Digital marketers need to be flexible, creative, and extremely adept at digital technical skills. Navigating digital marketing entails a full fledge process of planning, setting objectives, creating, implementing and revising. In order to successfully execute a digital marketing campaign, a digital marketer possesses the following:

• A core understanding of the product, it’s USP, and the organizations objectives
• A strong understanding of target audience and how to find them in the vast internet
• In-depth familiarity with digital channels - to see where and how to best target the aforementioned target audience
• Hands-on experience with these channels to effectively target and communicate with the audience
• Communication skills that entail copywriting and design. Often, digital marketers seek the help of specialists in these fields but drive direction and provide a brief.
• Analytical skills that help revisit, revise and optimize
• A hunger to learn and stay up-to-date with digital marketing tools, trends, and changes

Digital Marketing can be of many types:

• Inbound Vs Outbound:

Inbound Marketing or “Pull” Marketing involves creating content, blogs, and email newsletters that people actually wish to read. SEO and paid search help people find this content. If this content is engaging, it helps build a brand’s equity in the reader’s mind and may drive long-term action.

Outbound marketing or “push” marketing is one-way communication designed to push a product to audiences. This includes traditional forms of marketing as well as display advertising and social media advertising.

• Performance Marketing vs Branding

Performance marketing typically constitutes marketing driven to generate sales such as search engine marketing and social media advertising. This will be directly related to acquiring leads and customers and generating revenue.

Branding Marketing is not based on directly selling and is designed to build your brand equity. Examples of digital channels for this are content marketing and social media. These build brand awareness, assist customers, provide valuable information, and build long-term brand connections for the brand.

Popular digital marketing channels include the following:

• SEO

Search engine optimization is the process of gaining organic traffic through improving visibility on search engines. By understanding the way websites are ranked on the SERPs, one can optimize a website’s content to ensure that it ranks well for relevant searches.

• SEM

Search engine marketing is the process of gaining paid traffic through search engines. Google AdWords is the most popular paid search platform and drives audiences with high intent to websites.

• Content Marketing

Content marketing is a long-term strategy of creating and distributing valuable, unique content in order to connect with a clearly defined audience.

• Social Media

Social media marketing is yet another way to connect with current and potential customers. This can be organic through brand handles on channels like Facebook and Instagram or paid through their advertising platforms.

• Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is commission-led marketing - affiliate networks and blogs across the world promote other products and content and earn from subsequent sales.

• Email Marketing

Email marketing or newsletters is marketing by way of keeping your existing customers updated with your brand and its products.

• Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing leverages people with a following or experts that connect with a targeted audience in order to drive revenue for brands.

A digital marketing agency drives results-based marketing strategy, focusing on delivering ROI and helping a brand fulfill its objectives using digital skills and technology. They develop strategies to maximize awareness and acquire leads. Digital agencies need to be fast-paced and balance user-experience with brand perspective.