Digital Marketing Tutorial

This digital marketing tutorial will help you go through different aspects of online marketing like SEO, Social Media Optimization, SMM, SEM, content marketing, etc. Today, digital marketing is a growing technology and one of the booming industries in the world. Many top MNCs are using this to enhance their business. It helps promote their services and products online through social media, e-commerce, emails, etc.

This tutorial will help you learn the best digital marketing tools and skills to become a skilled digital marketer. By gaining digital marketing skills, you can explore multiple job opportunities.
So, let’s dive into this digital marketing tutorial to explore key topics.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is also known as online marketing and is a marketing branch responsible for promoting the business online via the internet, computers, mobile phones, or any digital medium. Digital Marketing is also an approach that meets customer satisfaction with more significant customer interaction and reaches the customer reach rate. The primary goal of digital marketing is to promote the business online by getting the right audience.

If you have any doubts about Digital Marketing, get them clarified by Digital Marketing Industry experts in our Digital Marketing Community!

Why learn Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is a rapidly growing market for companies of different sizes and types focusing on online presence. As a growing and ever-evolving field, there will always be new things to learn and update. It provides multiple job and freelancing offers to individuals as well as business enhancement offers. So. It is worth it to learn digital marketing.

Need for Digital Marketing:

Today, there is a great need for digital marketing in the current business world. It has gained a lot of eminence across the industry. Irrespective of the business or industry you are working in, there is a need for digital marketing to grow and enhance your business. It helps to provide better customer experience and client satisfaction.

You can customize your services & products to satisfy customers and enhance business branding products or services. Many companies, including B2B and B2C, are now using digital marketing to improve their business. It also lowers huge costs and helps companies to grow well.

Become a Digital Marketing Certified expert by learning this Digital Marketing Training in Singapore!

Digital Marketing Applications

Digital Marketing is the only means for a business to connect with multiple clients. It has multiple tools available to carry out different types of tasks. There are many applications of digital marketing, which are as follows:

• SEO Tools
• Content Management Systems (CMS)
• Lead generation tools
• Data Analytics tools
• Creating brand reputation
• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) tools
• Ensuring business existence
• PPC Platforms
• Email Marketing Platforms

Digital marketing mainly helps build brand reputation, ensures the existence of online businesses, provides data analytics, etc. Any business can scale up better using these apps and tools.

Job roles in Digital Marketing:

Digital marketing provides an opportunity to individuals through different job roles. It is a vast subject with many other roles necessary to succeed in digital marketing. Let us briefly review the various roles and responsibilities of the particular digital marketing position.

1. Digital Marketing Executive:

The DM executive is responsible for performing operations like planning, executing, and optimizing the online marketing efforts.

2. Social Media Specialist:

The social media specialist's primary focus is on social media, where he is responsible for creating and publishing content on all the available social media platforms. It would help us in gaining customer engagement and build the right audience.

3. SEO Analyst:

For an SEO analyst, it is possible to work with respect to the SEO and the strategies to be followed to optimize the website and track the traffic.

4. PPC Analyst:

The PPC analyst is responsible for working with Google AdWords, generating the ads, etc.

5. Content Writer:

The content writer is specifically involved in writing the website's content by performing the research analysis based on business requirements.

How do Search Engines work?

Search Engines follow a three-step process that includes crawling, indexing, and ranking. Let us understand each step in the working of search engines.

1. Crawling:

Whenever the user enters a particular query, the search engines browse and search the internet for the relevant content they are searching for. They will closely monitor the code or content for the URL they come across.

2. Indexing:

All the reflecting content will be stored, organized, and indexed in the same. After a page is indexed, it is approved for display on the search engine results page.

3. Ranking:

Once indexing is done, the results will be ranked based on content quality. It means that the pages will be ranked in the order of the most relevant to the least appropriate.

Traditional marketing vs. Digital marketing:

Let us understand the key differences between traditional and digital marketing:

Traditional marketing:

Traditional marketing and brand promotion will help reach the semi-targeted audience using offline Metro advertising like magazines, billboards, newspapers, and direct mail like postcards, SMS, phone calls, etc.

Digital marketing:

Digital marketing is a type of marketing that is relatively reliable on the internet, digital media and platforms, and electronic devices.

Let us have a look at some of the essential points that will make up the traditional marketing and digital marketing debate:

1. End Goal:

Traditional marketing primarily aims to boost sales and revenue by utilizing offline advertisements. Digital marketers do not strive hard for sales and revenue and provide value to the customers, which is one of the most important aspects of running a successful business. Customer satisfaction is the main motto of digital marketing.

2. Communication:

In traditional marketing, there is only one-way communication. Only the marketers will put forth their ideas and strategies in traditional marketing without any motivation from the user. In digital marketing, the primary focus is on customer-brand interaction.

3. Data-driven:

Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing is said to be highly data-driven. With a data-driven approach, digital marketing will improve the scope for customization to attract more business personas.

What is a Domain name?

A domain name refers to the identity of one or more IP addresses. For example, the domain name google.com points to the IP address "74.125.127.147". Domain names are used so that it is easy to remember a name rather than a long string of numbers. It would always be easier to enter a domain name than a long sequence of numbers in the search bar.

A domain name should not exceed sixty-three characters, excluding .com, .net, .org, .edu, etc. The minimum length is one character for a domain, excluding the extensions. It is entered in the URL after the protocol and subdomain.

Role of keywords in Digital Marketing:

In Digital Marketing, keywords are the words or queries the user enters when searching for particular information or a website. Keywords play an essential role in Search Engine Optimization. In simple terms, keywords refer to the topic the users use in these search queries. Keywords are the backbone that will help drive traffic to the website based on the specific words or phrases the user uses. He was referred to as a link between the content provided based on the search engines' search. The keywords could be long-tail keywords and short-tail keywords.

Modules in digital marketing:

Digital marketing is a vast subject that includes different models that have their own objective goals and responsibilities to be worked on. Let me brief you about every model in digital marketing.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

Search Engine Optimization is an approach that will help improve your site's structure and content. It also involves performing some promotional activities that would help increase the traffic and improve the traffic to the website.
Search Engine Optimization, also called SEO in short, has two types.

a) On-Page SEO:

On-page SEO includes measures to be followed within the website to improve the traffic and drive the ranking in the search engine results pages. It involves many website elements like meta tags, technical tags, content quality, internal links, image optimization, sitemap, etc.

b) Off-Page SEO:

Off-page SEO also increases traffic, but it is different from on-page SEO. It generally deals with various factors that control the website. Some SEO factors that would help optimize the website are guest posting, forum submission, article submission, directory submission, video submissions, image submission, etc.

2. Social Media Optimization:

SMO is also an approach that would help improve the website's ranking through social media. These include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google +, etc. It refers to the approach allowing the sites to offer an online platform to help them interact with other people and create social networks globally. Some social media platforms that help in optimization are Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Pinterest.

3. Search Engine Marketing:

SEM is an approach that is different from SEO and social media optimization. You need to pay the search engines for marketing your product and find it on the search engine results pages. It could be anything like Google. SEM examples include PPC (pay-per-click).

4. Email Marketing:

Email marketing is one of the most common profitable means of marketing, and it helps send commercial messages to a list of people or a group of people who are potential customers for your business. It refers to using emails for services via email platforms and also helps build relationships among clients.

5. Affiliate Marketing:

Affiliate marketing, also called digital marketing, will help earn a commission for marketing the products and services of a company or a seller on the website. Here, the affiliate is a person who receives the Commission after selling the product. It establishes the relationship between the publisher, consumer, and advertiser.

6. Content Marketing:

Content marketing is one of the most popular approaches or modules these days. It involves writing the website's content, publishing it without any errors or mistakes, and having it linked with other websites. Internal or external links to the website will help improve the website traffic.

7. Google Analytics:

Google Analytics (GA) is a web analytics service offered by Google that helps track and report website traffic. GA is free of cost, a software that will help gain insights and suggestions that will help improve the Strategies and shape the business efficiently.

8. Website Designing:

The website is the most important aspect of digital marketing, and it is a representation of your business. All the users or customers will visit the website and complete the goal by placing an order or clicking the links.

9. YouTube Marketing:

YouTube marketing is an approach where you target customers to reach the right customer audience by utilizing video options or video ads, etc. It would help improve the traffic and drive your website to a higher ranking.

Advantages and disadvantages of Digital Marketing:

The main advantage of digital marketing is that you will need a target audience to reach the targets cost-effectively and measurably. It also includes brand loyalty.

Benefits of Digital marketing:

1. Low cost:

Digital marketing has developed a plan and targeted digital marketing campaigns to help reach the right customers at a lower price than traditional marketing methods.

2. Personalization:

If the database is linked to your website, you can personalize and greet the user whenever he visits the website. You can refine the customer profile based on their purchase analysis or purchase profile.

3. Openness:

Digital Marketing is involved in social media and management. It also provides a way to build customer loyalty and create a reputation for easy engagement.

4. Trackable and measurable results:

Digital Marketing also involves measuring online marketing with online metric tools and web analytics to analyze and understand how the campaigns have to be effective.

5. Improved conversion rates:

If the business holds a website, then the customers will be just a few clicks away from purchasing. Unlike other social media that require people to make a phone call or go to a shop, digital marketing is immediate.

6. Social currency:

Digital marketing helps you engage and manage all the different campaigns using marketing tactics. The content could be image videos or articles that can help gain social currency that can be passed from one user to another and become viral using the different social media platforms.

Disadvantages of digital marketing:

There are some set of downsides and challenges in the digital marketing field. You need to be aware of these as well:

1. Time consuming:

The process of optimizing online advertising campaigns and creating marketing content is a time-consuming process that requires more time. It is also essential to measure the results to ensure a return on investment.

2. Complaints and feedback:

All feedback on the complaints that are native to the brand's organization will be visible to the audience through reviews or social media websites. It isn't easy to carry out efficient customer service online. However, negative comments will damage the reputation of the brand or business.

3. Skills and training:

We need to ensure that we have the right knowledge about digital marketing and the right experience and expertise to carry out digital marketing successfully.

4. Security and privacy issues:

We need to be aware that there are many legal considerations involved in collecting and using customer data for Digital Marketing purposes. We need to ensure that we follow the rules regarding privacy and data protection.

5. High competition:

There will be high competition when you try to reach a global audience through digital marketing. It has become a challenge to stand out from the other competitors and grab your website’s attention.

How to become a digital marketer?

To become a successful digital marketer, you need to have the skills that a digital marketer should possess. There are specific roles and responsibilities to be followed, and an individual has to gain expertise in the different aspects of digital marketing to become a digital marketer.

Some of the essential skills that are required to become a digital marketer are:
1. An individual should know no or know how to work on WordPress.
2. They should have a specific marketing channel expertise.
3. The individual should be responsible for working, executing, and analyzing the different marketing campaigns and having expertise working on the digital marketing campaigns.
4. Always have the upper Hand in knowing the latest updates about the technologies.
5. They should have the capabilities and abilities to explain the product and sell it.

Now, let us discuss SEM or Search Engine Marketing in this tutorial.

What is Search Engine Marketing?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the way to acquire an online market by buying ads on search engines such as Yahoo, Google, or Bing. SEM includes the advancement of sites by expanding their permeability in Search Engine Result Pages (SERP). The web indexes use calculations to give the most applicable outcomes to each client.

Search marketing works with two methodologies:

• Acquiring traffic through unpaid or free search postings (SEO Methods)
• Purchasing traffic through paid inquiry postings (PPC Ads)

In the primary sort of search marketing, where sponsors procure traffic through unpaid listings, there are two famous techniques: organic and non-organic search.

1. Organic SEO

• It requires some time to think more about content creation, hyperlink creation, meta-label improvement, keyword upgrade, etc.
• It yields a late effect.
• It centers around long-haul results.
• It is inexpensive.
• They can't be influenced monetarily.

2. Non Organic SEO

• It is expedient.
• It brings prompt impact.
• It centers around momentary outcomes.
• It is very expensive.
• They can be influenced monetarily.
• It needs a serious level of management.

Become an SEM Certified professional by taking this HKR SEM Training course!

Why SEM?

Using SEM, brands pay for advertisements to show up as search lists on search engine results pages (SERPs). They usually target chosen catchphrases, so when a client looks for those terms, they view an advertisement from the brand. If a client taps on the ad, the brand is charged. Paid search promotions can be found on practically any indexed list page. These paid arrangements are ordinarily situated at the top and lower part of the page. They include an "ad" option to tell clients that it is a paid one.

Top 15 frequently asked SEM Interview Questions!

Let us move forward to understand social media marketing.

What is Social Media?

It is a popular way of electronic communication that helps to design our sites for online communication. It is used to share content like ideas, experiences, videos, images, etc., with friends, families, business partners, and customers. Social media is a communication builder between users, retailers, and marketers, and it maintains three kinds of classification tools.

• Social publishing
• Social networking
• Photo-based social networking

Become an SMM Certified professional by learning HKR's SMM Training!

What is Social Media Marketing?

It is a platform that helps us in business presentations for customers, through which we can develop and promote our business, which increases traffic for websites, engagement of users and awareness of brands. It helps to achieve the aims of marketing by using different content forms for various social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Linkedin, X, Instagram, etc.

Why is Social Media Marketing important for the business?

SMM is a simple way to connect with a huge number of customers. In the present day, almost 3.8 million people utilize social media.
In 2024, it is the best way to reach the users for a long time. They are becoming essential for sales development and promotion. Over 50% of netizens use social media for goods and products research to purchase them after knowing the details, and 12% of users are ready to buy online from social media, such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Social Media Marketing tools

SMM is a kind of internet marketing that maintains various techniques that consider SMM as the platform to develop our business. Its platforms are Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. Helps to promote our business sales: The following are some essential tools of SMM.

• Buffer: It is an essential application of software that maintains scheduling platforms on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
• Hootsuite: It began in 2008 as a tool of social media used for publication. With this, we have the reports to send messages through email.
• Facebook Power Editor: SMM tools that help run more ads and design the target audience to produce images for our campaign.
• Google Analytics: The SMM tool is mostly used for statistics services, and it provides free basic versions.
• Bitly: It is a popular SMM tool for URL shortening.
• Social mention: One of the best SMM tools that enables customers for product performance measuring and trapping.

So, this is all about Social Media Marketing and its various aspects. Now, let us move forward and learn about social media optimization.

Overview of SMO

SMO represents Social Media Optimization. It alludes to all procedures that assist in producing exposure for your site by utilizing diverse web-based media platforms. You can perform different functions through social media. For example, you can partake in conversations, share your musings, and make your page to advance your business. It permits you to utilize web-based media posts to drive focused traffic. It also enables you to construct a social network and connect with individuals and your clients.

To gain in-depth knowledge with practical experience, then explore SMO Training

Advantages Of SMO

• With dynamic social profiles, you can rapidly refresh your audience on any new item or administration you are advertising.
• SMO aids you in completing an extraordinary number of traffic coordinated to your site via social media platforms.
• It encourages you to publicize to either an extremely chosen/restricted audience or a wide crowd.
• SMO guarantees that you have a solid presence in search engines.
• SMO can assist you with creating leads. When you tap into online media channels, it changes lead generation crusades.
• Online media has ended up being an incredible part of ads for your business and brand.

So, you understood all the concepts of SMO well. Now, let us move further and understand SEO in Digital Marketing.

What is SEO, and why is it important?

SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It is the capability of increasing both the quality and quantity of the website traffic so as to expose the brand identity to the global market with the help of organic search engine results.
It is a process aimed at optimizing the search engine website. It allows websites to obtain a higher ranking in search engine results as people search for keywords relevant to their goods and services.

Search Engine Basics:

Search engines are communication machines. They search billions of content and analyze thousands of parameters to decide which data is most inclined to answer your question.

Search engines accomplish everything by finding and analyzing all accessible content on the Web through a method known as "crawling and indexing" and then evaluating how often the query suits the process referred to as "ranking."

Organic search results are those that are created by an effective SEO. Nowadays, search engine results pages, also referred to as "SERPs", are packed with many more ads and more complex organic results types than what we've seen before.

Why SEO is important:

Although paid ads, social media, and other online platforms may increase traffic to websites, the majority of online traffic is powered by search engines. Organic search results consume more web real estate, seem more trustworthy to savvy searchers, and receive more clicks than paid advertising. For example, if you consider all US searches, only about 2.8% of people click on paid advertisements.

SEO is also one of the few online marketing platforms that can continue to pay returns on investment when properly set up.

White Hat and Black Hat SEO:

If the SEO is performed in line with the guidelines, it is called the White Hat SEO, and if it is performed without abiding by the rules, it is called the Black Hat SEO. So, essentially, there are two SEO types:

White hat SEO uses some approved SEO techniques to improve the performance of the website. Unlike the Black Hat SEO, it focuses primarily on the human audience as opposed to the search engine. People looking for long-term investment in their websites rely on SEO white hat techniques. Examples of White Hat SEO include quality content, internal links, link building, web optimization, SMM, Google Ads, etc.

Black hat SEO relies primarily on search engines and not on human audiences. People who are looking for a fast financial return on their website rather than a long-term investment are using black hat SEO techniques. Sometimes, it will offer quick results, but only for a short time, and over time, it can have the opposite impact. Hence, it can degrade your ranking and get you blocked by search engines. Examples of Black Hat SEO include keyword stuffing, duplicate information, cloaking, hiding contents, etc.

How do search engines work?

In order to appear in the search results, the content must first be available to the search engines. It's the most critical part of the SEO puzzle: if your site can't be identified, there's no chance you'll ever turn up in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).
To know how search engines work, you first need to know the three basic primary functions of search engines. They are Crawling, indexing, and ranking.

• Crawling: Browse the Internet for information and look over the code/content for each URL they find.
• Indexing: Store and organize the contents found during the crawling process. When a page is in the database, it will be shown as a result of the related queries.
• Ranking: Provide information that responds best to a searcher's question, which means that the results are sorted from the most relevant to the least appropriate.

Keyword Research:

Keyword research is important for analyzing your target market better and knowing how your belongings, such as content, services, or goods, are being searched for.
Keyword analysis provides you with detailed search data that can help you answer the following questions:

• What kind of things are people interested in and searching for?
• How many people are searching for a particular thing?
• In what format are they interested in viewing that information, like audio, video blog posts, etc?
• Here, we are going to learn important tips and tactics that are required to build strong and quality content for web users.
• Before doing keyword research, you need to know your customers' or visitors' data, such as who they are, their goals, interests, region, age group, etc.
• Do you know what terms people are searching for? Definitely not because you are familiar with the content and the things we used, but not because of your audience.

Analyzing the competitor’s Websites:

Competition website research is an essential aspect of SEO search and analysis. By reviewing the websites of rivals, you can get ideas to develop your online marketing strategy.
There is a range of competitor analysis tools designed to equate the website's search friendliness with the websites of its rivals. These tools are focused on different SEO metrics.

SWOT analysis for the website:

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This analysis helps in determining the present and future estimates of any business or any website.
After you have defined your goals and objectives, you can start with the following SWOT analysis measures.

Strengths

They refer to the advantages that are not available to your competitors. These strengths help you gain confidence and achieve greater results than other similar niches. Quick setup, user-friendly design, relevance and quality, and more engaging are the strengths of your website.

Weakness

It represents or slows down your website when compared to that of similar niche competitor websites. The weakness of the website will prevent you from achieving your desired goals and objectives. Just go through the competitor websites. If they represent the weaknesses in a better way, then follow them to improve your website.

Opportunities

They are related to external factors that improve website performance. It relates to the use of the most prominent technology in your website to achieve outstanding performance and a user-friendly environment.

Threats

They refer to some external factors that deviate you from achieving goals and objectives. These threats are beyond your control; if you neglect your website, progress will be down. Some common threats related to websites are software privacy, changing customer demands and needs, unfavorable government rules, fraudulent activities, etc.

Choosing the right keywords for your website:

Keywords are phrases used by people in search engines to locate the information they seek. Related keywords and phrases help improve profitable traffic to your website.

So, if you're looking for the right keywords and phrases, keep the following points in mind.
Using Long Tail Keywords typically refers to the phrases of 3 to 5 sentences. Such keywords are considered suitable for SEO, as people at the buying stage prefer to use longer phrases to search for goods or services. Long sentences are often found to be less competitive than shorter keywords and help you draw targeted traffic.

Latent semantic indexing incorporates the related terms along with main keyword phrases. If the search engine sheets some semantic words on your page, then Google assumes you are more relevant and authenticated.

Tools for Keyword Research:

Keywords are important elements to consider for effective SEO. Keyword research gives you important keywords that allow your websites to rank higher in search results. Thus, keyword research can be regarded as the basis of SEO.
A variety of resources are available for keyword analysis. Some common resources are listed below:

• Google Trends
• Keyword Spy
• Keyword Discovery
• Google Keyword Planner
• Semrush

On-Page Optimization:

On-page optimization leads to all actions taken by SEOs on the website to boost the ranking of the blog on the search engine results pages (SERPs). These measures relate to content and the HTML source code of a website, e.g. meta tags, keyword placement and keyword density, including the technical setup, content and user-friendliness of the site. So, the optimization variables on the page are linked to the elements of your website.

So, by doing on-page SEO, you can easily control all the elements of your website at your fingertips.

Google Data Studio

Today, every digital marketer uses GDS for data analysis. It is one of the best web-based data visualization tools that helps users create personalized dashboards and reports easily.
Some of the most prominent on-page SEO factors include:

SEO page title:

Your title will specify and tell more to search engines and content users. So, it should be structured properly.

SEO Meta-Description Tag:

Meta description acts as an important element, i.e. snippets of your page that appear below the URL of your page. It should contain the most engaging keywords and relevant content for users and search engines.

Place the keywords in the H1 heading:

For your content to get a higher ranking on the search engines, place SEO keywords in your H1 headings.
Make sure to use a canonical tag when you are using two URLs with similar content.
Currently, most users search for long content with detailed explanations about the topics. So, elaborate and prepare the lengthy topics. Also, you need to focus on optimizing images, internal link building, inserting keywords in URLs, sitemaps, etc. Moreover, it should be mobile-friendly as more than 50% of the global population uses mobiles to search and explore things online.

Off-page SEO:

Off-page SEO is a technique that is to be performed outside of the website to improve the rankings of the website on the SERPs. Compared with on-page SEO, it does not directly deal with the website's content. So, off-page SEO is not under the control of the website owner.

Off-page optimization is as important as on-page optimization for the website to rank higher. For doing off-page SEO for your website, there are three links: natural, built, and created links.
To attain the best local SEO-optimized ranking, go for Google My Business.

Tracking the SEO performance of the website:

You have learned about the on and off-page SEO techniques; after applying those techniques, you need to evaluate and track the performance of your website.
If you measure the performance of your work, when something goes wrong, you can easily identify and rectify it. First, set goals for your business and share them with others to achieve them quickly.
Here are some SEO metrics you need to measure to reach your set goals on time. They are:

Engagement Metrics:

Just check how people are behaving and respond when they reach your website.

Conversion rates:

Conversion rates are the number of conversions divided by the number of unique visits. It helps to know the return on investment (ROI).

• Check how long people stay on your page.
• Also, check how many pages the visors are looking at per visit.
• You need to check the bounce rate, i.e. many people visit the website but leave without browsing any feature.

Conclusion:

Hence, you have gone through the overall digital marketing concepts like SEO, SMO, SMM, SEM, etc. Learning these digital marketing skills can enhance your career in a better way. You can explore various job offers like SEO Analyst, Digital Marketing Manager, SMO Specialist, etc. Digital marketing is growing rapidly, and today’s business entities need to stay connected with customers and satisfy them. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you are looking to begin your career as a digital marketer, then visit the HKR Trainings website to explore various courses.