketers did not know for sure how much a product’s sales increased thanks to TV advertising, or what significance a display or promotion had in a store. With the advent of digital television and digital marketing tools, TV advertising has integrated with other digital channels. Now advertisers offer viewers to scan a QR code or write a code word on social networks and use this data to track purchases and advertising effectiveness.
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Features of digital marketing
● Measurability of results
An Internet marketer can determine how many people viewed an advertisement or opened a newsletter, which of them performed the target action – subscribed, made an order, booked a table. This helps to more accurately set up targeting in the advertising account in order to attract an interested audience and save on impressions. If everything is set up correctly, then an advertisement for a new restaurant in Yekaterinburg will not be seen by a Voronezh resident, and Android users will not be shown accessories for the iPhone.
● Automation
In digital marketing, a specialist can delegate routine tasks to chatbots and devote the freed-up time to creative tasks. For example, mailing automation services and algorithmic advertising purchasing help simplify the work.
● User habits
Users no longer want to spend too much time shopping. If earlier you had to go to the store to buy cat food, now you can order it in an app in a couple of minutes. Internet marketers must quickly navigate the changing habits of users: for example, service websites are now less and less likely to use banners with an offer to call back, but offer a form for self-registration with a doctor or hairdresser. The user will not have to be distracted by a call, and a reminder about the visit will come via SMS or messenger.
Pros and Cons of Digital Marketing
Companies offer marketers interesting work that combines creativity and analytics. It is not without stress and high competition among specialists. Let’s look at other pros and cons.
Pros
✅ The ability to show ads only to the target audience
Marketers use targeting so that an ad for a traveler’s debit card is seen by a person who often flies to different countries, and discounts on goods for children are seen by mothers.
✅ Accurate performance indicators
For the first time in digital marketing, it became possible to evaluate the results of advertising campaigns in detail: from reach to purchase cost.
✅ Budget communication channels
You can launch advertising with 500 rubles on your account. Advertising on television costs hundreds of thousands of rubles.
✅ Quick response
Digital marketing provides instant communication with users via social networks, email, messengers and website chats.
✅ Ability to change the industry
Marketers can make familiar things more convenient and technological. For example, once upon a time, an SMM specialist would occasionally respond to comments on social networks , but now customers can talk to a virtual assistant from the support service at any time of the day.
Cons
❌ You need to be ready for changes and be able to quickly adapt to platform innovations
Often, everything can break down simply because the platform has introduced restrictions on displaying ads. In this case, you have to quickly change your strategy. For example, VKontakte banned the use of emojis in the text of ads, and some brands built all their communication with clients on this.
❌ Ad blockers
Part of the audience is lost because some users set restrictions on displaying ads in browsers. For example, IT specialists often do this – a solvent, desirable audience for many companies.
❌ Limitations due to data protection
If the user has not approved cookies, the marketer receives significantly less information about the user and interactions with him.
Main channels of digital marketing
A marketer must be able to match the needs of potential customers and the product to be sold. The main goals of marketing are to understand people’s pains and desires and select a product for them to increase the company’s profits. These goals can be achieved through different channels. Let’s look at the most popular ones.
Content Marketing
This is the creation of content for publication on a company’s blog or brand media. If you regularly publish content that is interesting to your audience, there is every chance of attracting attention to your product or service.
Websites and blogs
You can publish useful materials on your own website or start a blog on a third-party platform like Medium or Habr. A blog is an important channel for working with brand recognition and preparing the audience for a purchase.
SMM
helps to attract traffic or audience attention through social networks. This promotion channel helps to find a loyal audience, receive feedback about the product, increase user activity to make the product or service more recognizable and attractive.
Performance Marketing
The specialists of this channel are responsible for purchasing coverage and target actions of users. It includes contextual and targeted advertising , CPA networks.
Contextual advertising
The channel is closely linked to user queries in search engines. They form a list of keywords, by which algorithms select and display suitable advertising for a specific person.
Targeted advertising
Thanks to detailed settings in advertising accounts, ads are shown to the target audience with specified parameters. Usually, such advertising is placed on social networks. For example, you can target those who have already purchased and even completed a course on programming in C++, and offer to learn how to successfully pass interviews.
CPA networks
These are online platforms where advertisers and webmasters agree on cooperation. These include advertising in mobile applications, which the user must watch, for example, to get an extra life in a game.
CRM Marketing
A field of digital marketing that is closely related to user data. CRM marketers are responsible for communicating with the audience: they send out newsletters, push notifications, do SMS marketing, and call potential clients.
Push notifications
This channel helps retain an existing audience. For example, if a user has added a product to the cart but has not completed the order, an hour later they receive a push notification with a reminder.
Email marketing
is a brand’s emails that users receive via email. They can be about the brand’s products or promotions, with useful or entertaining content.
SMS Marketing and Calls
The channel helps to promote the company’s products or services through short text messages or directly through a phone conversation.
SEO
Digital marketing helps to get traffic from search results. The more people go to a specific site in response to their request, the higher its traffic. The visibility of a site in search results depends on several factors: how correctly the technical part of the task is completed (for example, whether there are errors in the HTML code, language markup of the site) and whether the content meets the user’s request, which ultimately builds trust in the product and the company.
Affiliate Marketing
Exchanging affiliate links, holding joint promotions and advertising campaigns help reduce marketing costs and increase audience reach. For example, if a user makes purchases in an online store, he or she can receive a discount coupon or promo code for another service.
Influencer Marketing
People trust bloggers whose stories they watch daily on social networks and podcast authors they listen to while jogging. Advertising with bloggers helps attract the most loyal audience.
Each channel has its pros and cons. The main thing is to decide which of them solves a specific problem and decide on a promotion strategy. To do this, you need to consider various factors: tactical and strategic business goals, digital marketing resources and, of course, the characteristics of the audience and product. For example, the same electronics and home appliances store can actively advertise a game console with bloggers, and set up contextual advertising and work with SEO to sell industrial refrigerators.
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How to evaluate the effectiveness of digital marketing
Here are some key metrics that will help you understand how well a particular ad is performing, and how much the reach or purchase ultimately cost.
1. CTR (from English Click-Through Rate)
is a click-through rate indicator. CTR shows how often users who see an ad click on it. Helps to assess how interesting the offer is to the audience.
2. CPC (from English Cost Per Click)
the cost of a click. Shows how much each transition from an advertisement to a landing page costs. Helps the marketer estimate the cost of a click in different advertising channels.
3. CPA (from English Cost Per Action)
the cost of a target action. The metric helps to estimate how much a call, application, form filling, or chat communication costs.
4. CAC (from English Customer Acquisition Cost)
is the average amount spent on attracting a new client. If in CPA the target action can be considered anything, then for CAC it is always a purchase. Therefore, only those clients who purchased a specific product or service are counted. Marketers calculate CAC to understand how productively the campaign works and how to reduce the costs of advertising communications.
At different stages, depending on the goal, companies can choose different key metrics. For example, if Sberbank decides to launch a brand campaign to tell about a new service, marketers will look at coverage, because purchases are not the main thing at this stage, it is important that as many people as possible learn about it. And in targeted advertising, the determining indicators will be specific actions – for example, how many people applied for a credit card after viewing the ad.
