What Is Digital Marketing? – Types And Strategies

Digital marketing is a popular and effective technique to increase exposure, interest, and revenue for your products or services. As the name suggests, digital marketing is carried out through digital channels such as social media, websites, search engines, email, and text messaging.

To achieve the best results, you must first determine which digital marketing methods are most effective for your target demographic. This post provides an in-depth look at the most effective digital marketing techniques and best practices for attaining corporate objectives.

What Is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing, often known as online marketing, is the communication of messages using digital channels accessed via electronic devices like as phones, laptops, and tablets.

Digital marketing and traditional marketing, such as print ads and direct mail, have the same end goal: to raise product awareness and influence purchasing decisions in order to boost sales. The primary distinction between traditional and digital marketing is that the latter employs internet-connected tools to interact and engage with specific audiences.

The development of the World Wide Web in 1989 paved the way for the rise of digital marketing. The development of corporate websites, advancements in email technologies, and the emergence of hugely popular social networks have all fueled exponential growth in digital marketing. Online marketing is becoming a crucial component in most organizations’ marketing efforts, owing to the ubiquitous usage of digital technology as well as its ability to produce excellent results.

Why Digital Marketing Is Important

• To succeed, businesses must discover effective ways to spread the word about their products and services, which has never been more difficult than now. Consumers have more options from more providers, each vying for their attention. Stand out from the crowd by deploying intriguing content on digital marketing platforms.
• Another reason digital marketing is vital for businesses is that it is where your ideal customer hangs out. Statista research specialists predict that by 2024, there will be 5.19 billion internet users and 4.88 billion social media users globally. Internet users spend an average of six hours and forty minutes every day online.
• This massive, highly engaged online audience provides huge opportunity for organizations seeking to increase visibility for their products and services. Digital marketing provides virtually limitless chances for communicating with potential customers and is an essential component of almost every company’s marketing mix.

Types and Strategies of Digital Marketing

Developing a strong digital marketing plan for your company begins with gaining a deeper understanding of the digital marketing tactics that produce the best results. We’ve broken down digital marketing into six categories: social media marketing, search engine marketing (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, email marketing, mobile marketing, and content marketing.

Social Media Marketing

• Social media marketing is one of the most popular forms of digital marketing. In the United States alone, over 308 million people access a social network at least once per month. People of all ages use social media for entertainment, interacting with others, gaining information about specific interests and shopping.
• For businesses hoping to gain visibility and sales, social media statistics reveal that incorporating social media into your marketing mix can be a sound strategy. Social media is the go-to source for brand information for 78% of internet users. Nearly half of U.S. consumers report they’ve made a purchase through social media.
• Top social platforms include YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat and X (formerly Twitter). New platforms, such as BeReal and Poparazzi, are entering the market regularly.
• The social landscape is ever-evolving. For example, Twitter, now X, was once a top platform, but the social channel now appears to be struggling. Twitter has lost approximately 32 million users since Elon Musk purchased the platform in 2022. TikTok didn’t even come on the international scene until 2017, but now has more than 1.7 billion monthly active users. Digital marketers need to remain attentive to social media channel changes.

SEO

• Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important digital marketing approach for companies who want to drive traffic to their websites. SEO is the practice of improving your website so that search engines like Google rank it higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
• SEO is all about generating organic traffic to your website. Unlike paid advertising, SEO generates people to your site through unpaid searches. Google receives around 8.5 billion searches each day, providing several chances for businesses looking to market their products and services. Ranking high on Google is essential for attracting more traffic to your website.
• According to Search Engine Journal’s survey, 49% of respondents believe SEO provides the highest return on investment (ROI) of any digital marketing strategy. You may get started with SEO for free by studying about Google Ranking Factors or using top SEO tools and software. You can also hire an SEO firm or agency to develop an SEO strategy and manage your SEO for you.

PPC Advertising(Pay-per-click)

• PPC advertising is exactly what the name implies: you pay a price each time someone clicks on one of your digital adverts. The price you’ll spend depends on the platform you’re advertising on, the potential traffic for your promoted post, and the number of competitors ready to pay for similar adverts.
• Google Ads is the world’s largest PPC platform. Many businesses that engage in SEO marketing also use Google PPC advertising. Paid advertising on Google display above organic search results, and this positional advantage can attract additional traffic to your site.
• Google Ads isn’t your sole option for PPC advertising. You may also buy PPC advertisements through the Microsoft Search Network on Bing and partner sites, as well as on popular social media platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Amazon, and TikTok.

Email Marketing

• Email marketing is another effective digital marketing method that you should consider incorporating into your marketing mix. According to Statista, companies gain at least $32 for dollar invested on email marketing. For some sectors, such as retail, e-commerce, and consumer products, the figure is $45.
• To be successful with email marketing, you must devise a strategy for gathering email addresses from customers and prospects. Many firms collect emails with each client interaction, perhaps offering a unique incentive for joining an email list. Your business website is also an excellent area to provide visitors with incentives in order to develop your email database.
• Growing and nurturing your email list is essential for successful email marketing. You must also respect your list’s communication settings and only distribute information that your base wishes to receive. Furthermore, failing to handle the legal parts of email marketing, such as being compliance with CAN/SPAM Act obligations, is critical to email marketing success.
• Most marketers use email marketing software instead of manually managing corporate email. The best email marketing software automates the process of keeping your email database up to date by handling new subscribers and unsubscribes.
• Your email software should also allow you to easily segment your email database depending on client interests, build visually appealing email designs, manage email scheduling, and track email metrics including as open rates, click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and bounce rates.

Mobile Marketing

• With over 310 million smartphone users in the United States alone, it is not surprising that mobile marketing has become a popular digital marketing technique for businesses.
• Mobile marketing is often done by text, also known as short messaging service (SMS). Text open rates are believed to be as high as 98%, which explains why mobile marketing can be so effective. While text messaging is the most prevalent form of mobile marketing, smartphones can also get notifications from mobile apps and social media. The commercial applications for mobile marketing are growing every day.

Content Marketing

• Every type of digital marketing relies on interesting content to pique the interest of and engage prospects and customers. The phrase “content marketing” refers to the various types of material that may be developed and deployed in digital marketing efforts.
• Content marketing can take numerous forms, including as blogs, infographics, whitepapers, ebooks, films, podcasts, quizzes, slide presentations, and webinars. Unlike advertising, content marketing uses more subtle strategies to inform, educate, or persuade a certain target population.
• You can use content marketing to develop authority on specific topics or generate buzz for your brand. One of the primary benefits of content marketing is that it can be done on almost any budget. A do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to content marketing will cost you pennies, or if your budget allows, you can collaborate with copywriters, videographers, designers, and other content development pros to create content for your company.

Benefits of Digital Marketing

• Budget-friendly: You can engage in some forms of digital marketing, such as email and social media, with little to no money.
• Measurable results: Most forms of digital marketing allow you to measure key performance metrics, including total number of impressions, CTRs, cost per conversion, overall conversion rates and more.
• Improved brand awareness: With so many people using digital devices to access social channels, texts and emails, you have near-unlimited potential to generate awareness for your brand and products.
• Strong engagement: Digital marketing lets you create compelling content via text, images and video, leading to strong customer engagement.
• Strong ROI potential: Digital marketing often earns a more substantial ROI than traditional marketing and advertising tactics.
• Global and regional reach: Depending on the digital marketing tactics you choose, you can limit your reach to a local or regional area or use digital channels, such as YouTube and TikTok, where your content can reach a global audience.
• Flexibility: You can change or adopt new digital marketing strategies relatively quickly.

Digital Marketing Best Practices

While digital marketing can be very effective for building business results, you must understand the drivers of success. When you embrace direct marketing best practices, you’re far more likely to achieve the stellar results you want.

Establish Your Digital Marketing Goals

Before engaging in any type of digital marketing, you must establish SMART goals. Specifically, what do you want to accomplish? Examples of top digital marketing goals include:

• Increase website traffic
• Build brand awareness
• Boost brand engagement
• Become known as an expert in your industry
• Generate more qualified leads
• Expand your email prospect database
• Increase sales

Define Your Target Audience

You must have a well-defined audience in mind before selecting digital marketing channels and content marketing strategies. Otherwise, you risk creating messaging or using digital marketing tactics that are off the mark.

Defining your target audience begins with identifying shared attributes, including age, gender, income and education levels, geographic locations, interests and purchasing patterns. Next, you need to identify the specific problems your audience is facing or the pressing desires they have. Once your target audience is defined clearly, you can develop digital marketing messaging that highlights how your business solves their top problems or satisfies their needs.

Determine Your Digital Marketing Budget

• Establishing a digital marketing budget will keep you from under or overspending. Setting clear marketing goals and success targets will ensure your digital marketing spend is on target.
• You may choose to establish a budget for each digital channel or an overall budget for all efforts. It’s important to have a good handle on digital marketing costs to set a strong budget. Be sure to consider the technologies you’ll need to deploy your digital marketing efforts, including SEO software, email marketing software, website hosting services and social media management tools.
• If you plan to do PPC advertising, you must research costs related to the platforms you intend to use. PPC costs are platform-specific and Google Ads and most social media channels offer extensive information about PPC costs on their advertising portals.
• Other costs you may need to incorporate into your digital marketing budget include marketing services for copywriting, videography and design. If your budget allows, you can work with a traditional marketing agency, which can cost anywhere from $75 to $300 per hour. If you’re on a shoestring budget, you may want to hire freelancers from popular gig sites, such as Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer.com, which can cost as little as $15 per hour.

Select Your Digital Marketing Methods

Launching a company website is the first step in digital marketing for many businesses. The additional digital marketing methods you choose depend on what you’re selling, where your ideal audience is spending their time and how much money you want to spend on digital marketing. Social media, SEO and email are the most popular digital marketing techniques, but you may find a different mix works best for your target market.

Track and Analyze Results

The advantage of digital marketing is that it is relatively simple to track results. Setting goals establishes what you hope to achieve. In the analysis stage of digital marketing, you assess how well you’re meeting established objectives.

Set a cadence for monitoring digital marketing performance data: daily, weekly, or monthly. Very few digital efforts provide fantastic results right away, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t meet stretch goals on the first iteration of your marketing efforts. Learn from your analyses and use them to fine-tune your future digital marketing initiatives.

Bottom Line

Digital marketing is one of the most effective strategies that businesses can use to attract attention and sell their products and services. Several digital marketing approaches, such as social media marketing, email marketing, SEO, PPC advertising, and content marketing, have excellent ROI potential. You don’t need a significant budget to get started, thus digital marketing may be a useful tool for any sort of organization.