Beth Comstock once said, “you can’t sell anything if you can’t tell anything”

Marketing is one of the most important aspects of a business, and now with social media being the current buzzword for marketing, it has become THE most important aspect of business. The reason behind this being that an average person spends 30% of his productive time on social media with Facebook having a lion’s share of 1.5 billion people logging into it every single day of which 1.39 billion use it on their mobile phones.

The basic process of putting up an advertisement is plain sailing. You set your advertising budget according to your convenience and profit or you can also set a bid, that is the maximum amount that you are willing to pay for your advertisement. Then comes a vital part that is the audience. Set the demographics, such as age, gender, locality and other such preferences to target the right audience. And finally, you design your advertisement according to your choice. It could be a slideshow or text or just pictures. Also, marketing to such a niche set of people requires a lot of analytical data and digital tools such as big data and analytics which are able to predict the consumer pattern and that too at a greater accuracy. Why is it that when we search for some products online, we immediately start getting similar suggestions, egging us to buy them.

With such a huge pool of people looking into Facebook, the number of hits on advertisements are much more than the traditional methods of marketing in print or television. In 2019, it has been observed that over 5 billion people own a phone out of which over half of them own smart phones. of these 2.5 billion+, 1.5 billion are on Facebook, which immediately expands the spectrum of the marketed product and the chances of it being bought or enquired about. Also targeting a specific audience is so much more possible on the basis of likes, dislikes, views, shopping, searches etc. which the consumer may have done. These are approaches which can get us immediate results, and hence making the marketing job easier.

So, in a digital world, using a strong channel like Facebook will yield better and faster results. But there is always a price for a better product. A larger audience is targeted at a shorter and more precise time, which reduces effort and of course time; hence the price for this. As Aldo Gucci said, “quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten”. Paying a good price results in a quality market, and hence a better target audience.

With the number of small scale businesses and start ups being on the rise, it is important to to find customers. Gone are the days of printing advertisements and putting up signs on the road. With nearly over 2.5 billion people using smart phones, the digital market is the place where you should be putting up your advertisements. The target audience increases when you start marketing digitally and this is usually cost effective and measurable. There is also the advantage of effective tracking. With Digital Marketing being of utmost importance, it must also be taken in to account to optimise our cost. Here are a few techniques that can be tried:

1)Organic Leads

Organic leads are those clients who find your firm by seraching for a product on a search engine which is mot by visiting your URL or your site as such. These clients are not aware of the existence of your product, until they search for it online. These are one of the most important and cost effective methods of advertising. The key words strategy should be such that it has a mix of primary keywords along with a list of large scale integration(LSI) keywords. These search engines have also become smarter with the help of AI.

2)Facebook (social commerce)

Facebook has always been around as a platform for social media, but it has only very recently been used as a platform for digital marketing. Facebook with its wide number of users eases the job of finding target clients. Along with its feature of groups and “Live streaming”, it has become a very efficient and effect digital market. Also, it is not a burden on the pocket.

3)Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is when you ask a known personality to endorse your product or brand. Tha main misconception here is that it is typically believed that if a certain personality has tons of followers, he is immediately termed as an influencer. The key word of an influencer is advocacy. If your motives and objectives match those of the influencer, it is perfect. Or else it is a waste of time and money, and ofcourse your product.

4)Voice search

‘okay google!’

‘hey siri!’

with SEO moving to voice search, there has been a drastic change. In a survey, it has been noticed that 2 out of 5 adults use voice search once per day. Also, it has  been predicted that by 202o, over 50% of smartphone users will be using voice search. On top of that, 30% of the web browsing will take place through google home and Alexa.

5)Leverage Video marketing

Video marketing is one of the highest grossing advertisement forms. People prefer watching a video of your product being endorsed versus them reading paragraphs about it. In fact, 4X as many customers would rather watch a video about a product than reading about it. The main focus should be graphics and an easy to understand message.

6)Using landing pages

When a client clicks on your advertisement, where they are sent next either makes or breaks the deal. Matching of messages and consistency is of extreme importance because this proves the relevance of your advertisement. And on top of that, it creates a personalised experience for the client.

7)Optimise your emails

Optimising your emails is very essential as every email affects your brand. Try and cut off all unnecessary information and rationalise the email and send only what is necessary. Also, try and customise it as much as possible for a greater sense of satisfaction and personalisation. Lastly, you should also add an unsubscribe link in your email. Infact it is a legal requirement, but yes, more importantly you also need to know if your customers require your service or no.

In the extremely apt words of Dave Ramsey, “A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went”

Before arriving at the Digital Marketing budgets, one must need to be clear what one is trying to achieve for the company. The more aggressive the goal that the company is trying to achieve the more will be the budget. A budget helps in making a company more strategy oriented. You avoid making impulsive decisions and stick to a certain plan which lies in accordance with your budget.

According to statistical data, 30% of small businesses say that their digital marketing sales will increase considerably. The importance of marketing should be realised because the sales and profit depend upon it. Marketing is the salesman of your product. In order to validate the budget, a typical return on investment(RoI) could be done to establish the viability of the above. This could be done by quantifying the returns which is expected and how that compares against the investment made. For this, you would need to analyse your past record and figure out what worked and what didn’t and invest in areas of high return amd cut on the expenses. This helps in the preparation of an accurate budget. Knowing what worked and what didn’t, and, most importantly, why there was success or failure are vital pieces of the digital marketing puzzle that you’ll need if you want to move forward with your next effort.

The next is one of the biggest component which includes Design & layout, Graphics, visuals, Videography etc. This has to be done using the corporate guidelines and also keeping in mind the target audience. Majorly, for the service sectors, articles and blogs are still used extensively. In the case, a need for writing experts arises. On the other hand, businesses that are more product-based might benefit more from video content. That, of course, is an entirely different skill set, despite the importance of the content itself. So, budgeting would need to account for various other factors that are required in order to make a video.

Then one should look into which social segment are we targeting and which channel ( Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat etc) is more suitable to market your product or services. There are different tools and apps which can help determine the budgets based on the above criteria. Again, the platform that we select depends entirely upon the type of product/service that we are selling. If you’re more of a business-business enterprise you might want to design a budget which would include the costing of creating a sole website that gives details about your business and other factors related to that; but if you;re dealing in the sale and purchase of goods, platforms like social media and influencer marketing would also be highly advisable. This again, changes your budget.

Lastly, you should also look into investing in a good alaytics software that would be able to monitor your results accurately and hence, help you in making minor changes as when required. It also helps you to develop an optimsed and effective budget, which is an asset to the company.