Fundamentals of digital marketing Digital marketing has become one of the most trending terms recently Every kind of business is adopting digital marketing techniques Consider a large or small business everyone has adopted digital marketing activities in some capacity or other In this article we would cover what digital marketing is its importance and the fundamentals of digital marketing also referred to as the types of digital marketing What is digital marketing Why is digital marketing important Wider audience Compete with the big forces Reach potential customers Track the reach Return on Investment Fundamentals of Digital Marketing SEO Online Advertising Content Marketing Email marketing Social Media Marketing Pay per click Mobile Marketing Affiliate Influencer Marketing Video Marketing Audio Marketing Want to learn more about Digital Marketing What is digital marketing Digital marketing is marketing your product whether a good or service through digital means It involves marketing through online mediums and can be understood as the opposite of traditional marketing Digital marketing constitutes all the modern marketing techniques and is a growing marketing trend which is why it is important to learn about the fundamentals of digital marketing It has opened many avenues for different organizations and every brand has to imperatively employ digital marketing techniques for leading their business successfully Also a career in Digital Marketing is in huge demand Also you can learn more about marketing with the help of this free digital marketing course with certificate Why is digital marketing important There were 624 0 million internet users and 448 0 million social media users in India in January 2021 The number of social media users in India was equivalent to 32 3 of the total population Now if we consider this number then we would easily get the answer to the question of why digital marketing is important When 32 3 of the population is on social media then it is only smart to use that medium for your benefit There are many reasons why digital marketing has been booming Wider audience With traditional methods of marketing your efforts get limited to a particular demographic but with digital marketing your presence can be felt globally hence reaching a wider audience Compete with the big forces If Reliance is on social media so can be you Now the marketing opportunities are not limited to big businesses alone but anyone can use digital marketing methods for their benefit hence placing a small brand also in the major leagues Reach potential customers Earlier it was difficult to reach out to potential customers but with the efforts of digital marketing it has become easy to identify and reach the target audience Targeting the potential audience will yield better results Track the reach Traditional marketing methods were hard to track It is difficult to track how many people saw a particular billboard and ultimately made the purchase but with digital marketing it is possible with various tools that help to track the social media presence website activity etc Return on Investment Based on the Litmus report email marketing ROI stands at 4 200 or 42x For every dollar brands invest in email marketing they receive 42 in return This is the kind of return we are talking about It is huge and hence it would be a great decision to invest in digital marketing opportunities and see your business grow Fundamentals of Digital Marketing 1 SEO The first and the most inexpensive part of the fundamentals of digital marketing is SEO which stands for Search Engine Optimization It is one of the best and simplest ways to increase a brand s visibility SEO can be explained as the process of optimizing the content through the strategic use of keywords and complying with the algorithm of search engines so that during a search on Google Bing Yahoo or any other search engine they index the content and show it to the right people The more visibility one can get through a search the more are the chances of attracting traffic and potential consumers This explains why understanding SEO is important The Internet has become the top medium for people to get information so if businesses want to get noticed and get ranked on a search they have to invest in SEO activities SEO is the organic way of gaining traffic It is through the bots that Google or any other search engine uses that indexes the content The bots crawl the web and using various algorithms they analyze the content index and then decide in which order the content would appear in the search results While SEO can be done free of cost you can also invest in SEM practices Search engine marketing is a paid advertising practice to increase visibility on SERP Get to know more about it with the free Search Engine Marketing course 2 Online Advertising Where SEO was referred to as the inexpensive aspect of the fundamentals of digital marketing online advertising is the paid aspect also termed as paid media When you search on Google let s say free courses with certificates on the top of the search results you would notice some links before which the word Ad is mentioned This is an example of online advertising All those ads that pop up on your screen while you are scrolling through Facebook or Instagram are also examples of paid media There are many channels for online advertising like Youtube ads Facebook ads Linkedin ads Instagram ads Google ads PPC Campaigns etc Brands have to identify what works best for them and which channel would be the best way to reach their target audience Online advertising is considered the best way to reach the target audience and increase brand awareness The mediums like Google and Facebook have provided many resources that help the brand in building their ads and reaching the targeted audience Also online advertising has offered the brands the ability to keep track and analyze the reach which is not possible with traditional marketing 3 Content Marketing To put it simply content marketing is a strategy to target the desired audience by creating relevant content which can be in the form of articles videos podcasts or any other media meant to engage and retain an audience It can be achieved through blogs newsletters emails etc Content marketing is also an organic way of increasing traffic by developing SEO friendly content and helping in increasing brand awareness Content marketing when done strategically leads to great results