What is Digital Marketing? The Different Types Explained
If you’re looking to learn digital marketing, you will need to know what it is and the different types of digital marketing channels you can use to increase your online and offline presence.
That’s right, not to be confused with online marketing or traditional marketing; digital marketing mixes these two marketing types together to form an overall type of marketing strategy that uses technological channels.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is the process of selling products and services and getting brand awareness through advertising that uses technology to do it, whether online via the internet or offline via tv.
Essentially, it’s a way for you or your business to become more well-known and recognized through advertising across different media.
The Different Types of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing encompasses two different areas but keeps one key feature in mind, the use of technology to get your message out there.
Thanks to the advances in technology, you can mix them both together to create an all-around marketing effort, but should you?
No, money is a significant factor in determining which type you’ll be able to get started with.
If you’re a startup with little funding, then you’re not going to be spending millions advertising on the digital billboards on Times Square. You’re going to be focusing more less expensive channels like Content Marketing (via Websites or Video Channels) or Pay Per Click campaigns.
Online Digital Marketing
Online digital marketing is a huge area. It’s associated with advertising via everything connected to the internet.
SEO – the art of Search Engine Optimisation is a key area where many companies continue to improve their online presence to reach the top of the search engine rankings, whether that’s Google Search or Bing. There are many different areas of SEO with a vast array of online SEO Tools you can use to get insights into how well your site is doing and your competitors. It’s by far a key area of online marketing for small and big businesses. For example, the Semrush keyword tool can help you find new keyword opportunities to try and rank for to improve your SEO and PPC campaigns.
Email Marketing – email marketing allows you to sell to people already familiar with your brand, it helps with converting leads into sales and keeping customers loyal. Email marketing software like Campaign Monitor provide you with the tools you need to capture new leads, create, send, and track your email campaigns easily.
Social Media – gives you the chance to interact with and target anyone worldwide looking to benefit from using your product or services. You can pay for adverts and chat with your customers in real-time, securing a good reputation. To help manage your social media channels it can help to use social media management tools like MeetEdgar. These help you save time by automating scheduling and providing a single account from which you can curate your social media posts for all your channels.
Mobile Phone Apps – Whether playing your favorite mobile game or streaming content, mobile marketing, and advertising are ways to get your content in front of your customers’ eyes, increasing brand awareness.
Websites / Web Advertising (PPC) – creating content on your website whether it’s blog posts, helpful infographics or videos, or by advertising on other websites is another marketing technique to get your business noticed online.
Affiliate Marketing – let others do the marketing and lead generation for you, reaching a wider targeted audience that is already in the targeted field, leading to higher conversions and profits if done correctly.
- Keyword domain & backlinks analytics
- Create reports
- Track mobile rankings
- Keyword tracking & more
Offline Digital Marketing
On the flip side of online is offline marketing. Offline marketing is advertising through more traditional marketing methods (ones around before the invention of the internet) that have been brought into the digital age.
TV Marketing – Advertising on television is still commonplace, as it lets you reach millions of potential customers, but it’s expensive, hard to target, and hard to track results
SMS Marketing – sending text messages to keep your fans up to date on offers can work well if done right and help you reach your marketing goal
Digital Billboards – You probably think of static posters on huge boards around the city when you think of billboards. But thanks to digital technology, these are now digital, letting you create short videos to showcase your product. Think tv advertising, but on a much bigger telly. These work well in populated cities like London and New York but are expensive and out of the reach of many small business owners.
Radio Advertising – with billions of cars on the roads worldwide, advertising on local radio stations can catch your potential customer’s attention and get you more sales.
QR Codes – an offline marketing tactic used on flyers, posters, magazines, and traditional printed media. When scanned with a mobile phone will connect you online to open up a website or app targeted to what you are advertising.
What are the benefits of Digital Marketing?
With the population around the world growing every day, that means there are more and more people for you to try and familiarise with the products or services you’re selling.
Thanks to the invention of the internet and advances in technology, a digital marketing plan has become a staple in many business marketing campaigns.
But why? Why is it used, and why is it important for your business to use it too?
- Reach a Wider Audience – you’ll be able to get more eye balls on your content and adverts helping you reach a global not just local audience
- Reach your Target Audience – depending on the channel you’re using you’ll be able to target the types of people you want to to help increase your conversions
- Small and Big Can Compete – no longer is it just a big company world, with social media and other marketing channels even the smallest of companies can now compete on a global scale
- Engage with your customers – social media marketing and email marketing lets you engage with your customers on a personal level, answering questions and offering personalised offers, helping gain your brand reputation
- Track Your Returns – if you’re using online marketing you’ll be able to track and analyse your marketing efforts letting you know where to spend more and where to spend less
- Higher Conversion Rates – can lead to higher conversions and more sales thanks to targeting the right people at the right time via the right channel
- Higher Returns on Investment – digital marketing tools often gives you a higher profit to loss ratios than more traditional methods due to the ability to target your audience
Your success is determined by finding and interacting with your audience in the right locations. You can see good returns, gain a better reputation and help grow your business if done right.
- Automate your email campaigns
- Easy to use Drag & Drop editor
- Create & customize workflows
- Manage & update data automatically
Digital Marketing Conclusion
Depending on your marketing budget will determine which types of digital marketing you’ll be able to pursue as a marketer.
That is why it’s key to figure out your budget and expertise, who your audience is, and where they are most likely to be, whether watching television or browsing the web.
It’ll do you good to familiarise yourself with the different digital channels too, so you know how they work and what they can do for you.
However, many companies and even personal bloggers can make significant gains via the online side of digital marketing.
SEO and well-timed social media campaigns can produce huge results for the products or services you sell and your brand recognition. Email marketing can be used as a great customer retention tool, helping you get repeat sales from customers already familiar with your brand.
Remember that even with all of these different ways to market, word of mouth is still important. Make sure what you’re producing is of high quality and gain loyal followers, as a few bad reviews could quickly taint a reputation.
Overall, digital marketing services is a vast market, covering many different areas. It takes years to master, but with all the advances in technology, it’s becoming even more important to use it the right way. And you’re going to need to be agile and keep up to date with trends to be competitive over your competition.
A Few Digital Marketing FAQs
Why is digital marketing important?
It gives you more control over your advertising, helping you target only those looking to purchase the service or product you’re selling. It’s cost-effective and can give smaller businesses a competitive edge over major brands with measurable results.
How do you measure digital marketing success?
A successful marketing campaign can not only be measured in terms of money, calculating your returns over your investment, but also the people you reach and the traffic that you generate.
Is digital marketing here to stay?
Unless the next solar flare wipes out all technology or we revert to the dark ages, marketing digitally is here to stay. Whether in your homes, in cars, or on the street, new technology is continually being developed to capture your attention, leading to advertising and a solid digital strategy to make itself present.
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