So before we dive in the advantages; first things first, what is digital marketing? Digital Marketing is basically what you would call “modern marketing” since everything is getting digitized in today’s world. Digital marketing in terms of a layman’s definition refers to advertising or promoting products or services delivered through digital channels such as the internet, search engines, websites, social media, email, and mobile apps. Now that we know what it is, let’s compare traditional marketing with digital marketing.

We all know that traditional marketing is an expensive business and costs a fortune just to get your product or service across to the target audience. Small businesses face budget issues due to this and thus face failure in marketing and promotions. Whereas digital marketing costs a lot less and targets a lot more. You can easily get your message across via email or social media marketing by just paying a few bucks and reach thousands of people. You do not need to go through the hassle of traditional marketing or door to door services.

The other great advantage is obviously is a huge return on investment. Obviously that’s the main thing that matters! The return on small investments is quite substantial when it comes to digital marketing. Also the great thing is that the results can easily be monitored and modified rather than traditional marketing methods where you have to wait for weeks or months to get the findings and plan your next move. In digital marketing it is easy to evaluate the veracity of a campaign and you can know almost immediately how an ad is performing.

Digital tools these days have made it a lot easier to track down the results and analytics down to every detail. For instance for email marketing you can now check how many emails were sent, delivered and read. Or if you have set certain goals on a blog or a website you can use Google Analytics to measure them and check the turn out. Similarly, Google AdWords manager makes life easier by monitoring the performance of ads on Google search so you can easily figure out how many people viewed and clicked on the ad. Isn’t it awesome?

Basically, the future targets will vary on the current ad results so to achieve better targets ad performance is monitored. For instance, if there is an ad campaign that’s running smoothly then it’s easier to invest in more just by clicking it but if there’s an ad campaign that’s not delivering well – the features of the ad can be altered or adjusted to reach the target audience or simply terminate the ad altogether easily. This is not the case in traditional marketing. There’s so much wait and the chances of failure depend on the results which will come later on so you cannot even stop the campaign as stopping itself will cause you a loss. Plus there’s so much paper work and formalities involved, it’s a long procedure and takes a lot of time.

Digital marketing helps in many other ways like creating your own audience on the page and increasing following. Usually businesses these days use social media platform to build their brand identity. Usually these days business is judged on social media presence and an aesthetic website with features like blogs, articles and interactive interface. Businesses also feature sharing facilities on their social media so the campaigns can run twice as much and have more chances of attracting audience to the page and increase following.

Digital marketing allows target campaigning which means ads are shown to people chosen by the requirement of the product or service. Like for example, transactional emails (order confirmation emails, receipt, password reset) which will only be sent to customers following their action towards the business. So the audience only sees what they want to see and not irrelevant ads. All social media platforms and digital marketers use algorithms to study the data and analyze the results of the user activity and preference. So in accordance to the results of the algorithms, specific ads are targeted to specific audience which is likely to increase sales of the product or service. Also, this niche marketing also helps cut down the cost of traditional marketing.

As it is said, the world has turned into a global village all thanks to digitization. It’s because of digital marketing we are able to see any ad in any part of the world. Because of this accessibility, all businesses are in profit, especially small business and startups to get recognized and get exposure. Thanks to the internet we get to hear all these amazing success stories of small businesses going big over a short span of time. All of this wasn’t possible if it weren’t for the internet and digital marketing.

So how to stay relevant in this overly competitive market? One effective way is to always keep engaging your audience through social media and keep up with your competitors. Keep updating your channels and stay in touch with your audience by asking for feedback. Other than that there are always weekly emails, promotions, newsletter and offers. The purpose is to always grab the attention of your audience and retain them while boosting your business through social media platforms. Okay, so how to learn all these things and from where?

DigiSkills.pk is this awesome program in Pakistan that provides FREE OF COST online training courses to its trainees from the ease of their home. YAS! The training program was initiated by Government of Pakistan powered by Ignite, how cool is that no? So the purpose is to train 1 million trainees absolutely free to enable them for future of work, which basically means empower the youth for future so they can earn for themselves without a hassle. Also this really redefines the scope of employment and job market as online skills can be useful all over world and have no office or geographical limitations. Sweet.

So what do you need to do? Just sign up at www.digiskills.pk and enroll yourself in any two of you favorite courses from the list of ten. The courses offered are on Freelancing, E-Commerce Management, Digital Marketing, Digital Literacy, QuickBooks, AutoCAD, WordPress, Graphics Design, Creative Writing, and SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Btw, the instructors are truly amazing and experienced people who provide online lectures in Urdu and English to reach out to the masses so don’t worry because your future is in safe hands and it is digital! Enroll now – limited seats available!