Digital marketing – the most popular buzzword online. If you are into business, you would have heard about what is digital marketing a million times. Isn’t it? Probably, in 2020, there would be no business growth without digital marketing. So, what is digital marketing exactly?
Experts recommend, it’s the way to grow an online business. No doubt about it.
And it’s the time of the year, start thinking about your digital marketing strategy. It’s almost mid-April. And what’s worse? The hard times are running because of the corona.
Well, but if you are a beginner, the countless digital marketing types would overwhelm you. Right.
Don’t sweat!! We’re here to help.
Digital marketing is not just a word thrown at networking events. You have to understand the various types of digital marketing. Top of it, you need to use these methods to stay ahead of digital competition. And to stand out from the crowd.
In this article, let us discuss what is digital marketing and what is digital marketing strategy and the ins and outs of digital marketing. Let us know how to use 9 types of digital marketing.
By the end, I am sure you will feel confident in your digital marketing ability.
What is digital marketing?
The main and basic difference between digital marketing and traditional marketing is that:
- Campaigns of digital marketing are exclusively executed through digital channels
- Digital marketing gives marketers more control, tools, and data to analyze campaign effectiveness.
If you could believe it, digital marketing is nothing new. It came on to the scene as electronic devices entered our lives. Most of us just think digital marketing is all about content marketing. And also about social media. While these two exist as types of digital marketing, they are not all-encompassing. Digital marketing happens both online and offline.
Why Digital Marketing Really Matters?
Most people are spending time on these digital channels. Now to draw the user’s attention or to reach any business needs to target these channels. It’s that simple.
Types of Digital Marketing
Here are 9 types of digital marketing techniques that include:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising
- Social Media Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- Influencer Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Native Advertising
- Mobile Phone Advertising
- Marketing automation
Now let’s learn what are these types.
Search Engine Optimization:
SEO or Search Engine Optimization refers to the process of enhancing your online visibility. Mainly it applies to non-paid search engine results.
Search engine results pages appear to the users after they search in the search engine for a given set of keywords. Each user would receive individualized results.
These results pages will be based on keywords. It also depends on the user’s location at the time of searching and their browsing history.
The higher you rank on Search Engine Results Pages (SERP), then it will direct the more traffic to your site. And there will be higher chances of converting a passive visitor to an active customer.
But a million-dollar question would be: How do you get your website to appear at the top of search results?
The answer is simple: It’s by optimizing your website using SEO.
SEO includes many factors from keywords within your content to backlinks to your website. It includes both On-page optimization and Off-page optimization. On-page SEO marks the steps you take on your own website. Whereas Off-page refers to the relationships you make outside of your website to boost your SEO. To know more, let us get deep into it.
SEO further divided in two types, they are:
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
On-page SEO: On-page SEO is the act of optimizing different parts of your own website. It optimizes the factors that affect your search engine rankings. It will allow you to have control over your own website.
Off-page SEO: Off-page SEO concentrates on enhancing your domain authority. It does it, through the act of getting links. Here the links will be from other websites.
At its core, Search Engine Optimization is all about making the best possible website for your audience. A good SEO means, getting much more visibility online. And more traffic to your site.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising:
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising covers any digital marketing channel where you pay per click. Here you pay for every user who clicks on an advertisement. For example, Google AdWords is a Pay Per Click advertising nothing but “paid search advertising”.
Other PPC channels include Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, LinkedIn Ads and much more. Each platform has its own unique feature.
The best thing about Facebook Ads is that ad blockers are ineffective. It differs from Google in which one plugin locks out everything. On top of it, sponsored posts on Facebook are infused into the user’s news feed. And this makes it harder to ignore.
Twitter Ads gives you the chance to reach millions of customers. You can reach many people with promoted tweets. So the selection of PPC totally depends on your requirements, type of audience and budget.
Social Media Marketing:
Similar to SEO, social media marketing is also an organic way. It is a free way to promote your product. In this marketing, you can use social media platforms to promote your product. It can be Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. But your business on social media platforms takes a lot more time and effort. However, in the long run, it could deliver much cheaper results.
And guess what? Social Media Marketing is much more powerful than all the digital platforms. It reaches people in the various social networks through content marketing campaigns, paid ads or both.
The basic motto of a social media marketing campaign is brand awareness. It establishes society. You can also use it to get leads or even as a direct sales channel.
Example:
Let us consider Facebook. Facebook sales funnel consists of 3 major steps.
First is awareness. This is the stage where you can use Facebook ads to introduce your brand to Facebook users. Here you get your ad in front of as many people as possible and gain new followers.
Second is the consideration. At this stage, your goal is to get people. Make them visit your website. Engage them with your website content.
The final step is conversion. Here convince people to convert into your customers. A conversion can be anything that has value for your business like the sale of a product or service or a visit to your store.
Difference channels available in social media for marketing include:
- Snapchat
This social media marketing tactic is the summation of everything. It is a blend of what you plan to do and hope to achieve on social media. Best of all, it will let you know whether you’re succeeding or failing. Every post, like, and comment should serve a purpose.
Content Marketing:
Content is the king of digital marketing. It’s the voice of you. It’s the echo to your customers. Without relevant content, you cannot exactly reach your customers.
Content marketing is very important, not just because it works for building trust. But for generating leads. It helps you in cultivating customer loyalty. It helps to evolve what customers expect from the brands they interact with.
Neglecting content is way riskier than investing in it. Typically, the goal of content marketing is to use the publication. And to have the promotion of content to drive organic website traffic. It can increase qualified lead generation. And can empower sales.
Content writing channels include:
Blog posts: Blogging helps you to speak out your industry expertise. It generates organic search traffic for your business. It helps you a lot in turning visitors into leads for your sales team.
Infographics: Most of the readers want you to show, and not tell. Infographics are a form of visual content. It will help your visitors to visualize a concept. This can attract them towards your website. And can engage them for more time.
Ebooks and whitepapers: Ebooks, whitepapers can educate your website visitors. They make you exchange content for a reader’s contact information. And this helps you to generate leads.
Email Marketing:
The email marketing technique, the oldest form of online marketing, is still strong. It could make wonders. Most of the digital marketers use email marketing to advertise.
It is a known fact that at least 90% of consumers check their email on a daily basis. And on the top of the list. Email marketing is an inexpensive way to reach people. It can reach those who are interested in hearing from you. And you can communicate with them regularly.
Affiliate Marketing:
Affiliate Marketing is the big and main income source for the most bloggers and entrepreneurs today.
If you launching a product or giving a service and want to attract users, it is always better to approach good influencers available in the targeted niche. It is easy for them to promote your product or service as they already have the target users with them.
of course, In exchange you should offer a commission on reaching a successful goal.
This is affiliate marketing, as simple as that.
With this, you get a customer, affiliates get a commission and the customer will get his desired product or service. It is a WIN-WIN-WIN situation as all three parties will make a profit out of it.
This is the reason why Affiliate Marketing always works.
Influencer Marketing:
An influencer is a person who has built a reputation by doing and sharing things online. Influencers will have a good following in social media networks. And they are able to convince their audiences. They convince audiences about trends. They can do all this because of the level of trust they have built with their online presence.
So most of the brands tend to partner with influencers. They like them to do sponsored posts by spreading the positive word about their products. The majority of marketers believe that influencer marketing can attract the best customers in their business. It is mainly because social media users are more affluent. And also more likely to recommend products to family and friends.
Native Advertising:
Just get to the bottom of an article. And you would see a list of suggested articles. It is what is called native advertising. Three native advertising, generally, falls under content marketing itself. It is because they use content to attract clicks. These are usually mixed in with non-paid content recommendations.
Mobile Phone Advertising:
Mobile devices become an integral part of our lives. So marketers need to understand how to effectively communicate through this channel. They are carried by a person wherever they go. This makes marketing on mobile, an incredibly vital one.
From SMS to in-app marketing, there are plenty of ways to market on mobile devices. So choosing out the ideal method for your particular business is key.
Marketing Automation:
It is an integrated platform for digital marketing. It ties all of your digital marketing together. Without this, your campaigns would look like an unfinished puzzle.
Mainly, it’s the tool that measures the results and ROI of your digital campaigns. When used effectively, this strategy will help you gain much-needed insight into your digital marketing strategy.
Bonus:
Best digital marketing strategies to keep in mind
Make it easy for your customers to reach you
What is digital marketing? It is mainly all about connecting with potential customers. So traffic on your website has to be high to ensure positive outcomes.
One powerful strategy is you should make an easy medium for your users or customers to get connect with you. Engaging with your targeted audience is invaluable for your business.
There is even a lot to learn from your audience. Take their feedback. Run campaigns. Get honest feedback. Get honest messages from these campaigns.
Getting their interpretation and opinion of your brand can help you a lot. It can get you both fresh content and loyal fans. To eliminate the unnecessary effort, make sure the page does not ask for any irrelevant data. Just concentrate on the required data. Even a single unnecessary point can create a great loss. Make call-to-action visible on the landing page and other pages on the website.
Identify your competition and differ from them
If your company is not different from your competitors, then you should not expect high profits. Make sure you change your difference from the others. Make it by talking to your customers and asking them why they selected your company. Then, fix your existing differentiators if needed.
Get Updated with Your Progress:
Constant monitoring has to be there to ensure that the strategy works effectively. This is done by assigning teams that would deliver this task.
Accept complaints. Learn from them. Learn from your mistakes.
After going through this, surely you would have got a doubt. Wait. Let me guess. Does digital marketing require a high budget? Isn’t this your question?
As with anything, it depends on what elements of digital marketing you are looking to add to your strategy
For instance, If you focus on inbound techniques like SMM, SEO and content creation for an existing website, the good news is you need a little budget. With inbound marketing, the basic focus is on creating high-quality content that your audience will want to consume. So the only investment you will need is your time
If you prefer outbound techniques like online advertising and purchasing email lists, that needs a good investment. So what is digital marketing cost comes down to what kind of visibility you wish to have as a result of the advertising
For example, to adopt Pay Per Click using Google AdWords, you would bid against other companies in your market to get the top rank of Google’s search results. You would try to get a good rank for keywords associated with your business. Depending on the competition of the keyword, this can be reasonably affordable or can be very expensive. And that is why it is always a good idea to focus on building your organic reach.
FAQ – What is Digital Marketing?
What is a digital marketing strategy?
What are Digital Marketing types?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Social Media Marketing(SMM)
Search Engine Marketing(SEM)
PPC (Pay-per-click)
Content Marketing
Mobile Advertising
Email Marketing
Influencer / Affiliate Marketing
Viral Marketing
Radio Advertising
Television Advertising
What are the examples of digital marketing?
a) Using social media as a platform to create awareness about the business.
b) Taking advantage of the growing digital world and conducting campaigns by using any of the digital marketing types (Refer to Q.2). This could let businesses earn a great following. And it helps to generate leads.
By using digital marketing platforms, you will soon see your sales and goals to improve. And your customers will interact more with you and your products.
What is the future of digital marketing?
It helps to meet the needs of customers and brands alike. While all other industries are struggling with five percent of growth. The digital media industry is going at a jet speed. Digital marketing is experiencing dramatic developments and changes as innovations in technology development.
Conclusion:
There would be a lot of work and research needed in understanding what is digital marketing. It involves more time to design a digital marketing strategy. But an effective and well-thought-out plan will make it much easier and quicker too. Now get out there and conquer the online world this year and ever!
What Digital Marketing strategies you are using? Did we miss any of them?
If we missed out on any tactic that would add value to digital marketing, please let us know. Share your thoughts and suggestions in the comment section below.