What is Digital Marketing?

Almost everyone today owns a smartphone, laptop, and a tablet. With consumers mostly relying on their mobile devices to search information and buy products/ services, it only stands to reason that marketers are supremely interested in reaching customers online – enter the world of digital marketing!

Digital marketing refers to all techniques that businesses use to market their products and services through digital tools such as websites, text, email, social media, eBooks, online ads, YouTube videos, and live streaming services such as Skype and Facebook Live. Digital marketing has become synonymous with the term marketing because almost every aspect of brand promotion involves some aspect of digital media.

Digital marketing has been called different names in the past, such as internet marketing, e-commerce, e-marketing, etc. Today the term connotes an integrated marketing approach.

Popular Digital Marketing Strategies

According to Kevin Green (@KevinMGreen) Executive Director, Marketing at Dell, “The real trick to effective digital marketing is using the right platform /technology /tactic to reach the audience that will buy your product / read your articles / engage with your content.”

In a world where the customer has unlimited choice, digital marketing is helping businesses deliver promotional content that is tailored to the interests and needs to the end user. That’s become possible largely because of the wealth of online data available about customers, as well as big data analytics software that can churn millions of data points into actionable customer insights.

Digital marketing strategies can be divided into push and pull techniques. Push techniques are where the business tries to reach out to client proactively. These include email newsletters and online adverts placed in front of potentially interested customers. Pull techniques are efforts made to draw customers to the business website to make a conversion (such as a sale or register for newsletter). Pull strategies include social media posts, online videos, and free eBooks.

The seven most popular strategies of digital marketing are:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)

• Content marketing

• Social Media Marketing (SMM)

• Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)

• Affiliate marketing

• Email marketing

Email marketing is a powerful digital marketing tool that allows businesses to communicate with customers on a one-on-one basis. For the client, the best part of email marketing is that they get to choose when they want to click and read the email, which makes email marketing one of the more unobtrusive digital marketing tools.

When it comes to digital marketing, content has always been king. The key is to create content that customers want to read, which means writing on topics of interest to them and delivering it in a manner that they will find engaging. For instance, the style of writing will differ for a fashion website compared to a website catering to new moms. But there is a flip side to creating too much content – you end up annoying your customers. Focusing on content quality is as important as content quantity.

Website design plays a crucial role in digital marketing. Most customers like to visit the company’s website, see the quality of the products and services and check out what other customers are saying about it, before they make a purchase. The client’s ability to scan through the relevant information depends on the website design. Customers are fickler than ever before, which means that if they don’t find what they are looking for, they will just as quickly move to another website that does have the information.

In addition to the website layout, website responsiveness or how the site appears on different mobile devices, is super important. In fact, mobile friendly websites rank higher on Google.

Career in Digital Marketing in UAE

Digital Marketing is a vast and dynamic subject. There are so many ways in which digital marketers can reach out to customers, and each of the strategies described above is continuously evolving.

Pinpointing which digital marketing tool will be most useful for a business and identifying the base of potential customers to be targeted, is a challenge that faces every digital marketer. While digital marketing is a science that is best learnt in the real world i.e. by working for clients, the core competencies of being a digital marketer must be learnt.

If you too want to be part of this exciting 21st-century industry, there are several places in the UAE to get started. DM3 Institute offers a professional diploma in digital marketing, as well as a certificate program in social media marketing. Cambridge Marketing College – UAE and Academy of Digtial Marketing offer distance learning qualifications in Digital Marketing for students in the UAE.

SEO International conducts short three-day digital marketing and social media courses in Dubai. It would be a good place to get acquainted with digital marketing to help you decide if this is something you want to pursue.

As an aspiring digital marketer in UAE, focus on building a strong online presence. Today employers hire basis the amount of information they can find on an individual, and for someone looking for a job in digital marketing, a strong online presence can be the differentiator. Create your website and blog about things that you are passionate about. Build an audience of followers. Use social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn to drive people to your website. Follow popular blogs on digital marketing to familiarise yourself with the industry trends. Attend direct marketing events and conferences held in your city to build your professional network.

Every business needs an online presence and that is good news for digital marketers looking for work. According to Pay Scale a Digital Marketing Manager in Dubai earns an average salary of AED 183,197 per year.

As a trained digital marketer in UAE you can work as content strategist, social media specialist, SEO expert/ PPC/ and Google Analytics specialist, manager digital marketing, digital marketing coordinator, web development specialist and so on. Digital marketing offers a lot of scope of working as a freelancer and becoming an entrepreneur.