Digital Marketing Blogpost series – 1 : Understanding Digital Marketing & Finding your Niche

Whether you are a Small Business owner, a Student, an Artist or an Entrepreneur or just anyone who wants to reach more people with your Awesome Ideas & content, Digital Marketing is the way to do it. Wanna know how? The Digital Marketing blogs I shall be posting will explain it all.

Let’s begin.

Additionally, in case you want some more understanding about what marketing is, check this post out. 

WHAT IS DIGITAL MARKETING ?

Digital Marketing can be simply referred to as Advertising /Marketing your products or services using any digital medium. The digital medium can be your website, any search engine, social media platforms, or via emails.

Internet is the strongest platform for information out there seamlessly connecting billions of people all over the world. According to the latest statistics, there are around 5 billion internet users worldwide out of which 4.5 billion users using the social media! 

It also simply means that whether you are an existing business or planning a startup or providing any sort of services, you need to be ahead in the internet game. 

As the billions of people are on the internet, so are the businesses with products and services they have to offer. 

HOW DOES DIGITAL MARKETING HELP ?

Whether you are an existing business or new business you definitely want to be ahead of your competitors. With so many businesses already ahead and may be quite well settled in the game, how would you actually analyse the market, understand the customers, identify and reach your target audience and deliver your products/services ?

This is exactly where Digital Marketing comes into picture. 

With the help of Digital Marketing one can leverage their business to the next level and reach your target audience. 

As the majority of the world’s population is on the internet these days, Digital Marketing can be a great way to reach people.

All you to do is to be aware of the market, the demand in the market, different areas/disciplines of digital marketing like Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing & many more, You will also need to learn to use certain tools in order to target and reach the correct audience. 

With Digital Marketing becoming an enormous concept these days, you will have to stay up to date regarding the new emerging market base, updated versions of the Digital Marketing tools, etc.

Don’t worry. It’s definitely not difficult as it sounds.

In small business one can themselves learn the skills and implement it in their business or if yours is a very large business may be consider hiring some professionals.

Hence, this also happens to be a great career decision as this opens a lot of opportunity for employment be it full time or part time/ freelancing for any industry. This is one of the emerging skill and it will be in high demand in years to come. 

DIGITAL MARKETING CONCEPTS/ COMPONENTS  :

Digital Marketing is a vast ocean. It has a lot of concepts in it. While all of these concepts are quite powerful by themselves, combining and using them as and when required by your project can give you immense results. 

The Components/Concepts are as follows :

• SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) :

In the most simple terms SEO is the process of optimizing the website to rank higher in the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) in order to drive more traffic.  

Search Engine Optimization include : On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, Technical SEO, Local SEO, White Hat SEO, Gray Hat SEO, Black Hat SEO etc.

• SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM) :

In simple terms SEM is the process of displaying paid ads of your blog posts on the first page of the Search Engine Result Page. The major difference between SEO and SEM is that SEO is apparently less costlier than SEM but SEM does give instant results.

• PAY PER CLICK (PPC) : 

Pay-per-click or PPC is a type of Internet Marketing. It enables the user to get traffic using paid ads. Here the advertiser pays the Publisher/Platform every time a visitor clicks the ad. Google Ads, Facebooks Ads, Instagram Ads, Twitter Ads etc come under PPC. 

• CONTENT MARKETING :

It is the process of creating and distributing content to attract and retain customers. It helps attract potential customers to your content. Here the main thing to focus is to write meaningful content so that the customer’s problem/query is resolved through your content because any customer is bound to be influenced by the quality of content available. 

• EMAIL MARKETING :

Email Marketing is using Email as a tool to market/promote your products or services. This can be used for personalized communications with potential customers and helps maintain their trust in the long run. This is also one of the most cost-effective marketing channels.

• MOBILE MARKETING :

Mobile marketing is an advertising activity to promote products and services via handheld devices such as Smartphones or tablets. It is quite affordable compared to other marketing channels. 

• AFFILIATE MARKETING : 

In affiliate marketing an affiliate will promote products/services and in turn receives certain commission if the affiliate makes a sale. The affiliate will share the details of the product on any online platforms like Social Media channels , blogs, websites etc. in order to make sales. 

• SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING (SMM) :

Social media marketing is the process of using Social networks in order to promote product/ services.

The most commonly used Social Networking sites are Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This marketing channel helps connect with existing customers easily and also get new customers.

By now I am sure you have gotten some idea about Digital Marketing. I will dive into each of these topics in-depth in my upcoming articles.

But, for this article, I will speak about what is a Niche first, as, that will form the very basic foundation for you to begin as a digital marketer.

In order to start as a digital marketer, you first need to be thorough with the marketing concepts. Because understanding the essence of marketing is very necessary. Once you are done, the very next and most important thing to do is to find your niche.

WHAT IS A NICHE ?

Now you might be wondering what is a niche right? Let me tell you in the most simple way.

The focussed area in the market for your business is your niche.

For example, Marketing, Photography, Finance, Health & Fitness, Fashion, Beauty, Agriculture, Agribusiness etc. But, to start with, choose a very narrow niche. That means, just choose one field under your main niche.

For example, if I take Photography as my niche( as my talent and passion lies in this field), I have too many categories coming under it, like Street Photography, Wedding Photography, Portrait Photography, Maternity Photography, Mobile Photography, Editing and so much more. I can also niche down to speak about different types of cameras available, different lens attachments that can be used in each the above types etc. 

HOW DO I CHOOSE MY NICHE ?

May be now you got some understanding about Niches. But you might be wondering there are so many niches out there with so many categories too. How do I choose the one to start with?

Let me give you an example. After reading this you shall get an even better idea to choose your niche.

As I said earlier, don’t try to choose the main niche itself to start with. Go much deeper with it.

What I mean is, when you are starting out say in Photography then you will have to find one sub-niche to start with.

If you ask me what I would choose to make some content to start my Digital Marketing journey with Photography as my Niche then, I would choose Mobile photography.

I will start by understanding all the types camera modules available in majority of the smartphone these days. You can make content speaking about all the components of the camera first like the sensor used, how much mega pixel it is etc.

You can then make content on all the features available in the app. Like what option is used for the particular style of taking pictures.

If by chance the in-built app does not have much features, then you may even explore third-party apps and make some tutorial & review type of content on those.

As Mobile Photography is quite in demand these days and also, almost all of us have a smartphone with very nice cameras and all of us would like to click and edit pictures to post it on our social media channels, People would want to read your content to level up their Photography game.

Therefore, I will choose Mobile Photography as my niche to reach out to people initially.

You will for sure have some competition though. So just choose some low competition keywords to begin with, reach some people and then start focusing on more competitive keywords.

Just like this, find what is in demand in the market and where your talent and passion lies in. Once you are sure of your niche, you will be good to go.

NOTE :

Just because you chose Mobile Photography or Photography in general, you need not always stay in this niche itself forever.

The market trends may change, you might find some new industry & become passionate about it. That time you can definitely start making content on that as well while continuing to make content on your current niche if you are still interested.

Exploring new niches is definitely not bad. Just gain some experience with your current niche before to choose another one.

Make sure whatever content you make is Authentic, Unique & Original. Simply be yourself while presenting the content. You definitely need not go all fancy and all. Just keep things simple and understandable. That’s enough to reach your target audience.

Well, this is all about this article.

Let me know in the comments below if you liked my post.

In case you have any more points on choosing a niche or In case you have any questions related to this, drop them in the comments below. I’ll try my level best to answer them.

Peace.