Digital Marketing is any Marketing Policy that is developed and applied on the Internet. If you do paid advertising in Google Ads, you are in digital marketing. If you are creating a commercial website or virtual store, you are involved in digital marketing.
While digital marketing is present at all stages of the Marketing Plan, companies focus their strategies on advertising marketing, which is a set of efforts for:
- to promote your company, your brand and your products;
- communicate your positioning;
- convince the consumer that their value proposition is the best;
- make sales.
Digital Marketing x Promotion x Positioning
What is the relationship between digital marketing, promotion and positioning?
To promote (distribute) a product, you need someone to communicate with, who is your target audience. A company’s target audience is a group of people, usually quite diverse, but with common geographic, psychographic and consumer characteristics. These characteristics include buying behavior, needs, moral values and psychosocial factors. Based on a common definition of these characteristics, positioning is possible.
It is correct to say that positioning is the basis of communication. If communication and promotion are the same, all advertising work must be position-oriented. Only then will communication have great opportunities to reach the heart of the company’s target audience.
Since digital marketing is created in an advertising connection, it is elementary that positioning determines all company policy on the Internet.
Visual Identification x Person x Tone and Mark Style
There are three elements that need to be defined before thinking about digital marketing, because they will guide all communications.
And visual identity is important for your brand to be recognizable. It helps to differentiate your brand in the minds of the consumer. If you have a clear position and you know what you want to communicate, you just have to give the designer a visual image.
It is worth mentioning that the designer is not the one who creates logos, on the contrary, he is a professional who is able to understand the company’s strategy and to convey it in a visual communication. In addition to a logo, this professional can help in product development, packaging and even in website design.
Every brand has a tone and style, Tone is how it talks to people, so it will be directly related to style. If the style is young and fun, the tone of communication, whether in pictures or in a written message, should be young and independent. If a brand has a bold style, communication should be abandoned.
A person is the third element. You have defined the audience for your product. When communicating with it, you need to understand the basic characteristics that synthesize the profile of that audience, taking into account what people have in common.
It is from this process that a person emerges. This is the character that we have created for the management, which will develop communication campaigns in the company. In other words, everything will be done to convince you. The character is a synthesis of the consumer that we intend to meet with our value proposition.
Website x Virtual Shop x Social Networks x Email Marketing
Once you have determined which elements should be present in your communication (visual identity + personality + brand tone and style), you can already move on to certain digital marketing policies.
The first step is to structure the channels of communication with the public and what role each of them plays in your advertising strategy.
The site is the center of all digital marketing policies. It is the only address for a company where it can use all of its strategies. The site is institutional and commercial. It represents the company, its products and its positioning. It may have mechanisms for the direct purchase of products by the consumer. It can offer free services and interactions. It all depends on the strategy developed.
A shop is actually a site, only structured as a virtual point and sale. It is used in industries, distribution companies, wholesalers and retailers. These are those that have physical products, inventory and delivery structure. Orders are processed electronically.
It is important to repeat that both the website and the virtual store must be fully integrated with the visual brand identity, which must be present in everything that concerns the company. The same premise must be present in the other two communication channels of the company: social networks and mail marketing.
Social networks are interactive channels of communication. Among the main ones we have Yutubili Facebook or Instagram or Twitter about LinkedIn, the choice of social networks used will depend on the business profile and target audience of the company. These are factors that will also determine the type of publication, graphics and frequency.
Postal marketing is the most powerful of all channels because it is direct communication with a person that can be personalized. Above all, this interaction is allowed by the consumer, which allows the company to develop relationships with him or her. Not to mention the fact that it is possible to segment its base by comparing the content delivered by e-mail with the profile of each segment and the stage of purchase where each person is.
Digital Marketing x Purpose x Campaign
If we were at war, we could say that by defining our strategy and our communication channels, we would establish our combat positions.
However, before you can put them into action, you need to know what the battle objectives are. Digital marketing, as an advertising policy tool, serves to promote, provide services, capture potential customers and conduct sales.
Advertising is always the first step. No matter how you do the disclosure, it is the only way your business, your brand and your products will be known. Publication, therefore, means presence.
The provision of services depends on the type of business. If you have a virtual store, it will of course provide a range of services such as online buying and delivery. The service most used today is Content Marketing, Content Marketing Basically, it is an information service about products, services provided by the company, or topics related to your business. At the same time, since it is a service, it is a strategy to attract customers.
Grabbing leads to the importance that you can have an e-marketing policy, there are many ways to do this. Many online stores offer a discount coupon if you accept the newsletter. You can run other types of campaigns, which are ideas with which you can implement your digital marketing policy. These can be outreach, sales, attracting potential customers, research, branding, etc.
Finally, we have a big goal of all this – sales. If this whole process is not transformed into enough sales or sales, something about it is not right.
Campaign x Analysis x Strategic Marketing
The analysis is probably the most difficult part, as several indicators will need to be crossed to answer questions that are specific to the business.
Why aren’t we reaching our target number of potential customers? Have we chosen a bad strategy? Do we overestimate our campaign opportunities?
Why has traffic on our website gone down? Should we invest more in paid advertising? Do we overestimate our ability to attract consumers through content marketing? Is our communication wrong? Is our positioning wrong?
These are some of the questions that indicators will or will not answer. Please note, however, that we can only measure the potential of our overall strategy based on campaign results. This is why it is so important to look at the integrity of communication in all public interactions. Only then will we have integrity in our analysis.
Closing the digital marketing cycle – back to planning
In any case, we have reached the end of the digital marketing cycle. The analysis of the results of each campaign will be transformed into strategic information, which will be Strategic Marketing Planning.
This helps us to prove why we say that strategic planning is a continuous process. It’s like sending a ship out to sea and setting the course to be reached. However, this course and even the destination can be changed during the whole trip. When this happens, the whole structure must adapt to the new route. In the case of Marketing, those who manage this structure to adapt to the new route are strategic marketing planning.