Seven Facts About Digital Marketing That Will Blow Your Mind

Brands worldwide have stepped up their marketing efforts to use digital strategies. They not only use it to sell products and services but also to provide support and listen to their customers’ feedback and opinions. In this article, there will be a spotlight on one mind-blowing fact for each of the seven niches.

When products or services are sold on internet or any digital medium it can be broadly termed as digital marketing. Interestingly, it also includes mediums like mobile phones, display advertising etc.

The growth of a giant.

Sudden exponential growth of digital marketing was prompted by increase in devices that could access digital media. Proliferation of social media in everyday lives changed the customer behaviour and thus customers started expecting seamless user experiences across various channels to satiate their search for information.

Brands worldwide have stepped up their marketing efforts to use digital strategies. They not only use it to sell products and services but also to provide support and listen to their customers’ feedback and opinions. Online reviews and experiences have in fact, become a norm in the face of this ever-evolving medium.

Superluminal speed.

The technology is in the fast lane. Changing at a speed that is more and more difficult to reign in. This makes it mandatory for every marketeer to not only keep up pace but to formulate newer and more workable strategies to make most of these developments.

Personalized segmented communication, influencer marketing, remarketing and target specific market strategies are the focus in business to business as well as business to consumers sectors.

All the marketing today is data driven and can be classified in to two primary sections. First, where the consumer is actively searching for information (Pull marketing) and second where, marketeers promote their goods and services based on data inputs. (Push marketing).

Based on the categorization, many distinct areas of digital marketing have emerged. In this article, there will be a spotlight on one mind-blowing fact for each of the seven niches.

1.      Search engine optimization (SEO)

Fact: 61% of marketers say improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority. (HubSpot, 2017)

This is definitely the time to take this inbound marketing technique seriously. Ever changing search engine algorithms keep SEO experts on their toes. They implement a series of on-page and off-page techniques to conquer this beast. While it is easier said than done, improving organic ranking remains to be one of the top tactics of marketeers today.

2.      Search engine marketing (SEM)

Fact: 50% of search queries are four words or longer. (WordStream, 2016)

Real people search in a natural language, what machines and marketeers call “long-tail keywords”. When it comes to search optimization most users are not searching for simple terms. They are searching for specifics and the keywords as well as content needs to echo that. Understanding the intention of the search becomes a priority.

3.      Content marketing

Fact: The average first-page result on Google contains 1,890 words. (Source: Backlinko, 2016)

Long content ranks better. No more short-cuts. Period. Detailed value driven content is the what the user is demanding and going along with the fact that 50% of search queries are longer than four words, users are looking for something specific. Another shout out to ‘quality over quantity’.

4.      Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Fact: We know links are one of the top Google ranking factors. Google has said that social media shares don’t count as individual links, but there most likely is a correlation here. (Source: Search Engine Journal)

Although Google keeps their algorithms super classified, they have shared that social signals are more of a factor now than in the past. Most marketeer of top brands have reported a direct correlation between an increase in social signals and a rise in search rankings. It is even speculated that Google even incorporates indicators from YouTube and Twitter.

5.      Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)

Fact: Roughly half of web users can’t tell the difference between paid and organic search results

If you are dismissing PPC advertising by thinking “who even clicks on Google ads anyway?” Well, the numbers are in, and apparently up to half of all search engine users cannot tell the different between paid and organic search results. This means that all those people will see the PPC ads displayed on top assume that they are organic search results. That alone is enough reason to get started with PPC. Google drives 95% of all paid search ad clicks on mobile.

This is crazy. So, if you are serious about competing in the market, advertising on Google is a no-brainer. Make sure that your PPC campaigns are mobile-optimized through and through, so you’re not missing out on this enormous and still-growing market.

6.      Affiliate marketing

Fact: $5.3 Billion spent On US Affiliate Marketing In 2017. (Forrester Consulting study)

It is predicted that total affiliate marketing spend will grow 10.1% each year until 2020. By 2020, that spend may rise to $6.8B. The signs are clear, while the study is for the US market only, the number can be staggering if extrapolated to rest of the world.

7.      Email marketing

Fact: 73% of millennials identify email as their preferred means of business communication.

100% of people on the internet irrespective of the device, have an email id. This reach is wider than rest of the channels combined. But is it deep? – Well, 80% of retail professionals indicate that email marketing is their greatest driver of customer retention (the next closest channel? Social media identified by just 44% of those same professionals). As stated earlier personalized segmented communication has the highest conversion ratio and return on investment.

In conclusion, each niche is a super area in itself, and its need is driven by the ultimate objective of the product and service to be sold. The underlying thread which stitches them together is the digital brand strategy. The right allocation of the marketing budget in diverse yet focused channel objectives has the potential to harness the power of digital marketing.