What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing is a way of marketing to reach potential customers through various digital channels like social media, search engines, email, or other channels. The Digital Marketing Institute defines Digital Marketing as using digital channels to promote market products and services to targeted consumers and businesses.
Status of Digital Marketing in Nepal
The trend of digital marketing is at an all-time high in Nepal. All businesses, be they small, medium, or large, are shifting from traditional marketing platforms like TV, newspapers, flyers, and billboards to digital marketing platforms. Almost every business has a social media account and business owners wish to make them active. Businesses are competing to build the most attractive and feature-rich websites.
In the current scenario, digital marketing is the best choice for all businesses as it is affordable, effective, and can reach a larger audience quickly. The massive rise of the internet has changed the way of marketing entirely. People are consuming news and entertainment from gadgets such as phones or tablets. Netflix, YouTube, and other video streaming platforms are replacing standard TV for entertainment. Meanwhile, social media platforms have taken over both personal and professional communication.
Seeing these changes in the daily lives of people, marketing agencies have also evolved and re-branded the services they offer. With an increasing number of marketing agencies each day, the market is getting competitive with the increasing scope of digital marketing in Nepal.
History of Digital Marketing Industry
The term “digital marketing” was used first in the 1990s. The digital era took its pace after the invention of the internet and the development of Web 1.0. In Web 1.0, users were allowed to find the information they wanted but there was no access to share the information over the web. Due to this problem, marketers were not fully sure about marketing digitally.
After the birth of Yahoo and Google, the number of internet users rocketed. Then came Web 2.0, which solved the problem of Web 1.0. Now users started becoming more active. Web 2.0 allows people to interact with each other and different businesses. In the 2000s, with the rapid growth of internet users, customer behavior was changing.
Instead of consulting a specific salesperson, people started searching for the product they wanted on the internet first and forming the decision accordingly. In 2007, marketing automation was developed. Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online such as email, social media, websites, etc. They made marketing easier by automating repetitive tasks.
Division of customers, the launch of multichannel marketing campaigns, and the provision of personalized information for customers based on their activities were made easier by marketing automation. After the rise of social media platforms such as Linkedin, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, people began spending a lot of time on these platforms regularly as they were very addictive.
This was the best opportunity for marketers around the world to try digital marketing. During the coronavirus outbreak, almost every business was affected in many ways. During the coronavirus outbreak, almost every business was affected in many ways.
Digital marketing helped revive many of these businesses as well. The pandemic made everyone sit at home and look at their mobile screens. The pandemic was a boon to some marketers who were able to ride the pandemic. The pandemic added to the marketing potential over the internet.
The wave of digital marketing hit Nepal a little later than the rest of the world. It is mainly because of the political conditions of the country. When digital marketing had just started in the 1990s, Nepal had just overthrown panchayat rule to welcome democracy, and soon after that, in 1995, the Maoist revolution started, which went on for 10 years. These situations slowed down the growth of digital marketing in Nepal.
Digital Marketing Platforms
There are countless platforms that you can use for digital marketing. You only need to identify which platform your potential customers are most active on. Digital platforms are intelligent now. You’ll have to play by the rules to get the best out of them. There are pros and cons to all platforms that you need to ponder on. Some of the most popular used platforms are Search Engine, Social Media, Email, and Video Streaming platforms.
1. Social Media
Social media is probably the most easy way into digital marketing. In Nepal, many people refer to social media ads as digital marketing. Social media is a must-try platform if you’re invested in digital marketing,
Social media platforms have amassed billions of active users around the world. Businesses are reaping the benefits from these social media and marketing tools they provide. Social media platforms provide various targeting settings, active time, and many other information that help businesses create the perfect outreach campaigns.
2. Search Engine
Search engines are old and useful digital platforms for businesses. Getting ranked on search engines helps businesses get targeted visitors who are looking for the offered products and services. Marketing on search engines is usually a long game. It is because ranking on search engines takes a good amount of time and effort, however, the positive impact it brings is also a lasting one. Search engines are relatively harder and technical than social media but the impact is certainly huge.
3. Video Streaming Platforms
Video streaming is still a new concept for older generations in Nepal. As mentioned above, the digital wave hit Nepal later than the rest of the world. Most of the 90s-born people did not use video streaming until they hit 18, and that too had issues due to slow internet connection. Nonetheless, video streaming platforms like YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, Dailymotion, etc. are worth exploring.
We do not just mean paid ads on these platforms. Creating useful content like how-to videos, podcasts, live sessions, etc. are a good way to market your products and services.
4. Email
Yes, social media has taken over almost all of the online communication. But a good chunk of professional communication still happens through email. Emails are seen as a more secure and professional way of communication. Emails are still actively used and can be utilized for marketing purposes.
How to get started with Digital Marketing in Nepal?
If you’re a business owner, you must be looking to get more customers and increase sales through digital marketing. Digital marketing is easy and even you can do it.
Step 1: Start Easy with Social Media
You can start by creating accounts on popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Post about the products and services you offer. Share those posts on your profiles to get the word going. Ask your friends and families to follow your business profile.
If you want things to go quicker, try social media ads. Social media ads can be technical and tricky, so consult with a social media marketing agency to set up your ads. Maintain activity on your profiles for new followers to see and interact with. After you’ve got some results, look out for lesser-known platforms where your potential customers might be. Pinterest, Discord, Reddit, etc. might be useful for you.
Step 2: Expand your horizons with a Website
After you’ve built a bit of following on your business, scale your marketing budgets to build a website that displays your products and services. If needed, develop it in a way you can get sales from the website itself. Drive traffic from social media to the website and conversely. To get more visitors in your website, try search engine optimization.
Step 3: Write content to get organic traffic
Relevant content attracts readers to your website. Post quality blog articles, images, and infographics. Slip in your products and services between those content to increase your brand awareness. Share those posts on your active social media accounts as well. Create and stick to a suitable posting calendar.
Step 4: Analyze Conversions
Make sure no leads and visitors are leaking away to your customers. Manage your social media and website in a way they are great for communication and conversions.
Step 5: Reach out to Previous Customers
One of the less appreciated disciplines of marketing is reaching out to precious customers. In most businesses, you’ll have contact details of customers. You can reach out to ask for a review, provide them with loyalty discounts, and ask for recommendations. As they have already bought something from you previously, conversion will be easier as your brand has already been established in their mindset.
Usually, email marketing, telemarketing, and SMS marketing are great for reaching out to previous customers.
Step 6: Hire Staff or Agency when required
Digital marketing is a huge industry and you can’t learn, master, and apply all of the marketing activities yourself. In such cases, you should hire people or a marketing agency to handle your marketing work.
Scope of Digital Marketing in Nepal
Nepal has yet to cover many grounds not only in traditional marketing but also digital marketing. Agencies in Nepal are opening up to the idea of new technologies and actively participating in it. This has opened up opportunities for new ideas in marketing.
The freelancing culture has also started in Nepal, which lifts many previously existing limitations due to the rigid mentality of traditional marketing agencies. Remote work has emerged as a viable option for companies. Companies are now comfortable hiring freelancers who work remotely. There are many platforms and options for a career in digital marketing in Nepal.
What is Traditional Marketing?
Traditional marketing is such a marketing method that uses offline methods with less to no targeting. Newspaper ads, telemarketing, TV and radio ads, flyers, postcards, billboards, etc. are some known traditional marketing techniques.
While these methods of marketing are still applicable and provide returns in some niches and situations, they will soon become obsolete due to the rapid growth in digital marketing. You can see that telemarketing, billboards, and TV ads are still popular and effective in Nepal. But the returns they offer are decreasing annually. These marketing methods provide very little campaign measurement data as well. You would not know how many people you’ve reached or how many people interacted with the ad you sent out.
Applying just these traditional marketing techniques won’t get you the desired results. Integrating them with digital marketing methods is a must now if you want to sustain in the competitive market.
Digital Marketing vs Traditional Marketing?
Traditional Marketing
Digital Marketing
Benefits Of Digital Marketing
Since 2017, the growth, popularity, hype, and effectiveness of digital marketing in Nepal have been increasing rapidly. Marketing, in simple terms means connecting with your audience at the right place and time. With digital marketing, you can stay connected with your audience and inform them about your products and services.
Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing has a broad geographic reach. There are more than 4.95 billion internet users worldwide. That means 62.5% of the total population in the world uses the internet actively. After you post an ad online, people globally can see it (if you don’t limit your ad geographically). The limit of your business’s market reaches the sky. Not only does digital marketing help to reach more audiences than traditional marketing, but it also carries low cost with effective results.
The cost for newspaper and television ad spots is high, and they don’t assure you whether your target audience will see it. You can target a specific age, gender, religion, race, or ethnicity while running digital marketing ads. Monitoring the results is simple with digital marketing.
Digital marketing software tracks the number of people you’ve reached automatically. That gives you clarity about your product’s reach in the market. You can also collect customer data that is more precise.
Conclusion
Without a doubt, digital marketing is the present and future. With AI tools at your fingertips, digital marketing has become even easier for all business owners.
As Nepal is slightly behind in digital modernization, there are countless opportunities for anyone to take over the industry, while there are some challenges as well. Social media is dominant in Nepal as a marketing channel. Utilizing both organic and paid methods is important to gain benefits from social media.
