Basics of Digital Marketing – What every internet user must know.

Last Updated on October 20, 2021 by Shivanandana Hegde

Regardless of which field of work you belong to, knowing the basics of digital marketing is crucial in this era. Well, knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or unwillingly, you have been and will be a part of Digital Marketing all your life!.  Oh, you wonder how?

Have you ever thought about the ads which show up on any of the websites you visit? Lately they have mostly been the one’s that you are personally interested in – or – were trying to know more about. Isn’t it?

Is it just a co-incidence? – Or is there some science behind it?

I mean, how can any other website know what you are interested in?

Most basic digital marketingexample :

You wanted to buy a phone and just like anyone else, you tried researching about it. In other words, you started comparing few phones on e-commerce websites etc. Strangely, you also started seeing discounts and offers on mobile phone on every website you go. You may think that it is so common,however, have you observed the brands and budget range on these Ads? If you are searching for a budget phone, you may not see an add of iPhone. – Is that Creepy?

Online Tracking:

Likewise, there could also be cases that you had been chatting about certain product via FB, Whatsapp, Wechat etc.. and you start getting sms/emails regarding the same!.
Now, I am not sure if all this is creepy or not; What I am sure is that – this is ‘you’ being a part of someone else’s Digital Marketing plan!

I have tried to explain the Digital Marketing concepts crisply in the video below: I am assuming that the reader would have some idea of Marketing concepts. If not, no problem, we have Google and Wikipedia to our rescue!! Go through this video to understand basic concept of marketing & digital marketing.

A basic definition of marketing:

Marketing involves planning and execution of activities that intend to understand and solve the customer’s problem, using the products/services and ultimately sell them. Marketing also includes market research and advertising.

Now, let’s define Digital Marketing basics

You might have already guessed that ‘Digital marketing’ means, process of doing ‘marketing’ – ‘Digitally’. ? – Which is totally correct!

If you are digital marketing professional, Kudos! You may already know these. If not, let us see:

5 key benefits of understanding digital marketing basics:

1. Take your business online & enhance digital presence:

   • Almost every business is/will be digital at some point of time. Isn’t it good to know what exactly your digital team is doing in order for you to take your own decisions? Hence, if you know about digital marketing, you will be hitting the head of the nail instead of beating around the bush!

2. Take control of your online presence:

   • Being online is easy these days; but you take one bad decision and it can ruin your complete online strategies. If you are either executioner or decision maker, it is vital to know marketing and digital marketing concepts before you jump in to the sea of markets. It is dangerous to completely rely on tools and technology without knowing the basic concepts by yourselves.

3. Take Data driven decisions:

   • Be it the offers or Ad-designs, targeting a group of customers or sending out a communication, why do you what you do? How to do it more efficiently?
   • The power of digital marketing is the data!. You can record each and everything starting from your activities, success/failure rates and responses to your activities. Tracking revenue and ROI (Return on Investment) is easier than ever. Hence, you can hand-stitch your approach rather than depending on so called ‘proven’ techniques. You can learn from your data.

4. Tackle competition and complexity:

   • Digital world is getting more and more complex just like technology. With addition of so many devices, platforms, channels and tools, it is almost a mandatory for anyone to know what is actually happening in the back-end.

5. Take cost control:

   • When there is limited knowledge in and around, it is obvious that ‘digital agencies’ and ‘digital solution firms’ charge a bomb to get simplest thing done.
   • Entire analytics and Digital marketing is still in it’s infancy. (Yes, even in 2018) Hence, most of the work done by many digital solution providers are neither understood nor as effective as they are advertised.

If you want to further expand your knowledge on Digital marketing, AMA is the leading organization of Marketing and has ample of articles on Digital marketing.

Once you know digital marketing basics and concepts, it is a good idea to check out the following posts:

What is Analytics? –> Understand Digital Analytics in simplest way

Web analytics Basics –> A must know for digital marketers.

BONUS:– What google knows about me? – Things you may not know that Google knows about you!