Digital Marketing and Tech: Understanding the Industry
The internet is becoming a part of our everyday lives. Society unilaterally agrees that the future is built through the internet. It is fair to say that if you are reading this article then you are one of the several billion internet users that have grown deeply accustomed to browsing the internet for countless reasons on a daily basis.
These massive levels of consumption are represented in three primary groups:
Every website you visit, every blog, every store and every game all had to be built by someone. Who created the images and videos? Who created the page design and wrote the copy? What you see all falls under the umbrella of digital marketing. Just like any business venture we need to publicize our product, else our time would have been wasted. To create a successful business we need to actively work towards building our brand. And that is what digital marketing is all about.
We can at the very least acknowledge that there is real value to the internet, by imagining how it has impacted our daily lives. Some of us even leave the office if the wifi drops. Understanding the scalability of the internet is something that can only be understood by comparison. You have the ability to, with little capital investment, to reach the whole world. This plus the inexpensive nature of marketing through the internet makes it possible for business to start at little to no cost. This has made the global market accessible to virtually anyone with as much as a computer and internet connection. One of the first decisions a business can make is to integrate social media into their marketing. This has made the internet more accessible and blooming with ingenuity.
The industry is being supported by massive public capital, where major companies are now automating the many processes necessary for creation of content. They make it quicker, easier and more affordable to access the internet for business and individuals alike. While ecommerce is defined as buying and selling over the internet. Digital marketing can be used for any number of reasons and revolves around technical understanding of communication over the internet. These two fields work hand in hand symbiotically and has created massive fortunes at faster rates than ever before.
Digital Marketing Roles
Digital marketing is quickly outpacing traditional physical marketing as the premier tool for publicizing your agenda. This shift in the paradigm has created a few new professional careers, and the best way to understand the industry is by understanding the day to day roles of a digital marketer.
As a consumer you most likely use the internet to go shopping, browse for information or entertainment. For a digital marketing professional the internet is an entirely different world. They see it as an unlimited channel to a massive customer base, a place of competition and a place for building a brand. In order to succeed in the environment we are required to understand the technical nuances in order to save us the time that it would otherwise take on the slower path.
SEO
Search Engines are a major part of what the internet is because they index billions of pages and list them for inquiry. The process of optimizing for search engines involves understanding how these search engines rank websites at an algorithmic level. You can imagine how important the first page is for businesses by looking at how long consumers spend on subsequent pages. Google is by far the most commonly used search engine, it also serves as an advertising company for those trying to increase their exposure beyond organic purposes.?
The order of each search result is numbered by the search engine based on qualitative factors like quality, usability and relevance. This means that each search result has a number listed next to it that represents a ranking. A SEO specialist will typically spend their time trying to improve the website's overall quality for those ranking purposes. We generally say that organic traffic (free traffic that is derived from search) typically accounts for about 50% of all website visits.
Paid Advertisements
The next big role in digital marketing are paid adverts that are often abbreviated as CPC (cost per click) which are targeted ads that deliver information directly to consumer feeds. There are numerous channels available with millions of visitors, the two biggest names being Facebook and Google. Paid adverts are highly effective in generating exposure because these platforms utilize sophisticated algorithms to target your demographic. This role typically involves ROI analysis to evaluate the performance of these paid ads, as well as the content necessary for advertisement. But in general paid adverts are a way of giving you a competitive edge by cutting your competition out of organic searches.
Companies like Facebook operate around a core social function but it's only made possible by advertising money. Businesses figured out that they can reach millions and millions of people on social media platforms by advertising on those websites. In fact Facebook is more of an advertisement company then anything else from a business perspective. It is the active role of a CPC specialist to find the most engaged audiences and create ad campaigns in order to increase views and eventually conversions. Although these ads are considered expensive, their profitability is reflected in their ROI, which is known after the fact. A very important role in any marketing department.
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Content Management
A Content Manager would typically manage, video, images and copy for a website across all marketing channels. They are effectively a sales person for a website that runs 24/7. They choose the words that potential customers see, the script the videos that you watch and they organize the visuals. A content manager needs to know the customer, the industry and the practices most effective for communicating the qualities of a product or service. This is a lot more complicated than it may seem, because visitors to any website can spend less than a minute on a website for leaving. Mastery in content management is brevity and clarity of the message, which may be more difficult to do then you know.
Partnerships and Community
When it comes to building partnerships, developing social media accounts and searching for new opportunities we have community managers. This is one of the core digital marketing roles involved in outreach and management of active platforms. Developing co-marketing agreements and building back-links are an important part of the marketing process which involves a lot of outreach with industry professionals. A community manager may include influencers and collaboration with similar businesses. Most firms utilize omni-channel approaches which involve using multiple marketing channels to market their company.?
Sales Managers
Inbound & Outbound sales are important for sealing a deal. A sales manager will work on developing new techniques, finding new leads and understanding the product fully. One of the core roles of a sales manager involves strategy and gathering impressions for product improvement. The role can be separated into inbound and outbound which defines whether the manager is reaching out or receiving the potential customer.
UX & UI Designers
A major part of what a website turns out to be is based on the quality of the actual website. These designers are basically programmers but can often be part of a marketing department to improve overall agility of changes. They are responsible for building the most visually and dynamically viable website. These are the reliable tech heads to bring the website to the level required for a truly stand out website. They will often work closely with other team members to deliver a finished good. There roles are very technical and based on page building.
Video & Graphic Designers
Content can come in several formats; video, written or graphics. Depending on the demographic your targeting, these formats may be necessary in order to create a highly engaging effect on the viewer. Part of the job of marketing a product of business is having a creative editor that can shoot greats videos or photos for those important Youtube channels or Instagram posts. Having a video editor is important for any scaling business and it can make your business stand out.?
Keywords, Crawlers and Ranking
When we look at a website, we see a whole map of pages linked together by a single domain. These pages have keywords scattered all over that are used by crawlers from search engines, to identify the subject matter of that site and route it to the correct reader. We also have links that originate from other websites directing people to your website. The more your website is referenced; the higher its authority, and the more it is referenced; the more usable its contents. This is an approximate way of saying that this page is only linked by legitimate sources for the merits it possesses to the viewer. The more authoritative a website is, the more likely that it will have a higher domain rating. These algorithms are used to uniform the process of domain ranking for the purpose of feeding the best quality content to the search engine users.
Understanding Digital Assets
It is very important to understand that in digital marketing, your internet presence is an asset and it must be built with quality in mind. I highly recommend that you look at any website you visit from a technical perspective, taking careful notes on what each website offers. Your priority should be a combination of functionality and presentation. Observe the layout, the pages, examine the links, images, text, colors, observe the plug-ings and the branding. Digital marketing does not require any programming skills but making observations can teach you about how to market your online business correctly. Take the time to research a segment of the market to see how the market leader markets their product for a sound long-term objective.
As you can imagine, searching for new strategies of increasing your pages ranking is a great way of increasing your exposure. This exposure can translate into thousands of views and possibly transactions through your website. The art of digital marketing is capitalistic in most cases, as it seeks to optimize for competitive reasons. It's about the objective, the process and the technique used to accomplish your goal. Most importantly it's about teamwork and developing a digital asset with passion. With a strong understanding of digital marketing, you can bring virtually any idea to market, but not without trust and dedication.
In Conclusion
Understanding the digital industry is an important part of developing your business acumen. Stay tuned with us to get the latest ideas and insight into tech and digital marketing.