What is digital marketing? What are its benefits? And how can you succeed with it? As part of this guide to digital marketing for beginners, I will break it down into pieces so you can understand it better. 

My goal in this guide is to break down digital marketing for beginners in 2022 so you can amp up your voice or brand image in no time.

The term digital marketing is not new, but it’s a trending buzzword. The first public transmission of wireless signals happened in 1896 with radio.

That is exactly what the digital marketing industry is about. It uses wireless signals, which makes it different from traditional marketing.

A lot of people have misconceptions about digital marketing. There are people who think that online and digital marketing are the same, which is incorrect.

Online marketing only involves internet connectivity, whereas digital marketing involves transferring digital signals as well. 

In other words, billboards, radios, and televisions are also forms of digital marketing. Did you not know that? Well, you’re not alone. Now let’s crack a few more myths. Sounds good? Then let’s get started! 

What is Digital Marketing? 

The concept of digital marketing is as old as radio. It’s a method of marketing that involves using digital signals to communicate with customers, visitors, or readers.

Particularly in recent years, digital marketing has evolved a lot. 

“Digital marketing is a pattern of marketing that is delivered through digital channels or electronic devices such as radio, television, search engines, websites, and social media.”

Modern-day digital marketing has a wide range of channels as you can see. We now see tons of apps, websites, and digital services being launched every day.

According to Think with Google, 48% of customers begin their searches on search engines.  

This is just one channel of digital marketing. From email to social media and from PPC to radio, you have a wide range of options for marketing your brand and website digitally.

Let’s talk about why you or your business should invest in digital marketing.

Why Digital Marketing?

Businesses around the world need to increase sales, leads, and profits. In order to do so, they need to adopt new marketing strategies. Digital marketing is an old concept.

However, there were not many channels available back then. Things have changed since then. This has led to shifts in business strategies. 

Google and social media platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, generate more revenue than any traditional media agency. Why is that? Those platforms get a lot more eyeballs.

And that is why digital marketing is so important without a doubt. However, you ought to know more about it.

• Your Customers or Readers Are Online

There are over 4.66 billion Internet users in the world today. Nearly 60% of the world’s population uses the Internet.

This number is increasing rapidly. As the current year comes to an end, you’ll see 319 million new users. Consider how powerful it could be to market your product or service to that many people. 

Digital Marketing is insanely affordable with a better ROI (Return on investment)

Nowadays, digital marketing is more like online marketing. The cost of running an online ad is far more affordable than that of a television commercial. For example, a 30-second commercial may cost you $120,000 on a national TV channel.

While creating content and sharing it on social media might only cost a few bucks. However, you may already know this.

With digital marketing, your business can get up and running quickly. And investments in digital marketing yield more return than traditional marketing.

• Your Competitors Are Already Doing It

Every business, no matter how small, uses digital marketing, from McDonald’s to Gucci and from a local shop to an affiliate website.

Regardless of your industry or niche, your competitors are already doing it. Therefore, you are very likely to win the digital marketing game as well. 

The question is, how do you crack it down? First, you need to understand the major categories of digital marketing. Let’s get started!

Breakdown of Digital Marketing:

Digital marketing can be categorized into nine(9) major types. As a beginner, digital marketing is only approachable if you understand how it works and how to break it down.

Let me do it for you. There are 9 major types of digital marketing:

1. Content marketing
2. Search engine optimization
3. Search engine marketing
4. Pay-per-click advertising
5. Social media marketing
6. Email marketing 
7. Mobile marketing 
8. TV & radio marketing
9. Electronic billboards

It is clear from this list that digital marketing isn’t just one area. It offers several options for pulling and pushing your products and services online.

Digital Marketing for Beginners in 2022: The Ultimate Guide

If you wish to be a successful digital marketer, you need to focus on a particular set of areas, not digital marketing as a whole. Does it make sense? Let’s get started now.

1. Content Marketing

The only marketing that has ever existed and will exist forever is content marketing.

Every aspect of marketing revolves around content marketing, from email to social media marketing to on-page search engine optimization (SEO) to electronic billboards. 

Every marketing effort begins with a great piece of content. 

Here’s a myth to bust: content marketing is not just about blogs, videos, or tweets. It involves everything content-related.

Even printed flyers can benefit from the power of content. Content is powerful because it tells a story. And stories are what we all love. Isn’t that right?

Based on the content generated by users, Quora is one of my favorite platforms. You can reach your target audience there.

Here’s a video that I recommend you watch to help your digital marketing efforts on Quora:

Similarly, affiliate marketing is a form of content marketing where you market the content to generate affiliate commissions.

Books, podcasts, videos, white papers, emails, and more are all types of content marketing.

There are several ways to create each of them, but they all follow the same basic process. 

What You Need to Do

1. Determine your goals based on your mission

2. Establish or understand your unique selling point

3. Know your audience and understand its cycle

4. Choose the right type of content for your audience

5. Keep track of your content by creating a calendar

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Now that you understand the power of content, the next thing is to optimize it for search engines like Google.

This is my favorite form of digital marketing because it brings in organic traffic. Additionally, it is more consistent than any other form of marketing. 

Ranking high on search engines like Google or Bing is one of the major goals of a content writer and this involves using best practices for SEO.

To achieve your business objectives, your content must rank for a specific keyword or query. SEO isn’t quick.

A long period of time is needed to enjoy the rewards, but the reward is worth the time. 

What You Need to Do

1. Get to know what your audience is searching for

2. Do your research and pick the right keywords(Keyword Research)

3. Using your keywords, create super-helpful content for your audience

4. Continue to provide powerful content to your visitors and customers

5. Make more efforts to get authority links or mentions back to your business asset

SEO is an ongoing process. It doesn’t have strict rules or a one-and-done strategy. Invest wisely and expect slow returns.

Check out this video if you’re just getting started and need some free SEO tools:

3. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) are similar because both target search engines.

Despite this, there are numerous differences between SEM & SEO. SEO (search engine marketing) is about getting profits through paid advertisements. 

The goal of search engine marketing (SEM) is to achieve maximum visibility in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).

You pay a search engine to display an advertisement for a specific keyword. As a result, your page is now visible above organic search results when people type in a search engine. 

What You Need to Do

1. Research the keywords

2. Establish a bid for every relevant keyword

3. Select only the most profitable keywords

4. Publish loveable content and run ads

5. Enhance CTR with A/B copies

6. Target locations that are relevant for your business

7. Conduct an assessment and analyze the overall performance and strategize on how to maximize the ROI

Make sure you test out different keywords and keep repeating the process to determine which ones will be most profitable for you. 

The Pay Per Click or PPC works similarly to SEM since both use ‘paid’ advertising, typically on search engines.  

4. Social Media Marketing

Sure enough, you guessed it right! Basically, it is marketing your business using social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Nowadays, every business has to have a social media presence. Why? Simply because everyone is on social media now. Your customers, your visitors, everyone. 

The choice of which social platform you should use, however, is determined by the type and objectives of your business.

As an example, LinkedIn can be beneficial to you if you are in the B2B (Business to Business) sector. For fashion lovers, Pinterest or Instagram is the way to go.

However, it all depends. You should test and plan properly before you strategize your social media marketing. 

What You Need to Do

1. Understand your audience 

2. Create the kind of content they love

3. Know your competition

4. Engage with your audience 

5. Perform a social media audit and take appropriate action

5. Email Marketing 

In 1978, the first marketing email accumulated $13 million in sales. And the momentum continues. For every dollar you spend on email marketing, you get an average return of $42.

My favorite aspect of email marketing is that you can establish an authentic connection with customers. Take the time today to build a relationship with your subscribers. 

With a customer-centric approach, you can make email marketing more effective. Email marketing isn’t about you or your business; it’s about your customers and readers.

Here are some tips to help you get started.

The first step to generating leads for your brand is prospecting. It isn’t limited to email only but can apply to all marketing forms as well. 

What You Need to Do

1. Define and understand your audience

2. Provide a reason for people to subscribe or sign up (such as a free ebook or some other lead magnet).

3. Build an attractive opt-in form

4. Choose the right type of email campaign

5. Automate your email marketing efforts by choosing an email marketing service

Ensure your copy remains consistent with your voice and brand image. Adding a powerful call to action (CTA) will help you convert more visitors into subscribers.

Test the right time for the opt-in to appear and send the email. Keep the message personalized at all times.

6. Mobile Marketing

All forms of digital marketing that I’ve discussed here are included in mobile marketing. Whether it’s social media or emails, everything now happens on the phone.

Your content must be optimized to be served on mobile phones. 

What You Can Do 

1. Ensure your content is sized properly

2. Consider mobile phone in mind while streaming

3. Provide mobile-responsive ads

4. Make sure your newsletters are optimized, not just the videos and blogs

5. Measure the success of your mobile marketing

7. TV & Radio Marketing

I know you may not be here for this. But let me include television and radio marketing since it’s a form of digital marketing. Furthermore, a radio may refer to podcasts, and a TV may refer to online videos, you know.

For the purposes of this section, I will talk about radio and television. 

Although everyone is online today, you can reach specific audiences by using only TV and radio. Additionally, you can run TV ads midway through your viewers’ streaming televisions. Listed below are a few ways to do this.

What You Can Do

1. Get to know your audience 

2. Ensure that your ads get the audience’s attention

3. Target your TV and radio ads according to your audience’s location

4. Hire a budget-friendly but effective advertising agency

5. Make TV and radio ads more personalized with streaming services

8. Electronic Billboards & Other Digitized Marketing

As a digital medium, electronic billboards are also a form of digital marketing. It’s hard to deny that when you’re on the road, your eyeballs turn into an eye-catching electronic billboard.

You can do a lot of exciting things to boost your profits depending on your audience. 

What You Need to Do

1. Make sure you understand your audience

2. Craft creatives that will attract their attention

3. Take advantage of the power colors

4. Come up with powerful slogans 

5. Select the best location possible 

All right, so there you have it. I have tried to provide the best value to help you as a beginner understand digital marketing. Read on if the guide was too long, and you didn’t read it.

Digital Marketing for Beginners Course & Book Recommendation

Digital Marketing for Dummies by Ryan Deiss and Russ Henneberry

Marketers in every corner of the world will find maximum value in this book on digital marketing for beginners.

You can use these proven strategies to outrank your competition fast with this friendly guide. Get deep into the book for best practices on everything from SEO to SEM to SMM. 

Beginners’ Guide to Digital Marketing in 2022

You can see that this guide to digital marketing for beginners does not focus exclusively on online marketing.

Of course, no one can afford to win over all the digital channels. I also wouldn’t recommend it, since it depends on who your audience is.

We can, however, examine what digital marketing can mean for you:

1. Strategize content marketing and create great content

2. Pay attention to search engine optimization and marketing as well

3. Develop social media strategies as well (as discussed above)

4. Mobile phones should be considered when building a marketing strategy

5. Consider TV and radio ads, as well as electronic billboards based on your audience

The audience is the one thing that all forms of digital marketing have in common.

Under ‘Things You Need to Do’, I identified understanding your audience is a vital step. Why? Simply because it is the only way to successfully market yourself or your business. 

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