We live in a digital age. People use gadgets like smartphones, laptops, personal computers, and tablets every day.
Let’s go back 40 years – the time when technology was nowhere as advanced as it is today. There were no personal computers, smartphones, and laptops. How did people survive back then? How would they talk to each other? Life seems unimaginable.
Thank god for technology.
Today, we have all these fancy devices that allow us to communicate with each other within a matter of seconds. These devices have become our digital friends.
On the other hand, businesses can reach out to their customers more efficiently. E-commerce and social media marketing have become very popular for these businesses.
What is Digital Marketing?
In simple words, digital marketing is online marketing. It is the process of promoting the products/services of a business using tools like online advertisements, content marketing, social media marketing, etc.
Digital marketing is a necessity for businesses today. People use online platforms every day. So companies find it easier to promote their products/services on these platforms. They do not need TV commercials, newspaper advertisements, and radio commercials anymore.
Digital marketing is a vast topic. It contains different aspects like:
- SEO
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
- Social media marketing
- Search engine marketing
- Graphic designing
- Web analytics, etc.
Each of these aspects is again a very vast subject in itself.
Digital Marketing In Nepal
Companies and businesses in Nepal have started growing their online presence. E-commerce businesses are increasing. People prefer looking for products and services online rather than visiting the stores physically.
Besides e-commerce businesses, other businesses have also started growing their online presence. Every company has a social media page on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. They promote products/services and post content that might value their customers.
We often also see that some of these businesses promote products/services with paid advertisements on these social media platforms.
It shows that digital marketing in Nepal is growing.
Why Should Businesses Focus on Digital Marketing?
As I said, people are present online. If you have a business, you need to reach out to the people, whether your customers or your potential customers. The best way to do that is by being present online.
Merely opening social media accounts and posting a few contents will not help you grow your business. You have to put out engaging content to see real growth consistently.
Nowadays, most people search for products online before buying them. They look at the reviews of the product before making the purchase decision. They even try to reach out to the companies and ask about the product.
If a business has good customer service, the customers will be happy. The best way to give good customer service, for most companies, is by being active online. Solve people’s problems, answer their queries, take feedback, and provide value to them.
Three Steps to A Great Business
You need to make sure you focus on three things when doing business.
1. A Good Product or Service
Your product or service has to be good, for obvious reasons. Even though you are the best marketer in the world, if your product sucks, your business will not last very long. The main focus should be on creating the best product/service for the people. It must provide good customer value. If the product is good, you might not even have to do the hard work of marketing it.
2. Digital Marketing
After your product/service is ready, you need to let people know about it. That is where digital marketing comes in. As I have mentioned in the list above, there are many ways to do digital marketing. Start with the basics. Your goal is to spread awareness of your product/service. You have to participate in creating valuable content for the people actively. Communicate with them, tell them how you can solve their problems, ask them what they prefer, so on and so forth. If you are not sure about doing it yourself, hire an expert on digital marketing.
3. After-Sales Service
If you stop caring about your customers after you have sold your product/service to them, it would not positively impact your business. The after-sales service is about answering customer queries and taking feedback. How did the customers think about your product/service? Was it good? Was it bad? What improvements can we make? Questions like these need to be considered. If your customers have any trouble with your product/service, solve their problems. The after-sales service can determine the future of your business. So it must be a high priority.
As I said, companies and businesses in Nepal are actively present online nowadays. But most of them are not utilizing all the online tools and techniques that can help their companies grow to a great extent. They are only using strategies like designing and paid advertisements. Most of them think they need heavy investments to set up a good digital marketing strategy. Yes, if you want growth and stability in your business, you have to invest. But, there are many things in digital marketing that you can do for free. Yet, most companies are missing out on these things.
How To Use Digital Marketing Strategies Effectively?
If your business has a handsome budget to spend on digital marketing, the best thing to do would be to hire experts. Seek good digital marketing companies and ask them to look after your online strategies for you. You can hire freelancers as well.
But if your business is low on budget or if you have a small business, as I said, you can do a lot of things for free as well.
Below are a few things you can do to use digital marketing strategies effectively. These can be useful for both big and small companies.
#1: A Good Website
Having a good website for your business is very, very important. It’s the 2020s. Suppose you don’t have a website yet. Build one. You do not need significant investment to build a website. You need a domain name (which is usually the name of your business or your company), hosting, and a person who knows how to set up a website. Building a simple website using WordPress or Wix takes less than 10 minutes. You can learn it yourself on YouTube. Make sure your website has all the essential things on it. These include;
- A good theme and logo
- An “About Us” page (to let the people know about your business)
- Contact information
- Social media links
- Information about your products/services
- A “Blog” section
#2: Content is King
Content is an essential part of digital marketing. Create content — a lot. The purpose of creating content is to create a brand. So make sure that the content you create is related to your business. Talk more about your products or services in the content. Make content on how your products or services can add value to people’s lives and how they can solve real problems. A few examples of content include photographs, articles, videos, infographics, tutorials, commercials, so on and so forth.
Write articles about your business, products, and services. Use SEO tools to select keywords. It will help your website rank on search engines, which will benefit your business. Make videos related to your company and post them on YouTube, as it is considered the second most popular search engine. You can create a single piece of content and present it in many ways. For example, you write an article about your product. Then, you can convert that article into a video, infographic, or audio. Share your content with people on social media platforms to generate more traffic, which brings me to my next point.
#3: Be Active on Social Media
Only sharing pictures of your products will not help you. Do more. Make more content and share them, engage with your followers, reply to their comments, and answer their queries. Remember to post frequently. Don’t post and disappear for weeks. Experts recommend posting at least twice a day on different social media platforms. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are some of the most popular social media platforms.
#4: Lead Generation
Lead generation is the process of generating people’s interest in your product or service. The best way to do this is to collect people’s emails or phone numbers. You can later use this information for email or direct marketing using phone calls.
Lead generation can be done using social media platforms like Facebook. You can also collect emails from visitors to your website and blog.
#5: Paid Advertisements
Paid advertisement is the most common strategy used by businesses in Nepal, which is surprising. The common myth is that there will be more engagements by boosting their pages/posts. Yes, this strategy is undoubtedly effective. But, only paying for sponsored ads will not make your company grow. Even if it does, it will be short-term. And, it will also cost you a lot of money. If you want consistent growth, you need to follow the other mentioned methods. Paid ads help you boost your social media pages/posts. You can use platforms like Google Adwords and Facebook Advertising to do this.
Final Thought
As I said, digital marketing is a vast topic. There are different aspects, tools, techniques, and strategies in digital marketing. I wrote this post to make companies aware of the importance of using digital platforms and growing their businesses. In Nepal, there are a lot of companies that are unaware of these strategies. I have noticed that even the so-called digital marketing companies are not using these strategies correctly. I hope that this post was helpful. It was just a brief outlook on digital marketing in Nepal. You can always search online to know more about the aspects of digital marketing.
