Digital marketing is leveraging digital technologies, tactics, and channels to connect organizations with existing and prospective customers. It helps businesses grow, in spite of constraints like location, by enabling them to reach a targeted audience. It is a way to influence audiences online – be it through a website, blogs, video content, social media, or partnerships. Digital Marketing is a constantly evolving field and marketers must constantly be up-to-date and informed in order to stay ahead of competitors.

The truly unique thing about digital marketing is that we can reach large audiences as well as niche segments of these audiences without compromising scale. Unlike traditional marketing, we can also track the success of digital campaigns down to revenue, engagement, clicks, leads etc.

When looking for a digital marketing company, look out for the following:

• Do they have a complete suite of services?

  Oftentimes Digital Marketing services are interlinked. You need someone who can deliver all aspects of digital marketing seamlessly – right from ppc campaign management, social media marketing, SEO to website design.

• Do they have an impressive list of clients?

  Chances are if they have clients that you recognize, with testimonials to boot, you can place your money on them.

• Do they have industry recognition?

  There are all kinds of digital experts out there – from the one-man army to a large digital agency. A lot of people have hopped on to the digital marketing bandwagon. But what sets a good agency apart from the others is validation from the industry. A company that is decorated with awards and has case studies to justify them is a safer bet.

• Client satisfaction across the board

  Everyone likes to talk about happy clients. However you would do well to dig deeper. These are some of the things that you need to review before picking a digital marketing company, India or Globally: does the company in question have only 1 or 2 happy customers? Are clients across the board happy with the company? Is the company transparent enough to share its performance honestly with you?

• Best ROI

  Digital marketing can give you the maximum bang for your buck – with considerably less investment than TV, print or outdoors but with phenomenal results.

• Targeted marketing

  The digital medium is the only one that allows you to really filter your audience down to the narrowest demographic and psychographic profiles so there is the least spill over

• Quantify your success

  The digital medium allows you to accurately track, monitor and quantify the success of your campaign with keyword tracking, analytics, CPCs, traffic and analysing likes & followers. Course correction is easier to implement mid-campaign too.

• Digital Marketing can be of many types:

  Inbound Vs Outbound:

  Inbound Marketing or “Pull” Marketing involves creating content, blogs, and email newsletters that people actually wish to read. SEO and paid search help people find this content. If this content is engaging, it helps build a brand’s equity in the reader’s mind and may drive long-term action.

  Outbound marketing or “push” marketing is one-way communication designed to push a product to audiences. This includes traditional forms of marketing as well as display advertising and social media advertising.

  Performance Marketing vs Branding

  Performance marketing typically constitutes marketing driven to generate sales such as search engine marketing and social media advertising. This will be directly related to acquiring leads and customers and generating revenue.

  Branding Marketing is not based on directly sellingand is designed to build your brand equity. Examples of digital channels for this are content marketing and social media. These build brand awareness, assist customers, provide valuable information, and build long-term brand connections for the brand.

Popular digital marketing channels include the following:

SEO

Search engine optimization is the process of gaining organic traffic through improving visibility on search engines. By understanding the way websites are ranked on the SERPs, one can optimize a website’s content to ensure that it ranks well for relevant searches.

SEM

Search engine marketing is the process of gaining paid traffic through search engines. Google AdWords is the most popular paid search platform and drives audiences with high intent to websites.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a long-term strategy of creating and distributing valuable, unique content in order to connect with a clearly defined audience.

Social Media

Social media marketing is yet another way to connect with current and potential customers. This can be organic through brand handles on channels like Facebook and Instagram or paid through their advertising platforms.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is commission-led marketing – affiliate networks and blogs across the world promote other products and content and earn from subsequent sales.

Email Marketing

Email marketing or newsletters is marketing by way of keeping your existing customers updated with your brand and its products.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing leverages people with a following or experts that connect with a targeted audience in order to drive revenue for brands.

A digital marketing agency drives results-based marketing strategy, focusing on delivering ROI and helping a brand fulfill its objectives using digital skills and technology. They develop strategies to maximize awareness and acquire leads. Digital agencies need to be fast-paced and and balance user-experience with brand perspective.