Are you new to the world of Digital Marketing? Are you thinking about how to increase your brand awareness digitally? If this sounds familiar, let’s learn a bit about it and understand how Salesforce Marketing Cloud can support your Digital Marketing journey.
What is Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is the process of leveraging digital mediums to promote business online. It creates an opportunity for marketers to interact with customers and understand them better and build trust. With the ease of access to the Internet nowadays almost everyone is online spending a significant amount of their time on social media platforms. The way people shop and buy really has changed along with it hence we need to meet audiences where they’re already spending time: on the internet. It is therefore vital for all organizations to leverage digital platforms to reach their customers.
Key components of digital marketing include:
Content marketing: Where one can create blogs, videos and case studies about the product so that we can create interest among the audience towards the products.
Search engine optimisation: It’s the process of increasing the visibility of the website in search engines so that traffic is attracted towards our website having contents.
Pay-per click: Is a process in which an advertiser pays a publisher every time an advertisement link is “clicked”.
Social media marketing: Is a way of using social media platforms such as LinkedIn,Youtube, Facebook and Instagram to advertise our products via posts, videos, images and much more.
Email marketing: This is a kind of direct marketing technique used to inform customers, increase brand awareness, and promote specific products and services. Email send may be a transactional email send or a promotional email send that honors customers opt-in.
Mobile Marketing: Optimizing marketing efforts to promote products and services via mobile devices
Affiliate marketing: Means outsourcing to other individuals or companies who will promote our products in return for a commission.
Importance of Digital Marketing
The importance of digital marketing cannot be overstated in today's fast-paced, digitally connected world. Here are some key reasons why digital marketing is crucial for businesses and individuals:
Global Reach: Digital marketing allows businesses to reach a global audience without geographical limitations. With the internet, your brand can be seen by potential customers anywhere in the world.
Targeted Audience: Digital marketing enables precise audience targeting. You can tailor your campaigns to reach specific demographics, interests, behaviors, and even locations, ensuring your message reaches the right people.
Measurable Results: One of the most significant advantages of digital marketing is the ability to track and measure results in real-time. This allows you to analyze the effectiveness of your campaigns and make data-driven decisions for optimization.
Data-Driven Insights: Digital marketing provides access to a wealth of data about your audience's preferences, behaviors, and interactions. This information can help you refine your strategies, create more personalized experiences, and improve customer satisfaction.
Higher Engagement: Through various digital channels like social media, email, and interactive content, you can engage with your audience in meaningful ways. This engagement builds brand loyalty and fosters stronger relationships with customers.
Personalization: Digital marketing allows you to personalize your marketing efforts based on user preferences, purchase history, and interactions. Personalized messages are more likely to resonate with customers and drive conversions.
24/7 Availability: Your online presence is always accessible, allowing customers to interact with your brand at their convenience. This can lead to increased engagement and conversions, even outside regular business hours.
Brand Building: Digital marketing provides various platforms for creating a consistent and compelling brand identity. A strong online presence contributes to brand recognition and equity.
Accessibility: With the rise of mobile devices, people have constant access to the internet. Optimizing your digital marketing strategies for mobile users ensures you're reaching consumers wherever they are.
Adaptability: Digital marketing strategies can be adjusted and optimized on the fly. If a campaign isn't performing as expected, you can modify it in real-time to achieve better results.
What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud and how does it help in the digital marketing approach?
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a digital marketing platform that automates marketing. It's designed to help businesses create, manage, automate and optimize marketing campaigns across various digital channels to engage with their customers and prospects effectively.
Marketing Cloud provides a range of products and features that help businesses build relationships, engage audiences, and drive conversions:
Email Studio: Where one can build customized and personalized emails (in Content Builder) and preview as per customers data, test, and send.
Mobile Studio: Where one can create, send, and monitor SMS and push notifications to engage customers in mobile devices
Social Studio: Used to create, schedule, and monitor social media posts and take advantage of real-time engagement
Advertising Studio: Marketing Cloud Advertising helps companies coordinate campaigns across social, mobile, sales, and customer service.
Marketing Cloud Personalization: Salesforce Personalization (formerly Interaction Studio) empowers marketers to personalize the experience for each individual customer or prospect – in real-time.
Journey Builder: Marketing Cloud’s Journey Builder is a cross-channel campaign planning tool that enables you to design and automate campaigns that guide customers through their journey with a brand. Its foundation is the journey, which is the communication plan you design. Canvas activities tell Journey Builder how to communicate to and direct contacts in the journey.
Automation Studio: Automation Studio is a Marketing Cloud application used to execute multi-step marketing and data management activities on an immediate, triggered, or scheduled basis
Some of the benefits that Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides:
-By combining user data, customer profiles, privacy management, and marketing journeys, Marketing Cloud allows us to build a single customer view for all potential touch points.
-Boost sales by using extensive insights, analysis and reporting to help marketing team to achieve significant sales target
-The platform supports engagement across multiple digital channels, including email, social media, mobile, and advertising which helps us to reach customers where they are most active and responsive
-Allows us to automate marketing activities based on customer behaviors or predefined events. This saves time, ensures timely communication, and enables more efficient campaign management.
-As part of the Salesforce ecosystem, Marketing Cloud benefits from ongoing updates and innovations, ensuring that we have access to the latest tools and features.
In summary, Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers a suite of tools and features that enable businesses to execute targeted, personalized, and data-driven marketing campaigns across multiple channels. By leveraging these capabilities, businesses can enhance their brand awareness efforts and create a lasting impression on their target audience.
Basically these features empower marketers to know, personalize, and engage customers across every touchpoint.
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Sunitha is a Salesforce Marketing Cloud professional having over 9 years of experience guiding business in planning and implementing Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) projects.