In a recent survey carried out in United States and United Kingdom it was found out that the total spent on digital marketing has increased by 10% in 2014. 98% of the marketers are either continuing with their current investment in digital marketing or are planning to expand their digital marketing investment. These data point to an important fact that the meaning of marketing is changing every day with more and more people switching to the electronic mediums than the traditional ones.

Often when we talk about digital marketing we wonder what should be our approach in digital marketing.

What are the areas where we should focus more and which are the areas which should be left out of expenditure?  Following this dilemma here we are going to present you with the three most indispensable pillars of digital marketing and how you can use them to improve your marketing strategy. 

When we talk about digital marketing there are broadly three pillars which constitute the entire digital marketing concept. And these are SEO, SMO and SEM. 

Most of the digital marketing activities you engage with revolve around either one of these or their combinations. However it is very important to note that without proper understanding of these paradigms any investment in these might not lead you to the expected results. Therefore lets try to understand these in details so that you can use them to their best potential. 

SEO as the term appears stands for search engine optimization. It is one of the oldest ingredients of digital marketing, in practice from the time when social media was not even in existence.  However the meaning of SEO has changed a lot over the years. It started off as a process of making a site search engine friendly. So that the site can rank well on the SERP which in turn can get the customer to your site? However what started off purely for making a site search engine friendly has now changed to the process of making a site user friendly. SEO is still one of the major contributors when it comes to lead generation and sales. With your site ranking good on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing you can easily make a lot without spending much. However this is also the term which is abused a lot and which if not implemented properly can lead your business to huge losses. Therefore if you are spending good on digital marketing make sure that you use this tool to the best as this tool also helps in subsidizing the cost which you may have to spend on other weapons of digital marketing. 

Who would have ever imagined that the concept which started off with a site like Orkut will one day be the biggest platform for connecting to the people locally as well as geographically? Social media which started off with a way to connecting people from different places has today turned into one of the biggest digital marketing assessts. However with platforms like Facebook, Twitter and others inviting more and more people to market their product it is still a very costly bet if you are really planning to earn huge through this channel. 

In a way the use of social media these days have been greatly misinterpreted. One of the most prominent uses of social media is creating the brand for you. 

Today on platforms like Facebook you have a lot of opportunities to promote your business and connect to the new people not only in your locality but globally as well. This simply means that you just have to formulate a proper marketing strategy and launch it through these platforms. Although social media still does not contribute prominently in the sales but this platform is emerging as one of the biggest contributor in lead generation. And if you have leads you are poised to get sales. Therefore start using social media as your salesman who can bring more leads to your business. 

Search engine marketing as the name suggests incorporates every possible strategy which earlier used to be implemented on ground but now they can also be carried out online. At times it does appear that SEO and SMO are part of SEM. But it is always good to keep each of these separately. The major factor which differentiates between these is the fact that this tool involves money in it. If you are going for SEO or SMO where you are actually paying for something then it comes under SEM. Not only this, it has a lot many other tools as well some of which are Online Advertisement, Press Release, Motion Ads, Ad-words, Featured Banners, Partnerships and many more. 

However before you are planning to go with it, do make sure that you have a powerful strategy in place.

Do remember that SEM might be the fastest way of making sales and profit but the clock ticks only till the time you are spending because the moment you stop spending on it, your sales will stop as well.

Therefore it is very important that you understand the importance of each of these pillars and accordingly formulate your strategy. With a proper utilization of all these three you are poised to make good revenue and return from your business.