Digital marketing is the type of marketing that uses electronic devices and software and can be used by marketing experts to convey advertising messages and measure their impact on the path of your potential customer and your existing customer.
In practice, digital marketing usually refers to marketing campaigns that appear on a computer, phone, tablet, or another device. It can take many forms, such as internet videos, display ads, search engine marketing, paid social media ads, and social media posts. Digital marketing is often compared to ‘ traditional marketing ‘» Such as magazine ads, billboards, and direct mail. Surprisingly, television is often combined with traditional marketing.
As a marketer and freelancer, it is important to take advantage of the digital world with an online advertising presence, build a brand, and provide a great customer experience that brings more potential customers and more with a digital strategy.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing, also called internet marketing, promotes brands to connect with potential customers using the internet and other forms of digital communication. This includes email, social media, web advertising, and text and multimedia messaging as a marketing channel.
If a marketing campaign involves digital communication, it is digital marketing.
Inbound Marketing V/S Digital Marketing
Digital marketing and inbound marketing are easily confused and for a good reason. Digital marketing uses many of the same tools as inbound marketing — email and web content — to name a few. Both are there to grab the attention of readers and potential customers by turning them into customers. But the 2 approaches have different views on the relationship between tool and goal.
Digital marketing looks at how each tool can turn potential customers. A brand’s digital marketing strategy can use multiple platforms or focus its efforts on one platform.
Inbound marketing is a holistic concept. It first considers the target, then examines the tools available to determine who will effectively reach the target customers, and then at what stage of the sales channel this should happen.
The most important thing to remember about digital marketing and inbound marketing is that as a marketing professional, you do not have to choose between the 2. They work best together. Inbound marketing provides a structure and purpose for effective digital marketing in digital marketing efforts, ensuring that each channel works towards a goal.
B2B vs. B2C Digital Marketing
Digital marketing works for both B2B and B2C companies, but best practices differ significantly.
- B2B customers tend to have larger decision-making processes and, consequently, larger sales funnels. Relationship-building strategies work best for these customers, while B2C customers respond better to short-term bids and messages.
- B2B transactions are usually based on logic and evidence, as presented by specialized B2B digital marketers. B2C content is more likely to be emotionally focused, making the customer feel good about a purchase
- B2B decisions tend to need more than 1 piece of information. The marketing materials that best guide these decisions tend to be shared and decision-making. B2C customers, on the other hand, prefer one-on-one connections with a brand.
- Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. A B2C company with a high-ticket product, such as a car or a computer, can offer more informative and serious content. Your strategy should always be geared towards your customer base, whether you are B2B or B2C.
Types of Digital Marketing
There are as many specialties in digital marketing as there are ways to interact with the use of digital media. Here are some basic examples.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is technically a marketing tool and not a form of marketing. Balance defines it as “the art and science of making websites attractive to search engines.”
SEO is “art and science.” SEO is a science because it requires you to research and weigh different factors that contribute to achieving the highest possible ranking. Today, the most important elements to consider when optimizing a website include:
- Content Quality
- Level of user loyalty
- Mobile-friendliness
- Number and quality of inbound links
The strategic use of these factors makes SEO a science, but the unpredictability involved makes it an art.
There is no quantifiable rubric or consistent rule for high rankings in SEO. Google is constantly changing its algorithm, so it is impossible to make accurate predictions. What you can do is closely monitor the performance of your page and make adjustments accordingly.
Content Marketing
SEO is an important factor (Learn About SEO) in content marketing, a strategy that delivers relevant and valuable content to a target audience.
As with any marketing strategy, content marketing aims to attract potential customers who will eventually become customers. But it does it differently from traditional advertising. Instead of luring prospects with the potential value from a product or service, it offers value for free in the form of written material.
Content marketing matters and many statistics prove it:
- 84% of consumers expect companies to produce entertaining and useful content experiences
- 62% of companies with at least 5,000 employees produce content daily
- 92% of marketing professionals believe that their company values content as an important promotional element
As effective as content marketing is, it can be challenging. Content marketing writers need to rank high in search engine results while also attracting people to read the material, share it, and further interact with the brand. When the content is relevant, it can build strong relationships across the line.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing means increased traffic and branding by engaging people in online discussions. The most popular platforms for social media marketing are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, with LinkedIn and YouTube not far behind.
Because social media marketing involves the active participation of the public, it has become a popular way to get attention. It is the most popular content medium for B2C marketing professionals with 96% and is gaining ground in the B2B realm. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 61% of B2B content marketers have increased their use of social media this year.
Social media marketing offers built-in loyalty metrics, which are extremely useful to help you understand how well you are reaching your audience. You can decide which types of interactions are most important to you, including the number of notifications, comments, or total clicks on your site.
Direct marketing may not even be the goal of your social media marketing strategy. Many brands use social media marketing to start dialogues with the public instead of encouraging them to spend money right away. This is especially true for brands that target a larger audience or offer products and services unsuitable for impulsive markets. It all depends on the goals of your company.
To learn more about how Mailchimp can help you with your social media strategy, see how to compare free social media management tools with others.
Pay-Per-Click Marketing (SEM)
Pay-per-click, or PPC, is the posting of an ad on a platform and the payment each time someone clicks on it.
How and when users see your ad is a little more complicated. When a site is available on a search engine results page, also known as a SERP, the site fills the site with something that is essentially an instant auction. An algorithm prioritizes every available ad based on various factors, such as:
- Advertising quality
- Keyword relevance
- Landing page quality
- Offer Amount
Each PPC campaign has 1 or more target actions that viewers are about to complete after clicking on an ad. These actions are known as conversions and can be transactional or non-transactional. Making a purchase is a conversion, but so is a newsletter subscription or a call to your home office.
Whatever you choose as targeted conversions, you can track them through the chosen platform to see the performance of your campaign.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing allows one to make money by promoting another business, something like a reseller. You could be either the promoter or the company working with the promoter, but the process is the same.
It works using a revenue-sharing model. If you are a reseller, you receive a commission every time someone buys the item you are promoting. If you are a trader, you pay the reseller for every sale they help you make.
Some marketing partners choose to evaluate a single company’s products, perhaps on a blog or other third-party websites. Others have relationships with many merchants.
Whether you want to become a partner or find one, the first step is to get in touch with a company that promotes affiliate marketing with other resellers. You can use a platform designed to connect resellers with retailers or start or participate in an individual retailer program.
If you are a retailer and you choose to work directly with resellers, there are many things you can do to make your program attractive to potential promoters. You will need to provide them with the tools they need to succeed. This includes incentives for great results and marketing support and prefabricated materials.
Native Advertising
Native advertising is disguised as marketing. Its purpose is to harmonize with its content to be less visible as an advertisement.
Native advertising was created as a reaction to the cynicism of today’s consumers towards advertising. Knowing that the creator of an ad pays to promote it, many consumers will conclude that the ad is biased and therefore ignore it.
An inherent ad bypasses this bias by offering information or entertainment before it gets to any promotional, degrading the “advertising” aspect.
It is important that you always clearly mark your native ads. Use words like “promotion” or “sponsorship.” If these markers are hidden, readers may devote considerable time to engaging with the content before realizing it is advertising.
When your consumers know exactly what they are getting, they will feel better about your content and brand. Native ads are meant to be less annoying than traditional ads, but they are not misleading.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation uses software to power digital marketing campaigns, improving the effectiveness and relevance of advertising.
According to statistics:
- 90% of consumers in the US find personalization either “very” or “somewhat” attractive
- 81% of consumers would like the brands they deal with to understand them better
- 77% of companies believe in the value of real-time personalization; however 60% are concerned about it
Marketing automation allows companies to keep up with the expectation of personalization. Allows names to:
- Collect and analyze consumer information
- Design targeted marketing campaigns
- Send and publish marketing messages at the right time to the right audience
Many marketing automation tools use the interaction of potential customers (or lack thereof) with a specific message to determine when and how to communicate next. This level of real-time customization means you can effectively create a personalized marketing strategy for each customer without any extra time investment.
Email Marketing
The idea of email marketing is simple — you send an ad and hope your prospect clicks on it. However, execution is much more complicated. First, you need to make sure that your emails are wanted. This means that you have a membership list that does the following:
- Personalizes the content, both in the body and in the subject line
- It clearly states what kind of email the subscriber will receive
- It offers a clear unsubscribe option
- Incorporates both transactional and promotional emails
You want your candidates to see your campaign as a valuable service, not just an advertising tool.
Email marketing is a proven, effective technique: 89% of professionals surveyed named it the most influential factor in generating potential customers.
It may be better if you incorporate other techniques, such as marketing automation, which allows you to segment and program your emails to meet your customers’ needs more effectively.
The Benefits of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing has become well known because it reaches such a wide audience and offers several other benefits. These are some of the benefits.
Wide Geographical Scope
When you post an ad online, people can see it no matter where they are (provided you have not limited your ad geographically). This facilitates the growth of your business in the market.
Cost Efficiency
Digital marketing reaches a wider audience than traditional marketing and has lower costs. Overhead costs for newspaper ads, TV spots, and other traditional marketing opportunities can be high. They also give you less control over whether your target audience will see these messages in the first place.
With digital marketing, you can only create 1 piece of content that attracts visitors to your site, as long as it is active. You can create an email marketing campaign that delivers messages to targeted customer lists based on a schedule, and it is easy to change that schedule or content if needed.
When you put it all together, digital marketing gives you a lot more flexibility and communication with your customers about your advertising costs.
Quantifiable Results
To determine if your marketing strategy works, you need to know how many customers it attracts and how much revenue it ultimately leads to. But how do you do that with a non-digital marketing strategy?
There is always the traditional option of asking each customer: “How did you find us?”
Unfortunately, this does not work in all industries. Many companies can not have one-on-one conversations with their customers, and surveys do not always have full results.
With digital marketing, tracking results is simple. Digital marketing software and platforms automatically track the number of conversions you receive, whether email opening rates, homepage visits, or direct purchases.
Easier Personalization
Digital marketing allows you to collect customer data in a way that offline marketing cannot. Digitally collected data tends to be much more accurate and specific.
Imagine that you are offering financial services and you want to send special offers to people who have seen your products. You know that you will get better results if you target the offer to the person’s interest, so you decide to prepare 2 campaigns. One is for young families who have looked at your life insurance products, and the other is for millennial entrepreneurs who have looked at your retirement plans.
How do you collect all this data without automated monitoring? How many phone records should you spend? How many customer profiles? And how do you know who has read or not read the brochure you sent?
With digital marketing, all this information is already in your hands.
More Contact with Customers
Digital marketing allows you to communicate with your customers in real-time. Most importantly, it allows them to communicate with you.
Think about your social media strategy. It’s great when your target audience sees your last post, but even better when they comment or share it. It means more noise around your product or service and increased visibility every time someone joins the discussion.
Interactivity also benefits your customers. Their level of loyalty increases as they become active participants in your brand’s history. This sense of ownership can create a strong loyalty to the brand.
Easy and Convenient Conversions
Digital marketing allows your customers to take action immediately after displaying your ad or content. The most immediate result you can expect with traditional ads is a phone call shortly after your ad is displayed. But how often does one have the time to turn to a company while washing dishes, driving down the highway, or updating records at work?
With digital marketing, they can click on a link or save a blog post and move immediately to the sales channel. They may not make a purchase right away, but they will stay connected with you and allow you to interact further with them.
Digital Marketing Creates Growth
Digital marketing should be one of the main focal points of the overall marketing strategy of almost any business. Never before has there been a way to stay in such consistent contact with your customers, and nothing else offers the level of personalization that digital data can offer. The more you embrace the potential of digital marketing, the more you will be able to realize your company’s growth potential.
