WHAT IS DIGITAL MARKETING ?

Digital marketing is the use of digital channels to market products to boost brand awareness, drive traffic, and hit marketing goals. Digital marketing promotes brands and connects them to potential customers via the internet. It takes many forms, including:

Search engines
Websites
Social media
Email
Mobile apps
Text messaging
Web-based advertising

BENIFITS OF DIGITAL MARKEKTING

Regardless of whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, digital marketing can help you get to know your audience, understand their pain points, and provide metrics that will give your marketing team credibility. Benefits include:

Reach a large demographic.

Digital marketing allows you to reach a wider customer base with less effort. When you post an ad online, it can reach anyone, regardless of their location. You can connect with customers on the other side of the world, in multiple time zones, seamlessly.

Cost efficiency.

Traditional marketing channels like TV, radio, and print media typically have higher costs than digital channels. Posting on social media and creating blogs doesn’t have a cost beyond the time you spend producing the content.

Results are measurable.

Digital marketing comes with a host of analytics opportunities that traditional marketing just can’t match. You can track the number of conversions and leads, visits to your website, and much more — giving you plenty of valuable insight to help grow your business.

Easier personalization for customers.

Because it requires so much data, businesses naturally learn a lot about their ideal customers during a digital marketing campaign. Thanks to this data, it’s never been easier to personalize your marketing campaigns. For example, you can segment customers based on their demographics and customize your messaging for each segment.

Opportunity to engage with customers at various stages.

With digital marketing, you can engage with customers at several points during the buying process. For example, you can create a paid advertising campaign and then follow up with those leads after they’ve made a purchase. This could be as simple as saying thank you or using it as an opportunity to upsell with related items or a subscription.

TYPES OF DIGITAL MARKETING

12 types of digital marketing

1. Content marketing.

Content marketing aims to educate and share value to readers instead of promoting a product or service. It isn’t outwardly promotional but establishes your business as a thought leader and a trustworthy source of information.

2. Email marketing.

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing where you reach out to your customers through strategic email messages. Email marketing can take many forms, but the more common types of emails businesses send include blog subscriptions, newsletters, welcome emails, and post-purchase follow-ups.

3. Search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO is the process of optimizing the content, technical setup, and reach of your website so your pages appear at the top of a search engine results page (SERP) for a specific set of keyword terms.

4. Search engine marketing (SEM).

SEM revolves around paid ads that display in the SERPs. Paid search typically refers to the sponsored result on the top or side of a SERP. These ads appear when users enter a certain search term. As the advertiser, you pay every time someone clicks on your ad. The two most popular SEM platforms are Google Ads and Microsoft Ads.

5. Affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing recruits affiliates to promote a business’s product or service to their followers. When a customer makes a purchase through that affiliate, the affiliate earns either a percentage commission or a flat-rate finder’s fee.

6. Pay per click (PPC).

With pay-per-click advertising you pay every time someone clicks on your ad. Google Ads is the most popular PPC platform for search engines, but Microsoft Ads, Meta Ads, YouTube Ads, and Amazon Ads are also valuable platforms for PPC.

Social media marketing promotes your business organically through various social networks. It is effective for digital marketing because it gives businesses the power to chat with their most engaged followers one –on one. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter) are the most popular social platforms.

8. Influencer marketing.

With influencer marketing, brands promote their products or services through popular content creators. Influencer marketing is similar to affiliate marketing in that you can capitalize on an established, captive audience that inherently trusts the influencer.

9. Native advertising.

Native advertising creates ads that mimic the look and feel of a platform. The goal is to make the ads not seem like advertising, but as just another piece of content.

10. Marketing automation.

Marketing automation streamlines marketing tasks by automating them. This type of digital marketing uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to power digital marketing campaigns. Marketing automation handles mundane and repetitive tasks so marketers can focus on high-level strategy and creativity instead.

11. Mobile marketing.

Mobile marketing is tailored to mobile devices and mobile users. It engages your target audience on mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets, as well as wearables like smartwatches.

12. Video marketing.

In video marketing you promote your business through either long-form or short-form video. YouTube is the most obvious place to do video marketing, but social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram are also great for promoting your brand with videos.