Digital Marketing : Importance, Types, History,and Present Status in Nepal

The advent of the internet and growing dependence on technology for a living has changed our lifestyle. Busy working hours make people buy items with a click on an app or website's BUY button. Traditional or Outbound Marketing seems to be losing its aura over Inbound Marketing. Digital Marketing comes along with Inbound Marketing since many get confused with these two. 

What is Digital Marketing then?

According to Hubspot

Digital marketing encompasses all marketing efforts that use an electronic device or the internet. Businesses leverage digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and other websites to connect with current and prospective customers.”

In short, Digital Marketing is to get on online platforms and sell your product or service using various strategies. Many people get confused as they think there lie no differences between Marketing and Branding. Thus to be clear, Digital Marketing is all about increasing brand awareness using pull factors like killer content.

Brief History of Digital Marketing 

Digital Marketing got its introduction to the world in the 1980s. The 2000s introduced LinkedIn, Facebook, G-mail Youtube, Twitter, Smartphones, Groupon, which connected people quickly and strengthened their business. The 2010s gave us Snapchat, Instagram, and Pinterest. Digital Marketing in these years has achieved lots of improvement and standardization.

 In Nepal, family businesses are led by older generations. The introduction of smartphones among new generations led them to foresee the greater opportunities, challenges, and advantages to go online. Older generations’ international visits (for travel and work) made them realize that online presence is necessary for better sales and revenue. Digital Marketing in Nepal has started taking place after 2010.

 Importance of Digital Marketing

· Digital Marketing works to higher levels of Engagement with Customers.

· Digital Marketing provides Measurable Results using the Data-Driven approach.

· Digital Marketing ensures to reach out and expand to the Target Audience.

· Digital Marketing aims to accentuate brand awareness and brand presence.

· Relying on Digital Marketing means conveying your brand’s message to a larger population with a small budget. This will further yield a greater ROI.

· Using Digital Marketing means having high chances of being viral.

· Says NO to the paper-based advertisement and discourages deforestation. 

Let’s know more about types of Digital Marketing.

· SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Optimizing content and driving organic traffic to directed websites is the essence of SEO. Using SEO means boosting your website’s presence without any paid ads. A healthy and fierce competition to satisfy consumer’s search intent makes SEO easy and insanely difficult at the same time. Companies now hire SEO strategists and analysts who can bring results to the table using various SEO tools.

· SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

SEO takes time to show its magic. Thus companies choose SEM like Google Adwords, PPC, Bing Ads, Yahoo! Gemini, and IgnitionOne to get faster results. Using SEM, companies run ads on desired Internet Browsers (mostly Google) and get displayed on top under a searched keyword or key phrase.

However, relying solely on SEM may backfire on a company. Working on SEO and SEM both can be an effective plan.

· Content Marketing

The overall process of planning, creating, distributing, sharing, and publishing educational, effective, and entertaining content to reach your target audience is Content marketing. For greater brand awareness, increased sales, better reach, precise interactions, and eternal loyalty, content marketing is the best strategy. Infographics, blogs, podcasts, videos, and posts (mostly memes) are used for content marketing.

Brands are extremely cautious about the content they put out as it is the major factor to give them heights or cut off the wings to fly high.

· Social media Marketing

Using Social Media Marketing, you can promote your brand or services in the fastest-growing and evolving social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Telegram, TikTok, Snapchat, and many more. Brands’ presence in social media aims to provide updates and responses to the customers/audience.

A combination of great content and engaged customers makes your brand earn better sales and reputation. We can say that newer Trends in Social Media Marketing in 2021 will be bringing changes in the Trending section and will  make Social Media Marketers highly alert and act instantly.

· Email Marketing

Using Email marketing, companies send messages to groups of people via email. The list of emails can be bought or registered when visitors visit the company's website. These emails consist of the newsletter, commercial messages, advertisements, call for donation, or a call for business opportunities. They also send a personalized transactional email, a promotional email, or free shipping coupons.

 Email marketing is a great way to get visits and revisits to your website or blog. Combining email marketing with social media can help new visitors to connect with your brand. 

· Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing gets an affiliate to earn a certain commission for recommending products or services to their family, friends, or readers circle. Many success stories of small brands and individuals have come out from Affiliate Marketing. To track affiliates, a cookie(small file) is used. This cookie gets stored on the user's computer when an affiliate link is clicked. Then users buy a product that projects that these users were referred to by you(affiliate). Companies should work with affiliate marketers after educating affiliates about their business.

· Influencers and Marketing

An influencer is someone who has a great following in social media handles, especially Instagram and Tiktok. They can be some viral personalities too. In influencer marketing, influencers promote your product or services.

Reports suggest that approximately 40% of people purchased a product online when they saw an influencer using that product. These influencers then narrate the features of the products and subconsciously make their followers buy them. Influencers too invest their time to review or use or narrate genuine and authentic products as their millions of followers are on the stake.

• Viral Marketing

To be viral or gain popularity among a large population worldwide is a must-have tag for some social media users. For that, a content: meme or video or any content should have a large number of views, shares, likes, and forwards. These contents are bold, trending (for that time), and organic. However, content spreading, AKA becoming viral, is entirely up to the audience. Viral campaigns are not a piece of cake. Many brands have tried, but few of them have actually managed to achieve universal reach.

 Digital Agencies condition after COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 compelled many businesses to come to online platforms. These businesses needed support and strategies for growth and sales. Thus, Digital Marketing Agencies' demands have increased. These agencies now help businesses reach out to larger audiences with comparatively lesser investment and great ROI. At present, Many Digital Marketing agencies run their internship campaigns and help interested ones have a stable Digital Marketing career. Digital Marketing Agencies are vigilant to the latest trends and are making customized plans for their clients.

 Among such agencies, Marching Ants are the best digital marketing Nepal that provides secure and brand-specific Digital Marketing solutions. Marching Ants is also providing internship campaigns on Digital Marketing. 

 Summing Up

Digital Marketing helps your business/es to flourish with lesser or limited capital and investment and have a hassle-free check on your competitor's status and moves. Digital Marketing is a cost-effective, easier, and effective medium to enhance brand awareness, brand reputation, and increase sales. Connecting to larger audiences via digital marketing is exciting as well as challenging. Hence, it would help if you choose suitable digital marketing strategies and digital agencies for better performance and results.

Digital Marketing in Nepal