Digital Marketing: What Is It and Should You Use It
Like many businesses, there will inevitably be a time when you will be looking for more sales, leads, or general traffic to your site. The lack of any can be a common frustration for many business owners in both the physical and virtual space. As technology continues to evolve, digital marketing has continuously shifted as well. Any marketing specialist today can tell you that the digital marketing landscape is constantly changing whether we like it or not. Since this is the case, it can be beneficial for business owners to learn about the different strategies or hire digital marketing professionals who can help elevate their brands.
Digital marketing has many forms, including online videos, display ads, search engine optimizations (SEO), paid media, and social media. Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing primarily works in the digital landscape. The "traditional marketing" formats include magazine and newspaper ads, billboards, television, out-of-home ads, and direct mail.
What Is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is the promotion of brands through online mediums to connect with prospective customers, encourage communications, and interact with target audiences. Digital marketing allows brands to increase their visibility beyond a physical location and increase the chances of reaching a conversion.
Why Is Digital Marketing Important?
Digital marketing is important because it allows a business to grow its audience beyond traditional formats. Unlike "traditional marketing" formats, digital marketing allows brands to meet prospective customers where they already search for information.
Businesses can invest in different forms of digital marketing to help build their online brands. For instance, a smaller company may choose a light budget. They may include social media, some form of paid ads, and blogs. A larger company may invest in every aspect of the digital marketing landscape.
B2B VS B2C Digital Marketing
Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) strategies, while traditionally having differences, both benefit from digital marketing efforts.
B2B
B2B clients can be anyone who sells a product that requires larger scales of investment than an ordinary individual. These can include SaaS companies, aerospace companies, engineering firms, etc.
B2C clients can be anyone purchasing a product or service for an individual. These can include retailers, e-commerce brands, and others that sell directly to consumers.
Some businesses rely on one of the two, but some may target B2B and B2C clients. In those situations, there are typically more defined target audiences. Regardless, digital marketing can help target both aspects.
Types of Digital Marketing
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Content Marketing
Social Media Marketing
Pay Per Click (PPC)
Affiliate Marketing
Native Advertising
Influencer Marketing
Marketing Automation
Email Marketing
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization is the process of getting a website to "rank" higher in the search results for valuable keywords. This form of digital marketing is traditionally slower than other forms of digital marketing because it takes time to create content strategies that see results. However, investing in SEO can help to strengthen a site's ability to reach prospective clients organically in the long term.
Types of SEO:
On-Page SEO: This can include optimizing pages that are currently on a website to help rank the pages higher organically. The efforts taken on a page can help to generate longer-term results than other forms of digital marketing. Lessening the amount spent on reaching prospective customers in the long run.
Off-Page SEO: Off-page SEO includes looking at different websites or areas not found on your website. This form of SEO targets how other websites interact with your site and gain valuable backlinks. This form of SEO can help to increase the overall domain authority in the long term.
Technical SEO: This type of SEO focuses on the backend portion of a website. Looking at the backend, you can tell whether a website is functioning properly or if you need to fix any broken sections. These typically include coded aspects that are unseen to casual users.
Local SEO: This type of SEO focuses on how to develop your local SEO strategy. The focus for these are on Google reviews, Google Business Profile, and other local optimizations to increase a local business website presence.
2. Content Marketing
Content marketing is one of the pillar aspect of creating a good strategy in the digital marketing space. When working in conjunction with other forms like SEO, content marketing gives sites the best opportunities to rank.
Any marketing strategy typically has some form of content marketing because it such an important part of the digital marketing landscape. The primary goal of content marketing is to attract leads and drive traffic to a site. Unlike traditional advertising, these live on the website in different forms like:
Blogs
Newsletters
Video or audio transcripts
E-books
Whitepapers
Testimonials
Infographics
Each format can be used differently depending on how your brand is looking to interact with prospective customers. You can use multiple forms to create different content depending on the clients you are looking to attract.
3. Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is where brands can connect with their followers and prospective followers on social media formats. Social media platforms are great for driving traffic to a site and increasing brand awareness. Social media marketing is different than other digital marketing areas because each platform with a social profile will also have its own algorithms. A few of the most common social platforms include:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
LinkedIn
Youtube
TikTok
Social media has various applications for businesses beyond just posting. It allows for potential sales to be conducted, user-generated content (UGC) to be created, and general conversations/PR to be conducted.
4. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Pay-per-click, aka PPC, is another form of digital marketing that allows businesses to pay money to help drive traffic to a website. This typically offers quicker conversions than SEO or other formats.
PPC can be found on search engines or social channels, but the majority of PPC is done on search engines. While both most likely are implemented in a strategy, the invested amounts will vary depend on various factors.
A few factors that affect ad placements are the quality of the ads, keyword relevance, landing page quality, and the bid amounts.
5. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a digital marketing tactic that is used by businesses or individuals who choose to list products on their own platforms in search of potential compensation from listed brands. These individuals or companies are compensated through a revenue-sharing model where the product or service they are promoting will pay them for any conversions from their links.
Depending on the affiliate marketer, they may choose to work with one or many different brands. This profit-sharing model helps the brands being promoted by reaching a whole new demographic that may be interested in purchasing a similar product.
6. Native Advertising
Native advertising is a type of digital marketing tactic that is primarily used to blend in with other forms of the content found on websites so it isn't obvious. A native ad can get around traditional advertising and into the eyes of prospects by creating informational and/or entertaining content that a searcher may find interesting.
Native ads should still show that they are "promoted" or "sponsored" to best provide transparency for readers. In the digital landscape, it is important to avoid shady tactics as best as possible. By adding a layer of transparency, you can help alleviate the potential loss of trust.
7. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a tactic that uses individual people, aka "influencers", to promote a brand. These influencers help brands to target niche audiences that may be in an influencer's market.
Similar to affiliate marketing, a brand may choose to partner with an influencer and provide a link or code for people to use on the brands site to get discounts or buy a product or service. Either an influencer or a brand may contact one another to begin a relationship.
Influencer Marketing may include:
Posts (Feed, stories, etc)
Callouts in videos
User generated content (UGC)
These are typically contract based and may have varying regulations depending on both the social media influencer and brands themselves.
8. Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is a form of digital marketing that uses software to power digital marketing campaigns through automation. These can help companies optimize their brands by collecting data, creating automated workflows for internal teams, interact with different prospective customers, and so much more. A few marketing automation tools include:
Constant Contact
Mailchimp
HubSpot
9. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a form of digital marketing that focuses primarily on the nurturing side of marketing. You can use email marketing for prospective customers on each level of the marketing funnel and cater interactions for each.
Businesses can use email marketing to promote new products, services, or to simply provide updates. Regardless, businesses that choose to incorporate email marketing can help nurture their presence.
Final Thoughts
Digital marketing comes in various forms and touches on various levels of the consumer journey. While each business is different, there are numerous opportunities for different brands to use tactics to achieve their goals.
