What is Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing is a smaller segment of Marketing that requires more in-depth knowledge of basic marketing strategies and creativity. Digital Marketing is a concept that is gradually becoming familiar to everyone, especially those who work in Marketing.
Business and Information Technology. Whether you are one of the traditional Marketers or you are a complete newbie looking to learn and go deeper into this Digital field, you should know what difficulties there will be and how to deal with it. better.
If you are considering trying your hand at Digital Marketing, let's join Brandinfo to find out what skills are required and what the job of a Digital marketer is.
This article is a picture of Digital Marketing, dissecting the basic misunderstandings of Marketers about Digital Marketing.

1. What is Digital Marketing?

First let's understand the definition of Digital marketing, which many people are confused about. Or even those who are working on Digital are confused in this somewhat abstract concept. According to Asia Digital Marketing Association: "Digital Marketing is a strategy of using the Internet as a medium for marketing activities and information exchange"
Simply understand Digital Marketing (Digital Marketing) is promotional activities for products/brands to influence customer perception, stimulate their purchasing behavior.
In simpler words, Digital Marketing is a term that refers to the construction of marketing activities using one or more digital media on the Internet.
Digital Marketing emphasizes 3 factors: using digital media, reaching customers in a digital environment and interacting with customers.

2. Who is a Digital Marketer?

Digital Marketer is a person who does Digital related jobs. Typically a Digital Marketer will involve using digital channels to generate leads and build brand awareness.
Based on this, Digital marketers must use measurement tools to find weaknesses and ways to improve performance on these channels. Depending on the operating model of the company, digital marketers can be responsible for the entire digital strategy of the company or focus on just one.
SMEs or Start-ups usually have a specialist or a general manager, whereas in corporations this responsibility can be distributed to a team or even to the various departments involved.
*Expert: An expert here is understood as someone who is responsible for navigating customers related to the goal of increasing brand recognition and trust, ultimately drive purchase intention

3. The main platforms (Platforms) in Digital Marketing

However, each person has a different definition and division of Digital Marketing. But in this article, Brandinfo will introduce you to the main Platforms in Digital Marketing.
Popular digital platforms today include:

• Website (core platform)
• Social media
• Digital Ads (Facebook Ads and Google Ads)
• Search Engines (SEM and SEO)
• Email marketing
• Mobile & Games, Apps

In the popular Digital Platforms, the website is the core and really important platform in Digital Marketing because the business or individual who owns the website is the real boss. The introductory information, products, services, support, advice, contact are presented in the most detailed, clearest and easiest to see way. Visitors to the website are truly valuable assets. Whereas other platforms like Facebook are essentially semi-owned, individuals or businesses only partially own, when facebook changes its algorithm, individuals or businesses have to spend more money on advertising on their platform.
A quality website, search engine optimization (SEO) will create a large number of potential customers to visit and bring very sustainable sales value. Contact consultant here 

4. What is Digital Marketing profession?

Digital Marketing profession is doing marketing (including developing marketing scenarios, planning , implementing and measuring marketing results) in the digital environment mainly. The target audience of Digital Marketing profession is digital.

5. Main channel in Digital Marketing

We often talk about Digital marketing with effective online advertising channels such as Facebook Ads, Google Ads or email marketing campaigns, affiliate marketing but forget that the essence of digital marketing is marketing on digital platforms.

Digital online marketing

Associated with the internet /electronics

Search engine optimization (SEO) : is the process of optimizing your website to be "ranked" higher on the search engine results page, the most common here being Google. Thereby increasing the amount of organic (or free) traffic to your website.

Channels that benefit from SEO include:

• Websites
• Blogs
• Infographics

The optimal methods to bring  quality traffic  to the website, include:

• On-page SEO :  This method of SEO focuses on the content and resources present “on your website”.
  By researching keywords with high search volume, and considering the search intent of these keywords, you can write blogs that answer questions and questions that readers are interested in. From there get higher rankings on the Google search results page. Easier to understand, on-page SEO optimization is optimization in terms of keywords, content and article structure according to SEO standards.
• Off-page SEO :  This type of SEO focuses on activities that take place “off the web” of yours. Specifically, implementing backlinks (links from other pages pointing to your website). The number of websites and the authority of the websites that you get backlinks from have an effect on your ability to rank for the keywords you SEO. Easier to understand off-page SEO optimization, build internal links, backlinks.
• Technical SEO: Focusing mainly on the backend aspects of a website and how a website is coded, technical SEO includes compressing images, structured data, optimizing CSS files to speed up your page load significantly.

This is one of the forms of digital marketing that takes a lot of time and human resources to deploy. Therefore, many businesses consider using SEO services  as a first choice.

Email Marketing : Is an approach, to transmit a commercial message (promoting products/services, information, sales, etc.) to a group of people through email.

Companies today use email marketing technology as a way of communicating with their customers. Email is often used to promote content, announce discounts and events, and direct people to your website.

The types of emails you can send in an email marketing campaign include:

• Subscribe to Blog News
• Emails reminding website visitors that something has been downloaded
• Customer welcome email
• Announcement of promotions for loyal customers
• Tips or useful informational emails to nurture customers

Content Marketing:  A form of marketing based on the creation and promotion of content to increase brand awareness, traffic growth, and lead generation.

Commonly used channels for a content marketing campaign include:

• Blog Post:  Writing and blogging on your business website helps you showcase your business expertise in the industry and generate free organic traffic for your website.
  Implementing this blog will help you increase your ability to convert web visitors into leads for your sales team later on.
• Ebooks:  Ebooks and other types of long-form content help provide knowledge and education to website visitors about a particular niche. At the same time, ebooks help marketers get contact information (leads) of users, help increase the number of potential customers for businesses and nurture and convert them into customers who are likely to buy in the future. future.
• Infographic : The visual images and concise information in the infographic not only attract users through an eye-catching appearance, but also help them visualize what you say more easily.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) : Bring your website to the top of search results by paying for keyword bidding. SEM includes Google Ads, Google Display Network (GDN), Youtube Ads . In other words, SEM is a combination of many marketing methods with the aim of helping your website or content appear more on search engines. 

Social Media Marketing (SMM) : SMM is a marketing activity done on how social media channels promote your business and content on social media channels to increase brand awareness, drive traffic. Access and generate potential customers for your business. Includes everything you can do to do business on your social media channels from Facebook, Instagram, Zalo and LinkedIn, all the places where you stay connected with your customers on the information front.

Channels you can use in Social Media Marketing include:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Snapchat
• Pinterest
• Google+

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) : PPC is a form of appearing on search engines in a paid form to attract traffic to your website. The cost for each time someone clicks on the ad is called CPC (Cost Per Click). With this form, you need to optimize so that the cost per click is minimal.

One of the most popular types of PPC is Google AdWords, which allows you to pay for top positions on Google search results pages for a price based on “per click” of your links.

• Paid ads on Facebook: Paid ads on Facebook  help businesses to upload videos, posts and be posted by Facebook to the newsfeed of the right audience for their products/services.
• Promoted Tweets on Twitter:  With this form, you can pay to have posts appear in the news feeds of a specific audience. From there, achieve the specific goals set by the business such as: increasing website traffic, followers on Twitter, interaction or even downloading the app.
• Sponsored Messages on LinkedIn : Your messages will be sent directly to specific LinkedIn users based on their industry and background.

Affiliate Marketing : is a type of performance based advertising where you get a commission for promoting other people's products or services on your website. In which a distributor called a Publisher will do marketing, attract customers to buy products and use the provider's services. With each successful order, the publisher will receive a commission from the product and service supplier.

Marketing channels include:

• Hosting video ads through the YouTube Partner Program.
• Posts include links where you collaborate on your social networks.

Digital offline marketing

Offline channel associated with electronic equipment /electromechanical energy

About Digital Offline Marketing: are digital marketing channels that do not use the internet: TV, electronic billboards (LED), SMS, digital billboards (including indoor and outdoor)

6. Required Skills of Digital Marketers

6.1. Edit Video

There is a statistic that shows that “In an age where users are surrounded by too much information, our concentration level drops to about 8.25 seconds”. Therefore, it is never easy to attract the attention of online users. Studies have shown that videos increase engagement and generate higher rankings on Google. You don't need to be a video producer but you can learn how to make a basic video. Understanding how to write scripts, use platforms and apps to create videos, and video influencers will be a big plus for you when applying for a digital marketing job.

6.2. SEO & SEM

Search online to navigate digital advertising. You must understand about search engine optimization (SEO) and SEM (search engine marketing) if you want to work in this industry. Don't feel too worried about using the back-end. Understanding the importance of SEO and its application in the industry is even more important. This is the first step of any digital marketing or content management campaign. Understanding how SEO and SEM work and influence a common goal will help you better coordinate with the rest of your digital team without feeling lost or in the wrong place.

6.3. Content Marketing

Content is what attracts and interacts with customers whether it is a website, video, social media or blog. It could be anything that people might be looking for online: whitepapers, case studies, manuals, and a whole lot more. Understanding all aspects of content, how it is created, how it works, and how to best use it will give you an enormous amount of knowledge to know about any role in digital marketing. You also need to learn how content should be used to help your business achieve its goals, including on social media. Depending on the level of work you're looking for in digital marketing, you'll also need to know about content strategy and measurement.

6.4. Data & Data Analytics

Google Analytics is a popular and important tool of digital marketing. You can check the reports, but what's more important is how you use the information you find. Managing a project and applying findings based on customer behavior will help you find better solutions to increase conversions and drive traffic. Collecting and using data is also an extremely important skill because the data collected by the business is like a gold mine. It must be analyzed thoroughly and in-depth to acquire and retain new customers.

6.5. Design Thinking

Customer experience is the key to success on digital platforms. Design thinking is extremely important because it helps businesses understand how to best interact with customers. But first, make sure that your customer's online experience is easy, simple, and effective. That could include online shopping sites, access to information and a few other things your company can offer to customers including personalization apps.

You must have a broader view of the results of what you are doing and anticipate possible problems. You must also suggest improvements based on your predictions and make sure your idea is viable.

6.6. Knowledge of technology

Technology has a huge influence in today's digital age. In order not to get lost in the industry, you must have a clear understanding of the latest technology being updated and how it is being used. Working in an ever-changing industry, you also need to adapt quickly to changing updates and perfect your marketing plan in line with the times. I believe that using technology should not be too difficult for you. No matter where you want to start (or end) in your career, you should know about web coding systems and content management (CMS).

6.7. Understand how to interact

More than anything, you need to understand what the best way to attract customers is. You will need tremendous persuasion to be able to form a campaign to help grow the business. To be able to do that you have to figure out what helped the business get the customers it is today and what drives the commitment and conversion to purchase.

However, the number of followers of your social networking sites is never enough to show the results of your work. You also have to convince people from within. You'll have to convince your team, stakeholders, and especially your boss that they're spending money on what it's worth. Make sure you know everything from SEO to content and technology and feedback from everyone. That's the best way to make your plan go smoothly.

7. Job positions in the Digital Marketing industry

So with all of the above knowledge, what can you do in Digital Marketing? Here are a few career paths you can choose from:

7.1. SEO Manager

With this position, you will develop your skills as an SEO professional to navigate content and improve your company's content across digital platforms. Your input will guide content creators to the right targeting and customer insights. From there, the company's performance on Google and social media will be improved and enhanced.

7.2. Content Marketing Specialist

You will be a content creator with a plan and possibly a strategy to ensure that the company's traffic and Google rankings increase. You will plan for the required content be it video, blog or social media. You can combine with SEO Manager to come up with the most effective set of keywords for content.

7.3. Social Media Manager

A social media manager will focus on scheduling posts, creating posts, and monitoring social media posts. If you notice, there will always be intersections between positions to create an overall digital marketing strategy.

7.4. Marketing Automation Coordinator

This position will work with the effectiveness and results of the marketing campaign. This is a more tech-driven job. You will be exposed to the best software to research and find out important customer behavior. You will also participate in the measurement and statistics when tracking campaign performance.

7.5. Digital Marketing Manager

You will oversee the development of the content strategy and the entire marketing campaign. Your job will involve increasing brand awareness, driving traffic to get new customers. You also have to constantly update technological factors to optimize digital marketing campaigns. You need to analyze the marketing work that has been done to monitor and evaluate the campaign results.

Conclude

What is Digital Marketing? Digital Marketing is a very broad array with many different channels. When you first approach, you should find out an overview of all the channels that Digital currently has and what each of those channels do, what is the purpose? After you have an overview, you can choose an area to focus on first and then gradually expand to other areas. Consider Digital Marketing as a powerful tool of marketing, collaborating with other communication tools to achieve the common goal of all marketing activities. With such a view, you will see Digital Marketing Online and Offline (or other activities) as "each part of the same body". They are not separate but need to be "mixed" ( Marketing mix ) together to create the greatest value.

Entering the Digital Marketing industry, you must be responsive to changes and form a growth mindset. And remember that your campaign cannot be successful without the coordination of all team members. Therefore, teamwork and leadership are also two other equally important skills you need to accumulate during your work.