The world of marketing has evolved so much in the last 10 years that paper advertising is slowly becoming redundant and the marketing world is shifting more towards digital platforms. This is great news not just for the consumer but also for small businesses and individual operators. In this exclusive article Vahini Panda, our CEO who has Masters in Ecommerce and is a Digital Marketing guru will share some of her insights with you so you can apply them to yourself or your business.

Marketing is more and more at the fingertips of every individual, it becomes easier for savvy businesses and individuals to reach their core audiences quicker and in a more cost effective and measurable ways.

Let’s see the various ways you can market yourself or your business online. We will divide it into the 3 major streams.

Social media marketing

Search engine marketing

Industry marketing

Social media marketing 

There are many social media apps around, we will look at the major ones.

Facebook: Facebook is a platform where consumers between ages of 21 to 50 come to share, chat and socialise online with their friends. So pretty much it is still a place where income earning people spend a lot of time at. This gives marketers an opportunity to promote their products and services for this demographic. Remember people expect to be entertained on facebook not just sold to as for them this is recreation. So your sales pitch should be soft and engaging without being pushy.

Instagram: This app is the place where most millennials hang out, the demographic is between 14-30 years of age. So as you can see Instagram is very important as slowly the income earners will move on to here. So a presence on instagram is essential to continue to stay relevant. The way you market on instagram is very different to Facebook. It is image based. So some super cool images of your products or story will grab attention. Hashtags are important to grab new audiences. Instagram is for brand building which will convert to sales eventually. If you are a business which sells clothing, accessories, food or anything which has visual appeal Instagram will work wonders for you.

Twitter: Twitter is a fantastic tool to share news, announcements and profile building. It is used by celebrities, larger organisations as their personal voice and for consumers to keep in a touch with their brands, icons etc. If used in the right way it a powerful tool. It is best suited for independent operators whose business is built on their personal name and for large businesses to communicate directly with their customers.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is answer to digital networking in the time starved world of business. Networking is crucial for business development. It is always who you know in the industry which sometimes can make you. A presence on LinkedIn is a must if you want to form relationships business to business. Also for job seekers having a top notch LinkedIn profile helps gets you noticed by the right businesses.

Search engine marketing

The major difference between social media marketing and search engine marketing is that when people are on search engines they are actively looking for a product or service which gets them closer to the conversion funnel. So if your product or service is there when they are looking and fulfils their needs then they will definitely convert into a Sale.

So if you are serious about sales and business growth it’s vital that you market yourself on this channel.

This is a bit more tricky than social media as it’s very important to get it right so you don’t end up wasting money on unnecessary traffic. Before venturing into SEM it’s very important to have a clear knowledge of your market, competitors and customer needs.

Your ads and keywords will be based on this. Research is key to successfully designing campaigns which work for you.

The other very important point to ask yourself is ‘when the customer arrives on your site is your site and business ready ready to handle them? Are you following through with the promise you made in your ad?

If done right SEM has the best return on investment and is completely measurable to the last dollar.

Industry Marketing

This is not spoken about much but marketing in your industry channels will give you an edge over others. This is nothing new, it’s just a Digital version of the old industry magazine advertising. Most leading bodies in your industry have websites where they offer advertising. It will be beneficial for your business to advertise in the relevant sites. As your key audiences are in these sites you are directly targeting them. This makes the probability of a sale so much better.

Again it is important to advertise on your industry’s key body’s digital platforms as this will increase your search engine ranking which in turn will give you targeted audience. As when people are searching for products and services similar to yours you will come up in their search results and when you are listed on sites which are key to your industry it gives you more credibility.

You can also check if any these industry websites have social media platforms where they have a good following. If they do and are offering advertising on it, it is something else to consider.

Hope this article has given you good insight into Digital Marketing, wish you all the success.