Digital marketing, or digital media marketing, is a form of advertising that allows for the promotion of brands and products through digital channels like social media, search engines, websites, and more.
A digital marketing strategy is a plan that helps your business achieve specific digital goals through carefully selected online marketing channels such as paid, earned, and owned media.
In many ways, digital marketing is no different than traditional marketing. In both, smart organizations seek to develop mutually beneficial relationships with prospects, leads, and customers.
But digital marketing has replaced most traditional marketing tactics because it's designed to reach today's consumers.
Digital marketing is less about "digital" and more about "marketing," largely because digital marketing has come of age.
Digital marketing isn't magic, and one doesn't need to be a computer whiz to be good at it. If you offer a product or service that the market desires, you can successfully market them in digital channels using the strategies. As a Digital Marketer, my objective is to clear the confusion about the tactics that work and how to use them to grow your business.
There are 4 stages in a successful Digital/ Social cycle:
Listening
Influencing
Networking
Selling
All 4 of these stages are key to reaching social media success. But all of it hinges on Stage:
Social Listening:
Listening gives you the insights you need to perform the other 3 stages well. It helps you develop a strategy that will give you influence, a strong network, and lots of leads and sales.
The key, of course, is to get your information in front of your prospects and customers where they hang out online. For most businesses, that includes one or more of these top social networking sites.
Social Influencing:
At this stage, you aim to lead and direct your followers’ opinions, attitudes, and behaviors. And since you’ve been listening, it’s relatively easy. You already know the trending topics and conversations taking place, so adding your authority voice is the natural next step.
Keep in mind, this stage of the success cycle is influenced by the social listening you did in Stage 1. But the reality is that you’ll continue listening at every stage. In fact, once the cycle is going, you’ll perform every stage every day.
Social Networking:
It’s at this stage of the social cycle that you connect with other influencers and authorities and begin to move the needle.
Social networking is important for all businesses, whether you’re just getting started, scaling, or expanding into new markets.
It may help to think of social networking as a live event—except your interactions are online rather than face-to-face. After all, networking is networking, no matter where (or how) it happens. And it can lead to deep and lasting relationships, both with your followers and potential partners.
Social Selling:
The fourth and final stage of the social success cycle is social selling.
This is where social media marketing gets interesting. Finally, after listening to your prospects, building authority in your space, and establishing a strong network, you can start putting your offers in front of people—and converting them.
Relevant Roles in Digital Marketing:
Once you understand the basics of social media marketing, you need to identify the people who will be responsible for managing your success.
There’s no right answer. It will depend on your organization and goals. But in most cases, you’ll find your best solution in one of these three departments.
Marketing
Marketing and social media integrate so closely, it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. And most marketers are already involved in social media since it gives them the 3 things they need to do their job well:
Customer insights.
Understanding the trends and conversations influencing their prospects.
A powerful channel for disrupting the status quo.
Because they’re already actively participating in social media, marketing professionals could be a good fit for managing/directing your social media efforts.
Sales
Like marketing, successful sales depend on being relevant and current. Salespeople often use social media to engage with prospects, identify talking points, and figure out what matters most to people evaluating their products.
That being the case, someone on your sales team may be a good fit for managing/directing your social media program.
Public Relations
Public relations is another good option for taking responsibility for your social media. PR is all about creating a positive brand perception, and it’s already customer-centric, which makes it social by default.
Social media is about being present and truly engaging with your fans and followers. That’s pretty much the definition of a community manager.
If you already have an active social community, your community manager could be a good fit for taking on your social media efforts. They already create, maintain, and encourage member-to-member relationships. As your social media manager/director, they’ll simply scale those efforts.