An Introduction to Digital Marketing
Learn the basics of digital marketing and how it can help your company reach its goals.
Learn the basics of digital marketing and how it can help your company reach its goals.
It’s a big, complicated world in digital marketing these days, full of changing technologies, rising customer expectations, and omnipresent pressure to both grow and innovate. Consumers live online, and the battle for their attention–and their loyalty–has never been fiercer. 80% of marketers agree that customer experiences are the key differentiating factor, which puts tremendous pressure on marketing teams to deliver the best ones.
Where those experiences are happening has changed, too. Businesses used to exclusively reach customers through billboards, newspapers, magazines, radio, or television ads. Now, businesses can connect with the 92% of Americans using the internet through digital channels, including social media, news websites, mobile and email. Digital marketing also called online marketing, includes communication through text or multimedia messages and leverages digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and other websites to connect with current and prospective customers.
Let’s break down the core tenets of implementing a digital marketing strategy the right way.
Digital Marketing Guide: Table of Contents
Digital marketing encompasses all marketing activities that utilise digital platforms and technologies, often requiring an internet connection. This broad category includes online marketing, which specifically refers to marketing conducted via the Internet, such as email marketing, paid advertisements on social media platforms, and search engine optimisation (SEO).
Digital marketing techniques include a wide range of methods, such as marketing automation, email marketing campaigns, and social media strategies. These methods leverage digital channels to reach and engage audiences.
While “digital marketing” and “online marketing” are sometimes used interchangeably, it's important to note their distinctions. Digital marketing refers to all marketing efforts that use digital channels, including online (internet-based) and offline (non-internet-based) methods, such as digital billboards, mobile SMS marketing, and on-demand television advertising. Online marketing, a subset of digital marketing, involves explicitly marketing activities on the internet. Despite the overlapping aspects, the current understanding categorises online marketing as a type of digital marketing focusing solely on internet-based activities.
Digital marketing is crucial for business growth in today’s technology-driven world. Consumers spend many hours every day online checking email, using social media, reading news, and shopping.
Digital marketing creates growth by allowing businesses to consistently contact customers and leverage digital data for personalised marketing efforts.
Using digital marketing can expand revenue potential and growth.
Unlike old-school tactics like billboards and radio ads, digital marketing helps organisations carefully target their ideal audiences, which results in a higher return on investment (ROI) than traditional, offline marketing methods.
In addition to reaching a targeted audience, there are other benefits of digital marketing, including:
You can use dozens of digital marketing channels to carry out your strategy, including social media sites, SMS, and more. The sheer number of options can be overwhelming.
Below are explanations of four basic types of digital marketing: social media marketing, search engine optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), and email marketing. Remember, digital marketing is customisable and easy to change. If a strategy isn’t as successful as you’d like, rethink your plan, change platforms or tactics, and try something new.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing leverages platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram to build connections with potential customers and drive leads or sales. B2C digital marketing often leverages social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest to attract customers directly to the website and guide them through an accelerated buyer's journey.
There are two main types of social media marketing:
Nearly every type of business, from small e-commerce businesses to large enterprise organisations, can use social media to drive customer engagement, leads, and sales.
These are the main benefits of social media marketing:
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Search engine optimisation is a digital marketing strategy to help a website appear in results when users look up a word or phrase in search engines like Google and Bing. SEO is effective and imperative for all organisations, including small local companies, online-only brands, and enterprises. Search engine marketing (SEM) involves purchasing ad space in search engines to showcase ads for products in search results, complementing SEO strategies.
Why does SEO matter? When consumers look for a solution to a challenge, whether that challenge is what to eat for dinner or which payment processor to use for their business, they head to a search engine. There, they’ll read reviews, ask technical questions, and perform other searches that tie into where they are in their customer journey.
Nearly 5.9 million Google searches occur every day. SEO helps your business show up when users search for related terms.
There are several types of SEO. These include:
Pay per Click (PPC)
PPC refers to using paid ads to reach a highly targeted audience. For example, you could create an ad campaign targeting potential customers who visit your favourite news site. You can also use Google Ads to target users who search for a specific term like “buy a new [brand name] laptop.” Digital ads, including PPC, digital display ads, and mobile marketing, are essential components of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy.
Unlike billboard or radio ads, where businesses pay upfront, with PPC you only pay if a user clicks on your ads. Some platforms do charge by impression or view, but that is rare.
Considering PPC? Here are four benefits to keep in mind:
Whether you want to launch a new brand or bring back past customers, PPC can help you reach your marketing goals. Learn more about Google Ads, Google‘s PPC platform, here.
Email Marketing
Email marketing, or campaigns for your business sent via email messages, is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies because nearly every consumer in the U.S., and most of the consumers in the world, have an email address. In 2022, email accounted for 80% of all outbound marketing messaging.
More benefits of email marketing include:
Additionally, email marketing can be used at each marketing funnel stage and continue after the purchase. For example, you can drive traffic to your blog, launch a new product, promote your Black Friday sale, remind users to complete a purchase after abandoning their cart and ask for reviews post-sale.
The first steps in email marketing are building an email list and finding the right email marketing platform. Then, follow these email marketing tips to build a successful email marketing campaign.
How do you get readers to click and read your emails? The answer is easy if you take it logically with these best practices.
A core benefit of digital marketing is the ability to make changes on the go. Don’t be afraid to test your strategy and then switch to another if you don’t see the results you expect after a few weeks. Effective digital marketing involves strategising and implementing online lead generation, attracting and converting quality leads, and leveraging digital channels.
Here’s a seven-step guide to help you create an effective digital marketing strategy for your business.
How to Budget for Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is effective, and a portion of your overall marketing budget should be set aside. Your industry, target audience, and strategy will impact your budget decisions.
Small businesses can follow these four steps to hone in on a baseline digital marketing budget.
Follow these steps, and you’ll wind up with a lean, baseline budget and a streamlined view of your core marketing strategy. Look at the channels that perform well for you and generate new campaigns and priorities based on the data.
Building a Digital Marketing Team
Having a digital marketing team is an important piece to success. The good news is that you can customise your digital marketing team to fit your specific needs, budget, and goals.
First, decide whether an in-house team or an external agency best suits your needs. An in-house team may better understand your business and implement changes faster, as no project onboarding is required. Agencies often have more resources and specialised skill sets, which can deliver results faster.
Here are three steps to building your digital marketing team.
Consider a hybrid in-house and outsourced approach if your business is just starting with digital marketing. For example, have team members write blogs, but hire an external SEO team to optimise your website.
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Digital marketing is constantly changing. Google updates its algorithms. New social media platforms gain market share. Even consumer preferences can impact the most effective strategies.
Here are a few digital marketing trends to keep an eye on.
Digital Marketing Automation
Digital marketing automation uses tools to automate repetitive marketing tasks. In fact, marketing automation software is used by 88% of marketing organisations.
This gives digital marketers and business leaders more time to focus on tasks that require a human touch. Here are a few ways automation can help drive digital marketing success.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI refers to software or algorithms that can “learn” by applying lessons learned in one situation to another. In digital marketing, AI tools can help perform intelligent processes, such as forecasting results, planning new strategies, capturing and inputting data, analysing data, and much more. AI and other digital technologies are transforming how businesses gather data, improve customer journeys, and enhance marketing campaigns.
There are several benefits to AI, including:
Learn more about how to use AI to drive digital marketing success here.
Digital Marketing in the Metaverse
The metaverse is a term for the next generation of internet experiences that are starting to make their way into the public eye.
The technical details underpinning this new technology are complex and rapidly evolving. As a digital marketer, you don’t need to get into the weeds to see exactly how it all works. If you’re interested, plenty of great explanations get into the history, technical advances, and futuristic visions shaping the internet.
That said, here’s an overview of three emerging technologies that digital marketers should be aware of.
The metaverse is a vision for an internet comprised of immersive virtual worlds much like those depicted in Snow Crash, Ready Player One, and other works of science fiction. These worlds promise rich media experiences, digital real estate, and economic systems that bridge the online and offline worlds. A fun way to think of it is as the internet is reimagined by gamers. Though we’re still a ways away from a fully realised metaverse that blends the real and digital worlds, games like Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox and newer platforms like Meta Horizons, Decentraland, and The Sandbox offer a taste of what’s to come.
Digital marketing can help grow your business, open up new revenue channels, find leads, and drive sales. Growth digital marketing strategies will be essential for companies looking to capitalise on the opportunities presented by the metaverse. However, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy that works for every brand.
Start small. Choose one platform or channel where your audience spends much time. Create helpful content for your target audience. And remember, digital marketing helps make sales, but it’s all about building customer relationships.