Digital Marketing: A Complete Guide for Beginners

As the name implies, Digital Marketing or Online Marketing is a way of promoting products or services online using the internet. Sounds simple doesn’t it? In fact, we need an effective Digital Marketing strategy in order to obtain optimal results.

This article explains What Digital Marketing is and What are the different methods of Digital Marketing. All the explanations are beginner friendly and in complete detail.

What is Digital Marketing:

In this digital era, you may already be familiar with what Digital Marketing is?

Simply put, Digital Marketing is all the efforts made by businesses or companies to reach customers through the internet. Not only customers, Digital Marketing is a strategy that also aims to convey messages related to products or services offered to consumers.

Today, Digital Marketing is used by many people, businesses, and companies.

For example, one example of Digital Marketing is: SEO. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a technique or effort to optimize a website to get ranked in Google search results.

Well, lately various companies and businesses are competing with each other in maximizing SEO so that their business is at the top of Google search rankings.

Does SEO only prioritize searches on Google? What about other search sites like Microsoft Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Ask.com and others? The answer is simple, that is because Google is the search engine for the majority of internet users.

Besides SEO, there is also an effective Digital Marketing strategy called SEM (Search Engine Marketing). Its function is almost the same, namely to occupy the first page of Google with certain keywords.

The difference between SEM and SEO is that SEM is paid. So, we use the paid Google Ads advertising platform so that the website can appear on the first page of Google quickly.

In addition, Digital Marketing strategies that are often encountered are of course through various social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and more. Who is still unfamiliar with social media? It even feels like a day without visiting one of them will feel something is missing.

Of all these social media, you often hear the term advertising, right? Where you can set Digital Marketing campaigns by placing ads on one or even all of the social media that you have.

It doesn’t stop there, Digital Marketing strategies can also be through influencer marketing, email marketing, lead generation, and others.

Judging from these various strategies, you could say that Digital Marketing is quite effective in the digital era as it is today. Besides being able to reach the whole world, the costs you incur will not break your bank balance.

Advantages of Digital Marketing

The many Digital Marketing strategies used by various companies prove that it has many advantages compared to offline marketing. What are they? Here are some of the advantages of Digital Marketing:

1. Broad access

You have access to the whole world. Any part, any region, any age bracket, any gender. You can set up your campaigns so only a specific audience group can see your ads.

This is the reason why Digital Marketing is one of the most popular strategies for entrepreneurs. Yup, because you can reach the market anywhere, without having to worry about access.

2. Get instant feedback

Digital Marketing is a strategy that allows you to get instant feedback from customers. Customers can tell you the experience they had after using your product and allow you to know if you need to improve your service or not.

Just take advantage of Google My Business, which is a review on Google related to your business. If you get a lot of positive reviews, automatically many people will be convinced and interested in trying the products you offer!

3. Low cost

Compared to other marketing media, promoting products on the internet is also much cheaper. This is what makes it easy for small and medium businesses to introduce their products. Even without spending a penny, you can do marketing online!

That is why there is a profession as content marketing, namely someone who manages social media so that transactions occur. Interesting, right?

4. Connect without time limit

Prior to this marketing strategy, maintaining the relationship between consumers and producers must have taken a lot of time and effort. When online media is maximized, it will provide an opportunity for companies to optimize services to consumers.

5. Operations in a short time

The next advantage of Digital Marketing is that it can make operational activities complete in a short time. Being connected to the internet allows you to complete all operational needs quickly and briefly.

6. Digital advertising

Determining advertising content is not easy, as well as determining the right ad target. However, with the presence of Digital Marketing, you can relax while planning this.

Digital advertising is known for its accuracy and market segmentation, because it makes it very easy for you to determine the target of potential consumers. And that certainly minimizes the possibility of useless ads because they are not right on target.

Digital advertising also has a lower price range than conventional advertising such as billboards or billboards.

7. Available 24 hours

Digital Marketing is a strategy that also allows your business to be available 24 hours a day. This of course can increase sales and business profits.

8. Can save a lot of time

Digital Marketing can also save the perpetrators time. A potential customer can get all the information related to the products or services you offer via the internet.

This applies to both sellers and buyers. Buyers can access information anytime and anywhere, while sellers can also work anytime anywhere. Very efficient, right?

9. Can continue to connect with customers

The Internet allows you to always connect with buyers in real time. If you implement a discount system, you can easily email buyers and they can send multiple messages at the same time. This means you can also send product catalogs to all customers.

15 Effective Digital Marketing Strategies

from conventional or offline advertising strategies that are just like that. Digital Marketing strategies are much more complex so you can adjust them to the various types of products that you will sell or promote. Here, I have summarized some effective Digital Marketing strategies that you can implement.

1. Focus on the customer to be number one!

The first way of Digital Marketing is to focus on consumers. In any business, the customer is always the number one priority.

Make sure you yourself understand what customers want! Start by asking some questions about how customers found your product and how their experience with the product was.

In addition to knowing your own customers, you also need to learn how they make decisions to use your product. You can ask some questions to better understand their mindset in making a purchase decision, such as:

How do customers find this product?
What makes customers interested in using this product?
How do customers decide whether they will buy the product?

Through these questions, you can better understand how a buyer becomes more interested and decides to buy your product.

**2. SEO (*Search Engine Optimization***)

Almost all online marketers say that SEO has a very important role in online business marketing strategies. This is also expressed by Neil Patel, a professional in the field of internet marketing and entrepreneur.

Through content that has been optimized using SEO techniques, it will make the product easier for customers to reach. Through SEO, the marketing carried out becomes more targeted, so that the conversions that occur will be greater.

**3. SEM (*Search Engine Marketing***)

SEO Marketing

It has been mentioned above that SEM is different from SEO. SEM allows you to instantly top Google search rankings. However, it costs money to implement this strategy.

The similarity between SEO and SEM is that the target market is much more specific and relevant to the business or product you want to promote.

**4. SMM (*Social Media Marketing***)

Currently the power of social media as a Digital Marketing tool is no longer in doubt. However, what needs to be considered is the use of social media platforms according to the products you offer.

Besides you need to consider the right platform, you also need to have a good content marketing strategy so that the content is relevant to customers.

5. Pay Per Click

Not only SEO and SEM, the next effective Digital Marketing strategy is PPC. As the name implies, you will be charged a fee every time a user clicks on the ad that you create.

This strategy is indeed similar to SEM, but there are several platforms that display PPC ads to their audience, so they don’t always need a search engine like Google.

The most popular advertising platforms used for PPC by far are Google AdWords, Instagram Ads, and Facebook Ads.

6. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is no longer a foreign thing in the world of marketing. Amazon, Rakuten, eBay, are some companies that provide affiliate programs.

You let other people do the marketing for you. And you pay them a little commission. This is a great way to promote your products and services. You only pay if someone purchased the product or service unlike other campaigns where you are charged if a user clicks or views your product.

7. Email Marketing

The next Digital Marketing strategy is to use email marketing. Email marketing is perfect for those of you who have collected a database of customers. The advantage is, customers who are already engaged with your business will be interested in the latest information and products that you offer via email.

You can read about Email Marketing -Types, Methods and Strategies where I have explained Email Marketing in full detail.

8. WhatsApp Marketing

It’s like email marketing, Whatsapp is also the most popular chat platform because of its simple, easy, and fast-to-use features. Not only is it used as a chat application, now Whatsapp is also used by businesses to sell and promote their products.

You can send messages in bulk to customers. However, it should be noted that product promotional messages should be sent to customers who have contacted you or loyal customers so that they do not feel uncomfortable because of the message.

9. Create video Marketing

Campaign Video can also be the type of content that you need to pay attention to for content marketing. Because videos can make visitors stay longer on your blog. The longer the time visitors spend on your blog, the better your Google score will be.

10. Register for Google Business

google business

By registering your business on Google Business, your business will automatically appear on Google.

11. Respond to online reviews

If you ask how effective Digital Marketing strategies are, then one of the answers is to respond to online reviews.

Usually, prospective buyers will look for product reviews that they want to buy from review blogs, online forums, social media, to Google Business profiles.

According to a media report, 70% of consumers trust other customers’ online reviews. In fact, 12 times more trust in online reviews than information from the product itself.

Therefore, if there are customers who review your products online, don’t forget to respond. Especially if the review describes a feeling of dissatisfaction with the product, make sure you ask what makes him unsatisfied or provide clarification if there is a miscommunication during the ordering process.

12. Collaborating with Influencers

Influencers are divided into 2, namely macro and micro. Micro influencers are ordinary people who have less than 10k followers on social media. While macro influencers are people who are already well known, such as artists, athletes, singers, comedians, and others. Usually the followers range from 100 thousand to millions.

For those of you who are just starting a business, start collaborating with micro influencers because macro influencers tend to cost quite a bit, considering their popularity and reach is very wide.

13. Using the referral

program Referral programs allow you to get more customers through promotions that your own customers do. Of course you need to give rewards to customers who do promotions.

14. Be Active in Online Communities

The next Digital Marketing method is being active in online communities. Online communities like Quora, Facebook groups, and Reddit can help you understand potential customers. Find forums that still have something to do with your business and products.

In the forum you can also find the latest trends among consumers, problems that consumers often face, and input for your own business. That way you can improve the quality of your product or service based on reviews from the forum.

15. Go online whatever your business is!

Advantages of Digital Marketing

You can go online even if you start as a small business. With this method, you can even increase the company’s profit because it reduces expenses. The digitization that you apply will cut other marketing costs, such as the cost of printing brochures, banners, or billboards.

For example, you have a veil business. All that is needed is the hood itself, a model (you can do it yourself or ask someone close to you to do it), social media, an application and an online store website that contains a product catalog.