An Introduction to Digital Marketing

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.

What hasn't changed is traditional marketing. Marketing is the actions and processes businesses undertake to promote their products and services. Marketing often involves high-quality messaging and content, with the goal of creating a brand identity and demonstrating value for customers, clients, and society. Take these core principles and overlay them with your digital strategy.

Let’s break down the core tenets of implementing a digital marketing strategy the right way.

• Digital Marketing Defined
• Digital Marketing Benefits
• Types of Digital Marketing
• What is the Most Profitable Type of Digital Marketing?
• What is a Digital Marketing Strategy?
• How to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy
• What Does a Digital Marketer Do Daily?
• Digital Marketing Trends

Digital marketing, also called online marketing, is a promotional marketing activity used by brands to reach new and existing customers. Digital marketing uses the internet and digital channels such as mobile devices, websites, social media, email, and search engine optimisation (SEO) to promote products and services.

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:

• It’s cost-effective: Small and midsize businesses often struggle to compete with big brands. Digital marketing helps even the playing field. With a clear digital marketing strategy, even a small budget can help drive leads and customers to your website, app, or in-person store.
• It’s easy to measure: Some marketing campaigns generate decent ROI, but it’s hard to attribute a sale to a specific ad or see clear success metrics. Using an integrated digital marketing strategy, you can track users across the entire buying cycle to better understand what works — and what could be improved. In fact, 72% of high-performing marketing teams analyse performance in real-time.
• It drives engagement: With digital marketing, brands can interact with customers wherever they are in the customer journey. For example, you can educate, answer questions, and even provide customer service all from one platform.
• It’s personalised to customers: Digital marketing allows businesses to segment customers based on their interests and engagement history to create personalised experiences at scale. This allows businesses to impress customers at every step of their journey.
• It’s possible to update and optimise: You can't make changes once a direct mailer is in transit or a billboard goes up. With digital marketing, brands can test different headlines, fix typos, and tweak ads with a few buttons, and changes appear immediately.

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 five basic types of digital marketing: social media marketing, search engine optimisation (SEO), native advertising, 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 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:

• Inbound social media: Posting educational information, sharing resources, using paid ads (such as those promoting a lead gen campaign), and even sharing funny memes, all of which help you build a relationship with your audience.
• Outbound social media: Commenting on other social media profiles or participating in hashtag conversations are modern takes on the classic “interruption” style of outbound marketing, which helps with brand awareness and brand building.

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:

• Detailed targeting: Most platforms allow marketing teams to target ideal customer profiles based on demographics, interests, location, and language. This prevents wasting ad spending to reach audiences not interested in your campaign.
• Build brand awareness and trust: Consumers don’t generally make a purchase the first time they hear about a brand. With social media, you can reach your audience multiple times as they move through the sales funnel.
• It’s affordable: Social media marketing can be done with little to no budget. While you have to pay for ads, brands can post and interact with consumers for free through brand accounts.
• Easy-to-monitor results: Social media platforms and third-party tools offer analytics and tracking dashboards so you can monitor results, track interactions, and better understand your audience.

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:

• Local: A subsection of SEO that helps businesses, such as a family-owned restaurant, appear in local search results.
• Technical: Technical optimisation of websites to improve search engine crawlers’ ability to crawl and index web pages, often performed by a developer or professional SEO developer and can involve changes to the code for the site.
• On-page SEO: Optimisation techniques applied to pages on your website that are visible to viewers, such as adding internal links, optimising blog posts for SEO, or using key terms in title tags.
• Off-page SEO: Optimisation techniques from your website, such as building backlinks, using PR and news announcements, or using social media to drive SEO results.

Native advertising is digital marketing that looks like organic content. It aims to fly under the radar, blending in with surrounding content so seamlessly that customers don’t even recognise it’s an ad.

That being said, native ads aren’t deceitful. They don’t camouflage their paid status, but feature words like ‘promoted’ or ‘sponsored’ to make it clear to customers that they are engaging with paid advertising.

If you pay attention, you’ll start seeing native advertising everywhere. Common forms of native ads include:

• Sponsored articles
• Top-of-the-page paid search results
• Recommended content suggestions
• Promoted listings
• Sponsored social media posts

Digital consumers are a savvy bunch – and weary of being marketed to. When done well, native advertising can cut through the noise by providing customers with a better user experience, one that blends in with what they’re already reading or watching rather than distracting them from it. It increases the likelihood that your customers will be more receptive to engaging with your content and brand.

What makes a good native ad? In short – creativity. Here are four tips for creating an amazing native ad:

• Have a message: Make sure your content has value. Think about your target audience and craft a message they will find valuable. It’s the meeting point of what they want and how your brand can deliver that.
• Get a cracking copywriter: There’s no point paying for advertising if your content is subpar. Be genuine, concise, interesting, informative, and entertaining. Your native ad copy should rival the best content your host platform has to offer.
• Make it visually appealing: Images and videos tend to attract a larger audience, so dip into your media asset bag of tricks and utilise video, photography, animation, illustrations, and more.
• Blend in but stand out: Your native ad should blend in with its surroundings. Its style and content should match the platform you’re advertising on, but it should have that little extra something that attracts a customer’s eye.

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:

• Track your traffic: Using Urchin Tracking Modules (UTM) parameters allows you to see where traffic from your ads goes — and how often they convert.
• Make changes quickly: Did you make a mistake or want to test a new marketing approach? With PPC, you can change and relaunch ads in minutes.
• Reach a targeted audience: With paid ad platforms like Google Ads and Bing, you can choose exactly who you want to reach based on your internal email address list, current customers, specific demographics, or onsite behaviour.
• Expand your reach: If you’re launching a new product or want to expand to a new market, PPC can help your business reach a wider audience.

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, 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:

• Complete control: Unlike SEO or social media, where other companies (Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter) control your connection and reach, email marketing lets you connect directly with consumers. You do have to optimise to ensure your email metrics stay healthy, and there are email marketing best practices to follow just for that reason.
• Audience segmentation and personalisation: Email marketing software makes sending different emails to different audiences or personalising marketing strategies to each subscriber possible.
• High ROI: Email marketing has a high ROI, making it one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies.
• AI-friendly: Email marketing is uniquely suited to benefit from AI technology, including predictive AI that optimises send times and generative AI to help personalise subject lines and content.

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.

The most profitable type of digital marketing is the one that gives you the best return on investment (ROI), essentially achieving your strategy in the most cost-effective way.

Ideally, you should use a mix of different types of digital marketing in order to reach your audience through the various channels that they are using.

A digital marketing strategy is a plan that uses different platforms and content formats to achieve business goals. The purpose of digital marketing tactics is to raise brand awareness for your company, draw in new clients, and increase sales. A strong strategy helps create an online presence for your brand using social media, sponsored search, organic search, websites and more. It considers your resources – personnel, time, and money – and understands the audience and their preferred channels. The idea is not to spread yourself thin on all channels but rather to have a strong presence on those platforms that a majority of your customers frequent.

​Instead of creating content for all platforms at once, it’s best to focus your efforts on experimenting with content on specific channels that work well for you, monitoring your brand’s performance on these, and optimising your efforts on the platforms that give you the best results.

For example, if you’re a recruitment/headhunting agency, you are better off advertising on a platform such as LinkedIn, which is a ‘professional’ social media site. As a luxury boutique, your business could look at platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest. For unique products, search engine marketing may be your go-to option. For everything else, Facebook and Google serve as all-purpose platforms.

If you’re a small business or just getting started, keep things simple. Digital marketing for small or new businesses revolves around optimising websites, creating valuable content, using social media, email marketing, and search engine marketing (SEM). These strategies help SMBs establish a strong online presence, engage with target audiences, and drive conversions – all while staying within your budget constraints.

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 an eight-step guide to help you build an effective digital marketing strategy for your business.

1. Outline your goals: What do you want to accomplish? For example, do you want to increase traffic to your website, get more leads, increase sales by 20%, or launch a new product next quarter? Use the SMART framework and V2MOM to create actionable goals.
2. Define your target audience: Who do you want to reach? How old are they, where do they live, and what are their interests? B2B companies should consider the size, industry, and income of their target accounts. When defining your target audience, consider the differences between inbound and digital marketing to select the appropriate tools and channels for reaching your customers.
3. Choose the right digital marketing channel: Use your goals and target audience to choose the most effective channel. For example, a B2B company that wants to reach chief marketing officers will have more success on LinkedIn than TikTok. However, email marketing can be effective for most marketing goals and businesses and should be part of an integrated marketing campaign. Various digital marketing tactics, such as content marketing, social media campaigns, and influencer outreach, can be employed to achieve your marketing goals.
4. Set key performance indicators or KPIs: How do you determine if a campaign meets your goals? KPIs help marketers turn data into actionable insights. For example, if your goal is to drive traffic to a blog through an email campaign, you could use traffic acquisition on your blog or email click-through rates to see how effective your strategies and campaigns are.
5. Create a launch plan: Determine what you need to implement your campaign, who needs to be involved, and what everyone needs to do. Consider the resources, such as writers and designers, needed to launch your campaign. Create a launch calendar to keep everyone on track.
6. Track metrics: Are your ads driving sales? Are you ranking for targeted keywords and terms? Marketing analytics software can help you track and review metrics, providing answers to these questions.
7. Optimise your strategy: Track metrics for a few weeks. Is the campaign reaching your goals? If not, adjust your strategy. Test new ad copy, headlines, and subject lines, optimise blog post titles and landing pages, or test new keywords.
8. Create a strategy template: Think of this as a roadmap for growing your business. A digital marketing strategy template can help structure your approach to make sure every step you take is aligned with your goals. Start with an Executive Summary, which is a clear overview of your strategy, purpose, and key objectives. You might also want to include sections on your company mission or vision, target audience demographics, competitor analysis, SWOT analysis (your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats), goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), content strategy and execution plan, and resources (including budget and team considerations).

The role of a digital marketer is to promote a company’s services or products online. This might include:

• Content creation for social media, blogs, websites, videos, and more
• Managing online advertising campaigns
• Data analysis and optimisation
• SEO
• Email campaign strategies
• Communication with customers and the wider business.

A day-in-the-life of a digital marketer involves touching on all of these aspects, depending on what’s required. They might be replying to comments, creating content, building up to an advertising campaign, or assessing the success of a campaign that’s just happened.

Because of the varied tasks involved with digital marketing, digital marketers need to wear a variety of hats. They need to be organised, proactive, and in charge of their time. They need to be skilled communicators and writers, able to present ideas clearly and engagingly, adapting their style to the tone of the brand and communication platform. (Social media posts, for example, are much different from a press release.)

Along with the creative side of the job, they also need to be skilled at the analytical side, including data analysis, SEO, and proficiency with CRM systems.

Because it’s such a large and ever-changing role, training gaps aren’t unusual. Salesforce’s Trailhead’s free online digital marketing courses can help you thrive in the digital landscape. Whether you’re new or a pro, our courses will give you the tools and knowledge you need to develop a strong marketing strategy, measure performance effectively, and use AI to boost your campaigns.

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 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.

• Social media automation: Schedule posts in advance, use templates to respond to common customer questions, or automatically post articles your audience might find interesting.
• Create digital marketing reports: Create templates and connect different platforms to generate marketing reports automatically. You’ll have more time to analyse results when you don‘t have to spend additional time pulling data.
• Email marketing automation: Create drip campaigns to automatically deliver targeted messages at the right time. Automation can also help segment audiences, send cart recovery emails, and engage users through email marketing messages.
• Generative AI: Instead of writing ten emails for different audiences, marketers can write one “base” email and use generative AI to create personalised variants for as many audiences as they’d like.
• Ad targeting and bidding: Platforms like Google Ads use automation and AI to automatically adjust ad bidding and targeting. This is ideal for teams with limited PPC experience.
• Sales and CRM automation: Automatically send personalised messages, notify sales teams of new leads, create new lead accounts, and much more with sales and CRM automation.

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:

• Improving scalability by automating tasks that previously required a human to perform those tasks manually.
• Reducing digital marketing costs by allowing machines to take over less critical marketing tasks.
• Providing more detailed insights and collecting more data so teams can better visualise the impact of digital marketing campaigns.

Learn more about how to use AI to drive digital marketing success here.

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.