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What is 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 reach customers exclusively through ads on billboards, newspapers, magazines, radio, or television. Now, businesses can connect with the 92% of Americans who use the internet through digital channels that include social media, news websites, mobile and email.
Let’s break down the core tenets of implementing a digital marketing strategy the right way.
Digital Marketing Guide: Table of Contents
Digital marketing is any marketing action that occurs on digital platforms, regardless of whether the device is connected to the internet. Under the umbrella of digital marketing is online marketing, which includes email marketing, paid ads on social media platforms, and search engine optimisation (SEO).
The terms “digital marketing” and “online marketing” are often used interchangeably, but marketers should be aware of the difference. “Digital marketing” describes all marketing strategies that use digital services (like social media or television ads), while “online marketing” describes marketing strategies that are executed via the internet. While the line between them can become blurry, the current understanding of these terms defines online marketing as a type of digital marketing.
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.
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:
There are dozens of digital marketing channels you can use 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 such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram to build connections with potential customers and drive leads or sales.
There are two main types of social media marketing:
Nearly every type of business, from a small ecommerce business 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.
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.
There are nearly 5.9 million Google searches every day. SEO helps your business show up when users search terms related to your business.
There are several types of SEO. These include:
Pay per Click (PPC)
PPC refers to the use of paid ads to reach a highly targeted audience. For example, you could create an ad campaign that targets your 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.”
Unlike billboard or radio ads, where businesses pay upfront, with PPC you only pay if a user actually clicks on your ads. Some platforms do charge by impression or view, but that is less common.
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 to email marketing include:
Additionally, email marketing can be used at each stage of the marketing funnel, and continuing 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.
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 for it. 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 fits your needs. An in-house team may understand your business better 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.
If your business is just getting started with digital marketing, consider a hybrid in-house and outsourced approach. 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.
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 being used to describe the next generation of internet experiences 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 on exactly how it all works. If you’re interested, there are plenty of great explanations out there that 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 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. 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 a great deal of time. Create helpful content for your target audience. And remember, digital marketing helps make sales, but it’s all about building relationships with your customers.