Marketing is the process of developing relationships with customers to develop desirable product at the right price in the right place and at the right time. Activities include research to establish customer wants and needs, analysis to predict future wants and needs and working with other functions of the organisation to meet those needs.

Digital marketing refers to any activities to develop relationships and promote products with customers using the internet and electronic devices. It may include email campaigns, social media marketing and use of search engines.

The rise of digital marketing has created an evolution of traditional marketing objectives. In addition to typical marketing objectives such as increased sales, market share and repeat customers, objectives directly related to measuring the impact of digital marketing are becoming more standard and can often be very measurable. Typical digital marketing objectives include

Increase site traffic. This refers to the number of visitors to a webpage. Increased site traffic can lead to brand exposure and sales.

Improving conversion rate. This refers to the percentage of visitors which results in a sale, subscription, membership or whatever your site is aiming to achieve. For example, if there are 1,000 visitors to a website and 100 sales, the conversion rate is 10%.

Increasing return visitors. This is a good indicator of customer loyalty and can be easily measured. Return customers require less marketing investment than new customers.

Increasing traffic from search engines. If search engine optimisation (SEO) is effective, it can create high volumes of traffic to a website in a cost effective way compared to other methods of digital marketing.

Reducing bounce rate. This refers to the percentage of visitors who leave your website after visiting one page. A high bounce rate indicates that visitors are not visiting further pages which in turn could indicate that you have not captured their interest on the landing page.

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