Digital marketing is often referred to as 'online marketing' 'internet marketing' or 'web marketing'. Online marketing is becoming a hot topic in every business sector, and gradually plays a truly important role in any company’s multi-channel marketing strategy.
It uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. It nincludes email marketing, search engine marketing, social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising. Like other advertising media, online advertising frequently involves both a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher's content.
Tools of Online marketing :
Display advertising - Display advertising conveys its advertising message visually using text, logos, animations, videos, photographs, or other graphics. Display advertisers frequently target users with particular traits to increase the ads' effect.
Web banner advertising - Web banners or banner ads typically are graphical ads displayed within a web page. Banner ads can use rich media to incorporate video, audio, animations, buttons, forms, or other interactive elements using Java applets,
HTML5, Adobe Flash, and other programs.
Frame ad (traditional banner) - Frame ads were the first form of web banners. The colloquial usage of "banner ads" often refers to traditional frame ads. Website publishers incorporate frame ads by setting aside a particular space on the web page. Pop-ups/pop-unders - A pop-up ad is displayed in a new web browser window that opens above a website visitor's initial browser window. A pop-under ad opens a new browser window under a website visitor's initial browser window.
Floating ad - A floating ad, or overlay ad, is a type of rich media advertisement that appears superimposed over the requested website's content. Floating ads may disappear or become less obtrusive after a preset time period.
Expanding ad - An expanding ad is a rich media frame ad that changes dimensions upon a predefined condition, such as a preset amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage, the user's click on the ad, or the user's mouse movement over the ad.
Expanding ads allow advertisers to fit more information into a restricted ad space.
Interstitial ad - An interstitial ad displays before a user can access requested content,sometimes while the user is waiting for the content to load. Interstitial ads are a form of interruption marketing.
Text ads - A text ad displays text-based hyperlinks. Text-based ads may display separately from a web page's primary content, or they can be embedded by hyperlinking individual words or phrases to advertiser's websites. Text ads may also be delivered through email marketing or text message marketing.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is designed to increase a website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). Search engines provide sponsored results and organic (non-sponsored) results based on a web searcher's query. Search engines often employ visual cues to differentiate sponsored results from organic results. Search engine marketing includes all of an advertiser's actions to make a website's listing more prominent for topical keywords.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) -Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, attempts to improve a website's organic search rankings in SERPs by increasing the website content's relevance to search terms. Search engines regularly update their algorithms to penalize poor quality sites that try to game their rankings, making optimization a moving target for advertisers. Many vendors offer SEO services.
Sponsored search - Sponsored search (also called sponsored links or search ads) allows advertisers to be included in the sponsored results of a search for selected keywords. Search ads are often sold via real-time auctions, where advertisers bid on
keywords.
Social media marketing - Social media marketing is commercial promotion conducted through social media websites. Many companies promote their products by posting frequent updates and providing special offers through their social media
profiles.
Mobile Advertising - Mobile advertising is ad copy delivered through wireless mobile devices such as smartphones, feature phones, or tablet computers. Mobile advertising may take the form of static or rich media display ads, SMS (Short Message Service) or MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) ads, mobile search ads, advertising within mobile websites, or ads within mobile applications or games (such as interstitial ads, “advergaming,” or application sponsorship).
Email Advertising - Email advertising is ad copy comprising an entire email or a portion of an email message. Email marketing may be unsolicited, in which case the sender may give the recipient an option to opt-out of future emails, or it may be sent
with the recipient's prior consent (opt-in).
Benefits of Online marketing :
Internet gives you a wide access of your potential customers. It has been
estimated that a couple of billion people around the world use the Internet, and
more are becoming aware of Internet with each passing day. So, marketing
your business to such a large group of people is only possible through Internet.
Internet is the only medium that is able to cross geographic and national
boundaries.
The cost of promoting your business on the Internet is cheaper than other
mediums of marketing. This makes it easy for small and mid-sized businesses
to advertise their products.
Internet allows the ability to stay connected with customers on a real-time
basis. If any discount going on, then it is easier to send an email to customers
and they can buy the product instantly. Internet also allows to send multiple
messages at the same time, which saves the tedious task of sending a
newsletter to every client.
Internet marketing facilitates an instant feedback from the customers.
Customers can share about their experience after using the product.
Internet marketing saves a lot of time and effort. Instead of having a customer
service representative to answer the queries of customers, one can put all the
information about the product or service on the Internet so that customers can
go through it. The most common way of doing it is to have a section dedicated
to frequently asked questions (FAQs) about the product so that customers get
all the required information about the product or the service.
Internet marketing allows your business to be available 24/7, which means
increased sales and profit.