Presently, around 5 billion people use the internet daily. If you are someone with something to sell, you have to ask yourself – “Can I afford to stay away from the space which is accessed by over half of the global population on a daily basis?” The answer, of course, is a resounding no. With there being no end visible to the ever-increasing digitization of our lives, it is now necessary for corporations to embrace digital marketing in order to thrive. Check out the best digital marketing courses in Kansas for a lucrative career in this trending field.
Just as certain periods in world history have given names such as the iron age, the bronze age, and the copper age, the present age is undoubtedly the digital age. Everything is digital nowadays – our messages, our transactions, and our resumes. Even methods of emotional expression have not been able to escape the influence of the digital age; the use of emojis is now standard practice when it comes to messaging.
When the influence of digitization is being felt even in such trivial things, is it any surprise that our manner of conducting more important worldly affairs such as marketing has been completely transformed in the digital age? Of course not. This article on digital marketing courses in Kansas will help you to understand everything worth knowing about digital marketing.
In the era of smartphones and laptops, the volume of marketing done on digital platforms far exceeds that of non-digital ones. Paper pamphlets, brochures, newspaper ads, and flyers have long been displaced from their position as the preferred methods of reaching out to customers by emails, messages, and video advertisements on television and social media.
For any business to succeed nowadays, it is vital to create brand awareness and increase brand visibility online. It’s quite obvious that digital marketing has become an essential skill for all marketing professionals. Those who are serious about making a successful career for themselves in the field of marketing will undoubtedly want to learn more about digital marketing.
This article is for the benefit of such career-driven professionals. Here, we will take a look at comprehensive look at digital marketing. We will go over: –
- The history of digital marketing.
- The types of digital marketing.
- Effective digital marketing strategies.
- The best digital marketing courses in Kansas.
- Common FAQs about digital marketing.
History of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing first began in the 1940s, when the first television ads made their appearance. (Fun fact – the first-ever commercial, a spot by the Bulova watch company, aired on July 1 1941 in the US, and cost $9.) Over the next decade, TV advertising grew by leaps and bounds, as corporations immediately recognized the potential of this medium for marketing.
By 1951, TV ad spending in America reached $128 million and breached the $1 billion mark in 1955. By 1977, Tv advertising revenues accounted for 20% of all advertising revenue in the US. In this article, however, our primary focus will be on the online component of digital marketing. Henceforth, the term digital marketing will refer to online or internet marketing, unless mentioned otherwise.
The seed of digital/online marketing was first sown way back in 1971 when Ray Tomlinson sent the first email. This allowed the exchange of information between computers. However, the seed truly bore fruit in 1990. This was when the first internet search engine, Archie search engine, was launched.
The world’s first clickable online ad, AT&T’s “You Will” campaign, appeared in 1994. Soon after, marketing practices began to change. Companies started using database marketing instead of list brokers, as maintaining and using customer databases allowed more efficient tracking of information. Incidentally, the term digital marketing was coined in the 1990s.
As technology continued to advance, marketing practices also had to evolve in order to remain effective. With the launch of the iconic iPhone and the increasing number of internet users, customers began researching online about new products, and making decisions based on such research, instead of first consulting a salesperson.
This created a new problem for the marketing departments of companies to contend with. Marketers now had to find new ways to integrate digital technology into market development. A landmark event was the development of marketing automation in 2007. Marketing automation uses software to automate conventional marketing processes.
Marketing automation helped companies launch multi-platform marketing campaigns, and provide personalized information to customers based on their internet activities. AI is used to create personal messages for customers based on their activity (or lack thereof), and then these messages are shared with the user via their preferred platform.
Important milestones of the internet age that had a profound impact on digital marketing are listed below: –
- Hotmail was launched in 1996.
- Yahoo search engine was launched in 1995. It was because of Yahoo that businesses began the practice of optimizing their websites to improve their search engine rankings, thus giving birth to search engine optimization (SEO).
- The world’s first social networking website, sixdegrees.com, was launched in 1997.
- Google, the world’s foremost online search website, was launched in 1998. Today, Google controls around 90% of the online search engine market. Estimates of the number of daily searches on google vary in the 3-8 billion range.
- LinkedIn, the popular professional social media network, was launched in 2003.
- Facebook and Gmail were both launched in 2004.
- YouTube, the world’s premier video-sharing website, was launched in 2005. Since its inception, YouTube has cornered a large share of the consumer base of television for itself.
- WhatsApp was released in 2010.
- 2012 was the year of social media. By this time, Facebook and Myspace have established themselves as the preferred social networking sites for internet users. Corporations started scrambling to advertise themselves on these social media platforms.
- Mobile and smartphone users outnumbered PC users for the first time in 2014.
Even a cursory glance at the history of digital marketing shows that it has seen exponential throughout its lifetime. Digital marketing courses in Kansas will help you to find a career in this lucrative field.
Types of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is a highly diverse field, and there are many different types of digital marketing. We will discuss the most common types here: –
1) Content Marketing – Content marketing involves sharing relevant and valuable content with a target audience. Like other forms of marketing, the goal of content marketing is to convert leads into clients, but the methodology is unique. Instead of attracting prospective clients by sharing details about products and services, content marketing seeks to build a long-term relationship with customers by sharing written material that is relevant and interesting to the users. Such written material may be in the form of: –
- E-books
- Newsletters
- White papers
- Infographics
- Blog posts/articles
- Video or audio transcripts
Statistics obtained through numerous marketing surveys have consistently revealed that content marketing is a valuable tool for companies. Customers also expect companies to produce engaging content on a regular basis. The tricky thing about content marketing is that content writers need to produce content that ranks highly in search engine results and is also engaging to customers.
Brands that can achieve this consistently succeed in building strong long-term relationships with customers. To create such content, it’s important to identify your target audience and understand their preferences. You have to ask yourself – Whom am I trying to reach out to? What’s the typical profile of my average customers?
Are they urban middle-class youngsters? Are they elite ultra-rich business leaders? Or are they senior citizens? The type of content you create will ultimately depend on your target audience. Another important thing to keep in mind while creating content for public consumption is that the content should nudge readers towards the next step in the client-company relationship, which may be signing up for a regular service, a consultation with a company representative or even buying a product.
This means creating content that’s relevant, interesting, free of errors, and easy to understand. Good content writers can help you in this regard and are in high demand nowadays.
2) SEO Marketing – SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO is the art of making web pages more attractive to search engines so that they attain the highest possible ranking on a search engine results page (SERP). Your SEO strategy can be considered successful if your web page lands on the first page of a search engine results page. This is because users typically don’t go beyond the first page when checking out search results.
There are several factors to consider while optimizing your web page content for a good search result ranking. The most important ones are: –
- Level of user engagement
- Mobile-friendliness
- Number and quality of inbound links
- Quality of content
- Keyword density
In addition, there are some technical things to consider as well, such as loading time and URL structure. Digital marketers mainly focus on google search, because it handles the lion’s share of internet searches. What makes SEO challenging is that there is no permanent rule for ranking highly on search engine results.
This is because search engines are constantly changing their algorithm, so it’s impossible to accurately predict what your ranking will be in the future. What you can do is monitor your web page’s performance constantly and make appropriate adjustments to your SEO strategy when necessary.
3) Social Media Marketing – Social media marketing means engaging with people on social medial platforms. The most popular social media platforms today are Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Digital marketers prefer these platforms for engaging with the public. Social media marketing is a highly effective strategy because these platforms have billions of active users nowadays.
Choosing the right platform for your marketing campaign is important, and the choice depends upon your marketing goals and your target audience. For example, if you are part of a company providing high-end tech products, then LinkedIn will be the best platform for your marketing efforts, as it is where professionals connect.
On the other hand, if you sell lifestyle products for youngsters, then Instagram will be the right choice for your social media ads. Social media marketing allows greater interaction with consumers, and thus makes it possible for you to personalize your marketing campaign according to the tastes of individual customers.
4) Email Marketing – Countless surveys have shown that email marketing is the most effective tool for lead generation. One distinct advantage that email marketing has is that emails have a more personal feel to them than other forms of digital communication. The customer subconsciously feels that you have made a special effort to reach out to them personally.
This makes it more likely that you as a service provider will be able to build a long-term relationship with the customer. The way to go with emails is to customize the content, both in the subject and body of the email, according to the preferences of your target audience. You should always provide the email recipient with the option to unsubscribe from your mailing list with every email.
This is important so that the customer remains in control of what they see in their inbox. Remember, the key to a successful email marketing campaign, or for that matter, any marketing campaign is to put the customer’s needs first.
Click here to read about the most useful Email Writing Tips For Professionals
5) Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate marketing is a commonly employed marketing tactic today. It involves the promotion of a business by a third party or affiliate. There is a revenue-sharing partnership between the business being promoted and the affiliate/promoter. Usually, the affiliate gets a commission every time a customer buys the product in question because of their promotion.
Affiliate marketers may have ties with a single or multiple merchants. Often, the modus operandi of affiliate marketers is reviewing products on a blog.
Note – A special sub-type of affiliate marketing is influencer marketing, where the affiliate/third-party promoter is an influential person with a large following on social media, such as a celebrity or well-known industry expert.
6) Mobile Marketing – Smartphones are ubiquitous nowadays, so any marketing campaign that doesn’t take mobile phones into consideration is woefully inadequate. Mobile marketing involves sending promotional messages through SMS, MMS, WhatsApp messages, mobile app alerts, and social media notifications. It’s important to remember that all content must be optimized for mobile devices.
Besides these, there are other types of digital marketing as well, and you can pursue careers in any of these specialized fields of digital marketing. Considering the wide variety of careers available for digital marketers, opting for one of the digital marketing courses in Kansas is a wise choice.
Recommended Read: Digital Marketing Courses in the Phillippines
Here is The List of the Best Digital Marketing Courses in Kansas: –
1) IIM Skills –
IIM Skills is a well-respected online education platform that provides courses in various fields. They are peerless when it comes to high-quality training in in-demand professional courses, digital marketing being one of them. They have received universally positive reviews from the students who have completed any one of their courses.
Their digital marketing courses in Kansas have a comprehensive and detailed syllabus, which ensures that by the time the students complete the course, they have a detailed understanding of the subject and can apply their skills in the field. The course lectures are held online.
The training is made hands-on and practical by incorporating real-time case studies and projects. They also offer courses in related fields like SEO specialization and content writing, among others.
Some of the Highlights of the Digital Marketing Course Offered by IIM Skills Are: –
- 5 months of live training.
- 2 months guaranteed paid internship.
- Tools worth 79000+.
- 300+ placement partners.
Course Fees: 429.61 United States Dollar + 18% GST
Contact Info: +91 9911839503
Also Read: IIM Skills Digital Marketing Course Review
2) The University of Missouri – Kansas City (UMKC) –
UMKC traces its origins back to the Lincoln and lee university movement of the 1920s started by the Methodist Church. UMKC is a prestigious university today with thousands of students pursuing higher studies in fields as diverse as management, computing and engineering, music and dance, management, arts, and the law.
They offer digital marketing courses in Kansas called “Digital Marketing and Analytics Fundamentals”. As per the UMKC website, topics like advertising, content, branding, metrics management, and social media are covered under the course. No prior experience is required for the course.
However, the university does advise on its website that those with an aptitude for analytical thinking, creativity, and basic business principles are most likely to find this course useful. Students who enroll in the course will get the chance to work with an actual retail company and develop a full campaign for the final project.
It’s a virtual 16 – week course with online classes. Students can also attend optional monthly on-campus events. Scholarships are also available for residents of the states of Kansas and Missouri.
Course Fees: $6495
Contact Info: sse@umkc.edu
Recommended Read: Digital Marketing Courses in the UK
3) Certstaffix –
Certstaffix is a North America-based organization that was founded in 2008. They offer online training in computer-related courses. They provide several courses and workshops on digital marketing. Among the most popular courses on digital marketing is the 3-day introductory Google Ads course.
Students can access the course online and also on-campus at Overland Park in Kansas state. This course is designed for beginners who have no experience with search engine marketing. Upon course completion, students will be able to create and manage search campaigns.
Topics include analyzing keywords, writing ads, conversion tracking, performance reporting, campaign optimization, and bidding strategies. With such a thorough course curriculum, students will be able to tackle real-world challenges upon completion of the course.
Course Fees: $1375
Course Duration: 3 days
Certstaff also provides several other digital marketing courses. These include courses like Facebook Advertising, SEO, Google Analytics, Instagram for Business, LinkedIn for Business, Twitter for Business, etc. The courses range in duration from 1-3 days and are priced between $450-$1715.
Recommended Read: Digital Marketing Courses in Australia
4) Boot Camp Digital –
Boot Camp Digital provides a 4-day digital marketing online workshop that gives participants a comprehensive overview of the various components of digital marketing, such as web optimization, SEO, digital advertising, email marketing, social media marketing, and online market on other key platforms.
Course Fees: $2497
Course Duration: 4 days
5) BrainStation –
This Digital Marketing Diploma by BrainStation is a comprehensive course that will teach students to use digital marketing tools such as Facebook Ads Manager, Google Analytics, Hootsuite, and Google Ads. They will learn how to analyze data, develop content and manage social media and search engine marketing content. There is a practical component of the course as well, in the form of a real-world project at the end of each module.
Course Fees: $15,000
Course Duration: 12 weeks
Hopefully, this list of the best digital marketing courses in Kansas will help you to make progress in your professional journey.
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FAQs
Q1 – What is the average annual salary I can expect to get after completing one of the digital marketing courses in Kansas?
A1- You can expect an average annual salary in the 5-6 lakh range after doing any of the digital marketing courses in Kansas.
Q2 – Can I build a stable career in the field of digital marketing?
A2 – Yes, you can. Digital marketing has only grown in scope since its inception in 1994. You can be sure of a long and stable career if you complete any of the digital marketing courses in Kansas.
Q3 – Is there any special qualification requirement for doing digital marketing courses in Kansas?
A3 – No specific qualification is required for getting enrolled in digital marketing courses in Kansas. Usually, such courses simply require a graduate degree in any stream from the applicant.
Conclusion
Technology is advancing at a feverish pace and is the main driver of change in the world. The world of commerce has no choice but to change its ways to match the reigning technology of the day. Business practices have to constantly evolve to take advantage of the opportunities that technological advances provide, and also to cope with the new challenges that come with these new technologies. Digital marketing courses in Kansas will help you to keep yourself up to date.
Another thing to keep in mind while deciding upon a career is that online marketing had generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in a very short time after its origin in 1994. Since then, the scope of digital marketing has only grown and grown phenomenally. Digital marketing is here to stay. So, if you decide to pursue a career in digital marketing, rest assured that you will not just survive but thrive. The right course of action is to quit dithering and sign up today for any one of these excellent digital marketing courses in Kansas.
