The business paradigm is constantly changing as new platforms emerge, and the approach to content distribution changes as well. Digital Marketing is content distribution as the main instrument of impact. Content is created in a wide variety of formats although written content is the most popular, videos, infographics, images, and graphics are also used to attract and engage the audience.
The key focus is on the target audience who can fulfill the objective. It has become imperative to focus on the characteristics and geolocation of people who are looking for solutions that your product and services are capable of providing. Thus digital marketing is a broad-spectrum activity and content flows across various platforms.
Publishing Sites
A number of publishing sites have come up that are membership or criteria based. Most of these sites are run by top-class writers and editors. The subject articles to editorial scrutiny such that quality writeups are published. The readership is not only within the community but the articles are posted on social media feeds. And they are indexed and ranked on the search as well. Thus, the publications find a large readership base, and those in the target audience become regular followers as it suits their purpose.
Popular Social Media
- YouTube
These are the most preferred media for content propagation. While marketers focus on the platform they believe is most frequented by the target audience, most campaigners use all platforms. These platforms operate on a central theme: the feed mechanism. Various factors, especially personal likes and dislikes, govern or shape each feed according to profile characteristics. While using social media, the audience provides a lot of social signals to the platform algorithms and then base preferences that flow down the feed. Thus, in order to impact a target audience, the content should match the preferences of the audience. Posting on social media sites for digital or content marketing requires experience and the requisite content creation skills. Matching content attracts and entices the target persona, creating an affinity with the associated brand, product, or service. Marketers understand the characteristics of users on each platform and weigh the effort required for each accordingly.
Search Engine Optimization
This is another but most popular marketing technique. The whole Internet is abuzz with SEO which is short for search engine optimization. This is a very good technique for gaining organic traffic. But the experience and the skill set required are of a special kind. This practice of ranking a site high on the SERPs has gained a lot of traction recently. However, matching the required metrics to search engine guidelines is complicated, even though Google and other search engines often disclose some guidelines. Experienced webmasters do not guess what makes a site rule the Internet.
Email Marketing
Although the mechanism differs from the above inbound marketing techniques, email marketing is data-driven. Data collection is in the form of email addresses such that they are willing to read your message.
Email marketing, though effective, requires a larger scale effort because only about five percent of messages are opened. Nevertheless, we can effectively send greater and variable content, such as product literature, newsletters, and brochures, directly to potential customers.
Paid Marketing or Search Engine Marketing
While search engine marketing is mostly related to PPCs, advertisements on Social Media are also in the purview since they are considered for search although within their platforms. As a matter of fact, YouTube and Facebook provide stiff competition to Google, although the volume difference is vastly in favor of the latter.
