The trend in recent years is for people to spend less time reading newspapers or watching TV commercials. Most of your customers' time is spent on their mobile phone, computer or tablet and that is where you need to communicate with them. If you are a sales manager and you want to bring in customers through your business' front door, a strong presence on digital media is essential. This is particularly true for luxury hotels. They are able to communicate their own brand and services very effectively and also sell rooms via their booking engine, without customers leaving the website.
Digital is a key tool for success in marketing and advertising because unlike other segments each activity can be measured. Once measured, it can be managed. If you're trying to grow your online presence you can do it in-house or outsource it to a digital marketing agency. Understanding the role of digital marketing agencies is vital in helping business managers make smarter choices.
What Is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is the promotion of products and services using electronic devices and/or the internet. It includes various techniques to attract new online customers such as search engine optimisation (SEO), social media marketing (SMM), email marketing, content marketing, blogging and more. Digital marketing allows an organisation to analyse its campaigns, content and strategy to understand what impact it is having.
What Is the Role of Digital in Today's World of Marketing?
The internet connects billions of people around the world and is the backbone of the modern world of communication. Digital marketing allows you to interact effectively with this huge audience and to accurately understand their needs. Tools such as Google Analytics allow you to monitor the success of your business, measure each customer's familiarity with the business, their engagement with your products, the ROI of your campaigns and much more.
Who Works in a Digital Marketing Agency?
Digital marketers are responsible for promoting brand awareness and generating leads through all digital channels - both free (organic) and paid. Digital channels include search engines, company websites, social media, email marketing, corporate blogs and online display advertising. In small companies, one marketer may cover some or all of these strategies. In larger companies (such as Aró) there will be multiple specialists each focusing on just one or two brand's digital channels. Some examples are:
Content Marketing Specialist
A content marketing specialist is someone who creates digital content. This includes text, images, videos, audio, and messages designed to connect with a defined group of people. Content professionals often need to interact with other team members to make certain that the products and campaigns of the company are supported with appropriate and authentic promotional content.
SEO Manager
Search engine optimisation managers work on the planning, design and optimisation of websites to get higher rankings on Google. They use a variety of SEO techniques to increase the level of website traffic e.g keyword analysis and back linking. They work directly with content creators.
Social Media Manager
Social media managers implement the social marketing plan for the company's written and visual content. They can also create content, respond to customers and engage leads. They work across departments to develop a strategy for what content to post on which social network and when. They work with the design team to make projections and memes for their accounts.
Marketing Automation Coordinator
A marketing automation coordinator identifies tactics for improvement using software which helps the whole marketing team understand their customers' behavior and measure the growth of the business.
They manage marketing campaigns, analyse workflow, lead generation, lead nurturing and lead scoring.
Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing - What's the Difference?
These two concepts are nominally similar because both work online and focus on creating digital content for business-consumer (B2C) marketing. In reality they are different types of marketing and work in different ways.
Oubound marketing applies tools and techniques such as SEO, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Pay Per Click (PPC) to initiate leads and proactively inform customers of a product or service. These could be paid promotions such as Google Ads as well as blogs or social media pages.
Inbound marketing creates valuable and relevant content for websites, blogs and other social media which attracts potential customers to contact you because it is tailored to them. This type of marketing does not deal with paid promotions.
How Does Digital Marketing Work?
Digital marketing works for any business in any industry. It works by combining different strategies to drive traffic to your business, identifying your audience's needs and converting a one-time purchaser into a recurrent and loyal customer who will likely advocate for your business. The key to growing an online business is customer retention.
There are two different digital marketing strategies:
B2B Digital Marketing
B2B (business to business) marketing or industry marketing is a set of marketing processes between two different businesses. Its purpose is to get to know your target demographic well and portray your own customer persona to another business. The role of B2B marketing is to attract customers and convert the highest quality leads for your salespeople via your website, your social media such as LinkedIn and supporting digital channels.
B2C Digital Marketing
B2C (business to consumer) marketing is a set of tactics to attract people to your website and convert them to customers without needing to speak to a salesperson. Your digital marketing efforts are likely to be centred around the buyer's journey. The concept is to focus more on customer activities – from the moment they land on your website to the moment they make a purchase.
Aró Digital are experts in all areas of digital marketing. Our strategies are proven to attract more customers for our luxury hotel clients and increase their online revenue.