Starting your own digital marketing business in India can be confusing, can’t it?
There just aren’t any good resources out there to tell you how to start a digital marketing business in India. You’re stuck between a rock of obsolete advice and the hard place of short posts without much details. And, it’s damn upsetting.
You want an actionable, in-depth piece of content from someone in your acquaintance. Is that too much to ask?
Nope. Not any longer.
This article contains information about what digital marketing is and how to start a digital marketing business in India. The tips mentioned on the same aren’t taught in any school, so use them to give you the benefit of experience in the field even if you’re just starting out.
Digital marketing: Concept
It is the part of marketing that deals with utilisation of internet and other online-based digital technologies for the creation of awareness and promotion of products and services.
Ever since its development in the 1990s, it has changed the way brands and businesses use technology for marketing. As digital platforms become more incorporated in our everyday life and people make more use of digital devices instead of visiting physical shops personally, digital marketing campaigns have become quite prevalent.
Search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, campaigning, e-commerce marketing, social media marketing and optimization, email marketing, display advertising, eBooks and so on have also now become the new common.
Digital marketing also extends to non-online channels that provide digital media too. For example: television, mobile phones (SMS and MMS), callback, on-hold mobile ringtones etc. The extension to non-Internet channels is what makes the concept of digital marketing different from that of online marketing.
Assets of Digital Marketing
Almost anything and everything can serve as a digital marketing asset for you. The only condition being that it should be a marketing tool that you use online. Many people often don’t realize the numerous digital marketing assets they have at their disposal. Here are a few examples:
- Your brand website
- Brand assets like your brand logos, icons, acronyms, etc
- Video content like ads, product demos, etc
- Images like infographics, product shots, company photos etc
- Written content like blog posts, articles, eBooks, testimonials, etc
- Online products or tools like SaaS, calculators, your online social media pages, interactive content etc
- Reviews of your customers
And the list goes on and on!
Digital Marketing Strategies
The Digital Marketing strategies are consistently evolving. Knowledge about these strategies is essential if you are learning how to start a digital marketing business in India. Here are some of the strategies that are mostly used by businesses:
1.Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
This broad term covers all types of digital marketing aspect where you need to pay for each user who clicks on an ad. For example, Google AdWords is a form of PPC advertising which is called paid search advertising. Facebook Ads are another form of PPC advertising which is called social media paid search advertising.
2. Paid Search Advertising
All search engines including Google, Bing and Yahoo allow you to run text ads on their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). This is called paid search advertising. It is one of the easy and effective ways to target your potential customers who are actively involved in searching for a product or service similar to yours.
3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
It is the process by which you can increase your reach organically and rank better on the search engines without having to pay any money. Thus, you are not required to pay for every click on your ad. But getting a page to rank organically usually takes a lot of time and effort.
4. Social Media Marketing (SEM)
Social media marketing is a free and organic way to market your business by use of social media platforms like Facebook,Twitter, Instagram etc. Organically marketing your business on social media is also a time and effort taking process just like SEO.
5. Conversion Rate Optimization
It is the art and science of refining your online user experience. Most of the time, brands use this strategy of digital marketing for generation of more leads and increasing their sales by creating more awareness about their brand.
6. Content Marketing
Content marketing is another fairly broad digital marketing term that covers every digital marketing effort that uses content assets to build brand awareness or generate drive clicks, leads or sales through it. The content produced may be in the form of your choice- blog posts, infographics, eBooks, videos etc.
7. Native Advertising
Have you ever noticed a list of suggested articles at the bottom of it? That is native advertising and is yet another strategy you need to know about when you learn how to start a digital marketing business in India. Most native advertising falls under the category of content marketing because it makes use of content to attract clicks. Native advertising is usually mixed in with non-paid content recommendations.
8. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the concept where you essentially pay someone else, be it person or a business, to promote your products and services on their website.
9. Paid Social Media Advertising
Most social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Snapchat allow you to run ads on their site for a price. Paid social media advertising is another great way for creating awareness with your audiences that might not be still aware about your business, product or service.
10. Email Marketing
Email marketing is the oldest form of digital marketing and it’s still growing strong. Most digital marketers use this kind of marketing to advertise their special deals, highlight content or for promotion of their upcoming event.
The list above makes it clear that there are a lot of different types of digital marketing. This is why many businesses either hire an agency or pay an in-house marketing team and marketing automation software to cover their marketing needs. When you wish to start a digital marketing business in India, you must be aware about these basic terms.
How to start a digital marketing business in India: Process
1.Educating Yourself
Before you start a digital marketing business in India, it’s important to educate yourself and understand as much as possible about digital marketing agencies. Every successful person in the world never stops learning. So, you must first invest your time and money in learning. You should also try to learn about the digital marketing industry as well.
Some of the different concepts you need to understand are Pay per click marketing, SEO, email marketing, SEM and creating online funnels. You’ll also have to understand the basics about graphic design and content marketing as well.
2. Finding Your Niche
Once you educate yourself about the field, the next step to start a digital marketing business in India is finding your niche.
Since the competition is so intense nowadays, finding your digital marketing niche is important to stand out. You may then concentrate on a smaller target audience that is interested in what you offer.
3. Doing Competitor Research
When starting any business, you will be interested in knowing how you’ll rank against the contenders. When you do research about them, only then you’ll be able to understand how to compete with them in the market.
To do competitor analysis, you must use the same keywords your business uses online and find it out. Narrow down your competition to a list of about 10-15 contenders.
Once you’ve discovered your competition, you might want to check out how they’re monetizing (earning their money). Then you can learn what more methods and analyse which one will be beneficial for you more.
Examples of monetization methods include: Donation, commission, coaching, selling a product digitally, lead generation, affiliate sales, advertising etc. You must identify at least one method per contender for better analytics.
Once you figure out how they monetize, you may then determine their content marketing strategy as well. For this, you can take a look at their blog posts, social media and SEO. As far as content is concerned, it is more in the form in podcasts, blogging or videos!
Then take a closer look at how they communicate their product to their prospects and existing customers. After that you can easily determine if you’d like to use a similar content marketing strategy or some other.
4. Launch a Website
Before launching your own website, you will have to keep content and competitors in mind. You need to decide a strategy for how you’ll find clients for your business. You will then need a domain name and hosting service for your website.
Related: Best web hosting in India
5. Building a Portfolio
When you are aiming to start a digital marketing business in India, you need to get your name out there. You’ll want to get good reviews about your work that will help you gain trust from your customers. You’ll then attract more potential customers and your reach will expand.
A good portfolio includes the following:
- Detailed case studies
- All Headlines or snippets
- Future (upcoming) goals for that client
- Testimonials of previous and existing clients
You need to show your audience that you are competent enough to deliver results on time and you always do so. Make sure your portfolio is ethical and honest, not vague or exaggerating the truth.
6. Setting a Business model
There are numerous ways ( business model) in which you can bill your client and the way you choose to, is completely up to you. One choice is where you are paid per hour. This is a good way to be paid if you have one or shorter tasks. When you begin scaling up it can be a lot difficult.
A flat retainer is another pricing method. A flat fee is paid in this for the month. If using this method, you just need to make sure that your contract contains the rule regarding situations when the client quits early or scales up with their conditions.
7. Having presence on social media
When planning to start a digital marketing business in India, you need to be on social media networks. Creating an account on social media platforms cost no fees, so why not take its advantage? There are a lot of benefits of online presence- from organic lead generation and engaging with current customers and prospects to turning your business global.
8. Generation of Leads
Placing emphasis on generation of leads is one of the keys for success when you start a digital marketing business in India, especially considering how many other digital marketers are unaware of this fact and thus don’t devote enough resources to it. While both SEO and Adwords have gotten more complicated, there are still many underutilized techniques to keep your company flooded with work:
Identifying your target customers-
The first step for generation of leads is knowing the type of people or companies that make up your best leads. Who are your best clients? What are their income levels? Which sites do they frequently use online? All the other lead generation tricks depend on first narrowing down the range of your clients. For reference, Conklin Media targets mostly B2B companies whose annual revenue is around 21 million.
Alert services-
You can set up special alerts for times when people buy a new domain name. This will help you focus on domain names that are relevant to your target clients. In those cases, you can have your sales team contact them directly.
Affiliate marketing-
Sites like ShareASale and CJ Affiliate help you in knowing the best partner sites for websites that increases your reach to the target clients, whoever they are.
Outsource cold calling-
Outsourcing your cold calling to companies that specialise in it is yet another thing you need to know when you start a digital marketing business in India. Cold calling is not always recommended, but if you can afford to outsource the work, cold calling remains a slow but steady method for generation of leads.
Stellar website-
Your website is your most important business tool if you start a digital marketing business in India. You must make sure your site showcases what you do, your unique value proposition, your slogan, your clients, some statistics that prove your effectiveness and a call to action. You can also use StoryBrand to help you identify the room for improvement in your website.
Conclusion
The scope of digital marketing in today’s world is beyond imagination. In addition to all of the advantages mentioned in the article, you can also track the results of your digital marketing efforts with precision. This means that it is easy to analyse which strategies of digital marketing are resulting in profit and which ones have room for improvement, once you start a digital marketing business in India.
While it may first appear overwhelming starting out, you should have a good idea about these things if you start a digital marketing business in India. Keep it in mind when you’re planning out each step of your business!