We’ve talked about social media marketing and discussed how you can make your marketing journey a success, so now let’s talk about digital marketing. What is digital marketing?
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is what the name says. It’s using a digital platform to market a business!
These marketing efforts use an electronic device and the internet.
Digital marketing is leveraging digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and other websites to connect with current and prospective customers.
What does digital marketing entail?
I’ve mentioned briefly in my previous posts the types of marketing that is available for businesses, and although traditional marketing might exist in print ads, phone communication, leaflets etc. digital marketing occurs electronically and online.
It includes the likes of branding, advertising, includes email, video, social media, or website-based marketing opportunities.
From how far we’ve come into this tech world, digital marketing is now vital for many businesses.
Every other brand has a website. And if they don’t, they at least have a social media presence or digital ad strategy.
It’s become heavily reliable to get noticed and has become vital for businesses to include digital marketing in their marketing strategies if they wish to succeed.
How do define digital marketing?
There’s a spectrum of tactics that fall under the umbrella of “digital marketing.“
These can include websites, branding campaigns, digital advertising, email marketing, online brochures etc. which covers the purpose of knowing your customer and how they spend their time online.
Once a marketing strategy has been set out, campaigns can be set from either paid or free channels.
As mentioned above, a digital marketer covers various aspects of a businesses success.
It can include:
A content marketer, to create a series of blog posts that serve to generate leads from a new ebook the business recently created.
A social media marketer, to help promote content through paid and organic posts on the business’s social media accounts.
A email marketer, to create an email campaign to send those who download the content and to provide more information on the company.
Types of Digital Marketing
Here’s a quick checklist of some of the most common jobs involved in digital marketing:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Pay Per Click (PPC)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Marketing Automation
- Email Marketing
- Online PR
- Sponsored Content
Now lets break each of these down into detail
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Are you a newbie? You have most definitely overlooked this aspect then. In the world of blogging I have learnt that SEO is probably one of the major aspects every business should consider when first starting out. Set the bar high at the beginning.
SEO is the process of optimizing your website to “rank” higher in search engine results pages such as Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.
It increases the amount of organic traffic your website receives.
There are three main ways to approach SEO:
- On page SEO: This type focuses on all of the content that exists “on the page” when looking at a website.
- Off page SEO: This type focuses on all of the activity that takes place “off the page” when looking to optimize your website.Off page SEO includes earning back links which can give your ranking a big boost.
Follow me on Instagram where I share daily tips on how to grow your blog score: @writtenbysadia
- Technical SEO: This type of SEO focuses on the back end of your website, and how your pages are coded. Image compression, structured data, and CSS file optimization are all forms of technical SEO.
Content Marketing
This term is related to any content creation brands. For example:
- Blog posts: Writing and publishing articles on your own blog or a company blog can help demonstrate your industry expertise and generate organic search traffic for your business.
- Ebooks and whitepapers: These are similar long-form content pieces which help further educate your website visitors.
- Infographics: Infographics are a form of visual content that helps website visitors visualize a concept you want to help them learn.
Social Media Marketing
If you’re a regular reader of mine, you’ll know how much I’ve hammered on about social media marketing.
Not sure? Have a look through my “Business 101” category for more detail posts on social media marketing.
This technique promotes your brand and your content on social media channels to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, and generate leads for your business. There are several platforms you can use to channel your social media marketing strategies:
- Facebook.
- Twitter.
- LinkedIn.
- Instagram.
- Quora.
- Snapchat.
- Pinterest.
- Reddit.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
PPC is a long term goal I kept in mind before beginning my blogging journey. Just like someone would pay to have their ad placed on your site, my goal was and is to be on that receiving end!.
It’s a method of driving traffic to your website by paying a publisher every time your ad is clicked.
One of the most common types of PPC is Google Ads.
Site’s such as Google Ads allow you to pay for top slots on Google’s search engine results pages at a price “per click” of the links you place. Other channels where you can use PPC are:
- Facebook ads: Very popular and practised by many businesses.Users can pay to customize a video, image post, or slideshow, which Facebook will publish to the newsfeeds of people who match your business’s audience.
- Twitter Ads: Users can pay to place a series of posts or profile badges to the news feeds of a specific audience, all dedicated to accomplish a specific goal for your business.
- Sponsored Messages on LinkedIn: Users can pay to send messages directly to specific LinkedIn users based on their industry and background.
Affiliate Marketing
This is where you receive commission for promoting someone else’s products or services on your website. Affiliate marketing channels include:
- Hosting video ads.
- Posting affiliate links from your social media accounts.
- Sharing a brand or product on your social platforms.
- Creating a landing page where you can bring sales traffic in return for commission.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation refers to software that can automate your basic marketing operations without you having to do them manually. These can include things like:
- Email newsletters: A very popular one which I never knew existed. I would think brands and bloggers ACTUALLY take the time out of their daily routine and sit at a laptop typing emails to their readers daily. Nope I was wrong! Email automation does the job for them. It allows you to automatically send emails to your subscribers. It can also help you narrow your audience so you know who are engaged and who aren’t.
- Social media post scheduling: Consistency is the key to success. If you want to grow your business presence on a social network, you need to post frequently. This makes manual posting a bit tiring. Social media scheduling tools push your content to your social media channels for you, so you can spend more time focusing on content strategy.
I enjoy using Tailwind, Later and Hoot-suite to schedule my Pinterest, Insta, Facebook and Twitter posts.
- Lead Magnet automation: Generating leads, and converting those leads into customers, can be a long hard process. You can automate that process by sending leads to specific emails and content once they fit a certain criteria, such as when they download and open an ebook.
Email Marketing
Businesses use email marketing as a way of communicating with their audiences.
Email is quiet often used to promote content, discounts and events, as well as to direct people towards the business’s website.
The types of emails you might send in an email could be:
- Blog subscription newsletters/updates
- Follow-up emails to website visitors who downloaded something.
- Promotions or discounts
- Tips or similar series emails for customer nurturing.
Online PR
Online PR is the practice of securing earned online coverage with digital publications, blogs, and other content-based websites.The channels you can use to maximize your PR efforts include:
- Reporter outreach
- Engaging online reviews of your company
- Engaging comments on your personal website or blog
Sponsored Content
With sponsored content, you can pay another company to create and promote content that discusses your brand or service in some way.
Influencer marketing is a popular type of sponsored content. With this type of sponsored content, a brand sponsors an influencer in its industry to publish posts or videos related to the company on social media. This in return brings in high traffic and sales for the brand.
Another type of sponsored content could be a blog post or article that is written to highlight a topic, service, or brand. This is published on the bloggers platform.
What is the role of a digital marketer?
Digital marketers drive brand awareness and lead generation through all the above (and more) digital channels — both free and paid — at a businesses request.
These channels can include all or some of the following: social media, the company’s own website, search engine rankings, email, display advertising, and the company’s blog.
KPI’s – The digital marketer usually focuses on a different key performance indicator (KPI) for each channel so they can properly measure the company’s performance across each one.
Here are some examples of the types of digital marketing specialists:
SEO specialist
To drive organic traffic is the main goal
SEO managers aim to get the business to rank on Google. Getting on the first page of Google is a great way to bring huge traffic to a brands website.
Content Marketing Specialist
To bring out new content each time
Content marketing specialists track the company’s content strategy and make ways to improve it.
Social Media specialist
To gain follows, impressions, shares comments etc.
Social media managers establish a posting schedule for the company’s written and visual content.
Marketing Automation specialist
Operate email , campaign click-through rate, lead-generation (conversion) rate
The marketing automation specialist helps manage the software that allows the whole marketing team to understand their customers’ behaviour and measure the growth of their business.
Does digital marketing work for all businesses?
Digital marketing can work for any business in any industry.
It can work for B2B and B2C businesses too.
Can digital marketing be monitored?
YES!
Digital marketing is way easier to monitor than the traditional marketing method.
You can see the results in real time.
For example, setting up an ad in a newspaper would make it difficult for you to analyse your audience or how many people viewed your ad, or even how many people shared your ad. Whereas with digital marketing as it’s all done online, it’s easily trackable and can be monitored in real time.
Using the information, you can tailor your ads to specific audiences and create a sure way to obtain brand attention.
An example is “website traffic” and “engagement”.
You can monitor exactly how many people view your website, how many visitors return, which devices they use and how long they stayed on your website.
Same goes for an online brochure, you would get more benefit promoting it online and making a download instead of posting it through your customers door.
Some social media platforms offer this information for free.
Instagram is a platform which provides analytics for your business account. It shows you the insights for each post and the impressions it’s received.
Pinterest also has a similar layout.
Digital marketing can be monitored A-Z. It’s the best way to keep tabs on your business.
Have you invested in a digital marketer? Or maybe you ARE a digital marketer?
Leave me a comment below!
Related: A-Z what is Social media marketing (fully explained)
