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The term digital marketing refers to the use of digital channels to market products and services to consumers. This type of marketing involves the use of websites, mobile devices, social media, search engines, and other similar channels. Digital marketing became popular with the advent of the internet in the 1990s.
Digital marketing involves some of the same principles as traditional marketing and is often considered an additional way for companies to approach consumers and understand their behavior. Companies often combine traditional and digital marketing techniques in their strategies. But digital marketing comes with its own set of challenges, including implicit bias.
Key Takeaways
Digital marketing involves marketing to consumers through digital channels, including websites, mobile devices, and social media platforms.
This form of marketing is different from internet marketing, which is exclusively done on websites.
Digital marketing relates to attracting customers via email, content marketing, search platforms, social media, and more.
One of the biggest challenges digital marketers face is how to set themselves apart in a world that is oversaturated with digital marketing ads.
Digital marketing comes with various challenges, including implicit bias.
Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
How Digital Marketing Works
Marketing refers to activities that a company uses to promote its products and services and to improve its market share. To be successful, it requires a combination of advertising savvy, sales, and the ability to deliver goods to end-users. Professionals, known as marketers, take on these tasks either internally at companies or externally at marketing firms.
Corporations traditionally focused on marketing through print, television, and radio. Although these options still exist, the internet led to a shift in the way companies reach consumers. That’s where digital marketing came into play. This form of marketing involves the use of websites, social media, search engines, and apps—anything that incorporates marketing with customer feedback or a two-way interaction between the company and its customers.
New technologies and trends forced companies to change their marketing strategies. Email became a popular marketing tool in the early days of digital marketing. Then, the focus shifted to search engines like Netscape, which allowed businesses to tag and keyword items to get themselves noticed. The development of sites like Facebook made it possible for companies to track data and cater to consumer trends.
Smartphones and other digital devices now make it easier for companies to market themselves and their products and services to consumers. Studies show that people prefer using their phones to go online. In fact, according to a Pew Research Center study, over 75% of American adults typically make shopping purchases using their phones.
Digital marketing can be interactive and is often used to target specific segments of the customer base.
Sources and Receivers
Advertisers are commonly referred to as sources, while recipients of the targeted ads are the receivers. Sources frequently target highly specific, well-defined receivers, as McDonald’s did with shift workers and travelers.
The company used digital ads because it knew these people used digital devices and made up a large segment of its late-night business. McDonald’s encouraged them to download the Restaurant Finder app, targeting them with ads placed at automated teller machines (ATMs), gas stations, and websites that its customers frequented.
Types of Digital Marketing Channels
As noted above, marketing was traditionally done through print (newspapers and magazines) and broadcast ads (TV and radio). These channels still exist and are used today. Digital marketing channels have evolved and continue to do so. The following are eight of the most common digital avenues that companies can take to boost their marketing efforts. Keep in mind that some companies may use multiple channels in their efforts.
Website Marketing
A website is the centerpiece of all digital marketing activities. It is a very powerful channel on its own, but it’s also the medium needed to execute a variety of online marketing campaigns. A website should represent a brand, product, and service in a clear and memorable way. It should be fast, mobile-friendly, and easy to use.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising enables marketers to reach internet users on a number of digital platforms through paid ads. Marketers can set up PPC campaigns on Google, Bing, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook and show their ads to people searching on terms related to products or services.
These campaigns can segment users based on their demographic characteristics (such as age or gender), or even target their particular interests or location. The most popular platforms for PPC are Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
Content Marketing
The goal of content marketing is to reach potential customers through the use of content that interests them. Content is usually published on a website and then promoted through social media, email marketing, search engine optimization, or even pay-per-click campaigns. The tools of content marketing include blogs, ebooks, online courses, infographics, podcasts, and webinars.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is still one of the most effective digital marketing channels. Many people confuse email marketing with spam email messages, but that’s not what email marketing is about. This type of marketing allows companies to reach potential customers and anyone else interested in their brands and products.
Many digital marketers use all other digital marketing channels to add leads to their email lists. Then, using email marketing, they create customer acquisition funnels to turn those leads into customers.
Social Media Marketing
The primary goals of a social media marketing campaign are to build brand awareness and establish social trust. As you go deeper into social media marketing, you can use it to obtain leads and as a direct marketing or sales channel. Promoted posts and tweets are two examples of social media marketing.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing, and the internet has given it new life. With affiliate marketing, influencers promote other people’s products and get a commission every time a sale is made or a lead is introduced. Many well-known companies including Amazon have affiliate programs that pay out millions of dollars per month to websites that sell their products.
Video Marketing
YouTube is one of the most popular search engines in the world. A lot of internet users turn to YouTube before making a buying decision, to learn something, to read a review, or just to relax.
Marketers can use any of several video marketing platforms, including Facebook Videos, Instagram, and TikTok, to run a video marketing campaign. Companies find the most success with video by integrating it with SEO, content marketing, and broader social media marketing campaigns.
SMS Messaging
Companies and nonprofit organizations also use text messages (formally known as SMS, or short message service) to send information about their latest promotions or give opportunities to willing customers. Political candidates running for office also use SMS campaigns to spread positive information about their platforms. As technology has advanced, many text-to-give campaigns also allow customers to directly pay or give via a simple text message.
Internet marketing differs from digital marketing. Internet marketing is advertising that is solely on the internet, whereas digital marketing can take place through mobile devices, on a subway platform, in a video game, or via a smartphone app.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Digital Marketing
A key point to remember is that digital marketers use key performance indicators (KPIs) just like traditional marketers. KPIs are quantifiable ways that companies can measure long-term performance of marketing and compare their efforts to their competition. Areas of measurement include corporate strategies, financial goals and achievements, operational activities, and even marketing campaigns.
The following are some of the most common KPIs that marketers can use to help companies achieve their goals:
Blog Articles: Marketers can use this KPI to figure out how many times a company publishes blog posts each month.
Clickthrough Rates: Companies can use this KPI to figure out how many clicks take place for email distributions. This includes the number of people that open an email and click on a link to complete a sale.
Conversion Rate: This measure focuses on call-to-action promotional programs. These programs ask consumers to follow through with certain actions, such as buying a product or service before the end of a promotional period. Companies can determine the conversion rate by dividing successful engagements by the total number of requests made.
Traffic on Social Media: This tracks how many people interact with corporate social media profiles. It includes likes, follows, views, shares, and/or other measurable actions.
Website Traffic: Marketers can use this metric to track how many people visit a company’s website. Corporate management can use this information to understand whether the site’s design and structure contribute to sales.
Digital Marketing Challenges
Digital marketing poses special challenges for its purveyors. Digital channels proliferate rapidly, and digital marketers have to keep up with how these channels work and how they’re used by receivers. Marketers need to know how to use these channels to effectively market their products or services.
It’s becoming more difficult to capture receivers’ attention because they’re increasingly inundated with competing ads. Digital marketers also find it challenging to analyze the vast troves of data they capture and then exploit this information in new marketing efforts.
The challenge of capturing and using data effectively highlights that digital marketing requires an approach to marketing based on a deep understanding of consumer behavior. For example, it may require that a company use different techniques, such as website heatmaps, to learn more about the customer journey and new forms of consumer behavior.
Implicit Bias in Digital Marketing
Implicit bias has a way of creeping into digital marketing, even when marketers and companies do all they can to ensure that it doesn’t. Implicit bias refers to attitudes and stereotypes that occur automatically without any conscious knowledge.
Algorithms are part of the foundation of digital marketing, which makes them very important when companies craft their marketing strategies. These algorithms are often created with the intention of being unbiased. However, the intention doesn’t always match the result.
That’s because algorithms are programmed by various individuals, including engineers, developers, data scientists, and marketers—all of whom come with their own implicit biases. This means they may program, input, and manipulate data in certain ways, without meaning to.
Something as simple as adding stock photos or videos to a campaign can come with implicit bias. For instance, companies may unintentionally use images and videos of heterosexual White individuals while excluding Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, along with those of different body types and abilities.
What Is a Digital Marketing Agency?
A digital marketing agency is a firm that deals exclusively in marketing to consumers through digital channels. This includes creating and launching campaigns for corporate clients through social media, pay-per-click advertising, videos, and websites, among others.
What Is SEO in Digital Marketing?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a way that companies increase traffic to their websites, with the goal of pushing their sites and names to the top of any search results page. This can occur with search results obtained organically or editorially. When companies are able to successfully apply SEO to their digital marketing strategies, their names and websites become increasingly visible to more consumers.
What Is Internet Marketing?
Internet marketing is any marketing that takes place solely on the internet. This means it exclusively appears on websites. It is different than digital marketing, which includes internet marketing as well as marketing on social media sites, and mobile apps. These marketing campaigns can take place through smartphones, digital devices, and other platforms.
How Can I Become a Digital Marketer?
Digital marketers require strong writing skills along with data analytics and social media skills. A bachelor’s degree is needed for most digital marketing positions. You’ll find these positions in a business field such as marketing, or a related field such as communications. You may also want to take digital marketing courses or bootcamps. In addition, completing an internship while in school can be useful. A master’s degree in digital marketing may be useful but is not necessary to getting a job in the digital marketing field.
What Skills Are Needed in Digital Marketing?
Writing content is a required skill. So are communication skills, to effectively tell your product’s story to your consumer base. Data analytics skills are important for understanding how well your marketing campaigns are performing and where they can be improved. Finally, social media and other online skills are a must.
The Bottom Line
Some of the world’s biggest advertising campaigns were executed through traditional means. The Marlboro Man was very popular in print and on television, while people still recall Wendy’s “Where’s the beef?” tagline.
But changes in the way people consume media forced companies to shift their focus. Digital marketing is now just as big, if not bigger, than traditional advertising and marketing.
Implicit bias can occur in digital marketing, just as it can elsewhere. The main thing to keep in mind is that, as technology continues to change, you can also expect digital marketing to evolve.
A digital marketing strategy requires meaningful, personalized engagement with customers down the funnel and across multiple channels. To maximize the value of digital channels and engagement, and their impact on customers’ shifting digital behaviors, marketers need to plan, execute and evaluate the impact of digital marketing efforts holistically.
Multichannel
Multichannel is the marketing practice of using more than one channel to communicate with customers and prospects. Best‑in‑class digital marketers drive business growth by leveraging multichannel to span a multitude of touchpoints with target audiences.
These include websites, paid and organic social media, search and display advertising, TV, over‑the‑top (OTT) streaming media, digital video, email and mobile marketing (e.g., SMS, push notification, in‑app messaging and consumer messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp), and voice‑enabled endpoints (e.g., smart speakers and smartphone‑based virtual personal assistants).
Personalization
Scaling the delivery of personalized content and experiences is one of marketing’s most important roles in driving effective digital experiences, and it’s imperative to align personalization approaches to overall multichannel marketing objectives. Yet according to Gartner research, 63% of marketers face a moderate or significant challenge in delivering personalized experiences to customers.
The challenge is how to connect a customer’s experience of “rightness” with a digital marketer’s ability to measure, and hopefully optimize, “rightness.” Although 86% of individuals responding to a recent Gartner personalization survey said they are open to some personalized communication from brands, 55% say they’ll stop doing business when a brand communicates in a way they find invasive. A further 40% said they would stop doing business when they perceive a brand’s communication as irrelevant.
With such a fine line and big consequences separating good from bad personalization, it’s no wonder the topic continues to drive digital marketing leaders’ objectives as a critical element of their digital marketing strategy.
Learn How Digital Marketing Efforts Drive Business Success in the Modern World
Marketing is the practice of identifying and satisfying customer needs. This is a particularly important task in the business context, as successful marketing efforts can drive leads and conversions. Even though marketing has deep roots in business history and culture, digital marketing is a relatively new practice.
It’s much easier to double your business by doubling your conversion rate than by doubling your traffic.
Jeff Eisenberg
With the explosion of digital technology, including widespread use of computers and smartphones, businesses began to experiment with new marketing tactics—which is the origin of digital marketing.
Fast forward to the present and digital marketing is as important, if not more so, than traditional marketing methods. Depending on the business there is a growing divide between traditional and digital marketing, while others have found novel ways of bringing the two closer together. Regardless of the approach, it is vital for businesses to plan and execute a viable digital marketing strategy.
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In this course, you will discover the five key steps to Conversion Rate Optimization and how the process interacts with other facets of digital marketing.
What Are the Basics of Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing refers to any marketing methods conducted through electronic devices which utilize some form of a computer, including online marketing efforts conducted on the internet. In the process of conducting digital marketing, a business might leverage websites, search engines, blogs, social media, video, email and similar channels to reach customers.
Unlike traditional marketing—which is static and often referred to as “one-way” communication—digital marketing is an ever-changing, dynamic process. Stated otherwise, customers cannot interact with business through a billboard or print ad, whereas digital marketing provides an avenue for two-way communication between a business and its actual or prospective customers.
These days, screen time is at an all-time high for many people. Digital marketing takes advantage of this reality, promoting business products and services across the internet. In this way, businesses ensure that their marketing efforts are more likely to reach customers, by targeting them where they spend most of their time.
From startups to enterprise businesses, a multifaceted digital marketing approach can lead to significant commercial benefits. Successful digital marketing strategy generally involves a combination of various methods, including online advertising, search engine optimization and marketing, social media marketing and management and content creation, among others.
Are There Different Ways to Conduct Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is a broad term that encompasses many different channels for promoting business interests to prospective customers. Depending on the business needs and goals, there are countless ways to conduct digital marketing. It is not a cookie-cutter exercise.
That being said, there are several common methods for conducting digital marketing, including:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) — SEO is the practice of improving ranking within major search engines to increase online traffic.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) — SEM leverages paid online advertising to increase website visibility within search engines. SEM is often used in conjunction with SEO.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) — PPC is an online method for advertising where a business only pays for its ads when a person clicks on them.
Social Media Marketing (SMM) — SMM is the practice of using social media channels to promote business products or services. The use of social media influencers, often referred to as influencer marketing, is prevalent in SMM.
Email Marketing — Email marketing enables businesses to send branded, promotional content directly to prospective customers via email. The use of automated newsletters is common in this context.
Affiliate Marketing — Affiliate marketing is a performance-based exercise that enables revenue sharing and pay-per-sale (PPS) compensation within a common network.
Content Marketing — Content marketing refers to the publishing and distribution of text, video or audio materials to customers online. Blogs, videos and podcasts are common ways for businesses to engage in content marketing.
Native Advertising — Native advertising involves blending marketing materials into a medium, making the underlying message and marketing purposes equally important. Sponsored content, in which one business posts its own content on a different website, is a common method of native advertising.
There are numerous ways to execute a digital marketing strategy. For most businesses, successful inbound marketing involves the use and application of multiple digital marketing methods.
What Benefits Can I Achieve Through Digital Marketing?
Given the diversity of digital marketing methods, there is a similarly diverse set of benefits available for digitally savvy benefits. On an overarching level, digital marketing enables businesses to reach customers during everyday activities, such as scanning social media, reading online articles, watching videos, etc. When customers are exposed to marketing in this type of natural and regular manner, it can yield a variety of commercial benefits.
“Digital marketing is defined by using numerous digital tactics and channels to connect with customers where they spend much of their time: online.”
Hubspot
More specifically, digital marketing can help businesses achieve any or all of the following benefits:
Global Reach — Unlike traditional methods, digital marketing is not necessarily bound to a specific geographic area. The internet is available to customers across the globe. This allows businesses to market and sell to customers who live in a different state or country, removing many traditional barriers to entry.
Low Cost of Entry — To achieve the global reach of digital marketing through traditional channels, there would be a serious price tag attached. On the other hand, certain aspects of digital marketing can be achieved with a small investment of time and resources. For example, even small or startup businesses can create a website, manage social media and publish blogs without breaking the bank.
Measurable ROI — In order to maximize profits, businesses must carefully evaluate return on investment (ROI). With traditional marketing, ROI can be difficult, sometimes impossible, to measure. On the other hand, digital marketing provides real-time visibility into the effectiveness of each campaign, enabling business leaders to make well-informed decisions to drive revenue and increase profit.
Improved Targeting — Digital marketing allows businesses to target very specific demographics of potential customers. By engaging customers in a particular geography, industry or social channel, businesses have a much better chance of reaching their target demographic.
Dynamic Adaptability — Digital marketing strategies are extremely malleable and flexible, enabling businesses to adjust course when needed. Unlike long-term, traditional marketing campaigns, businesses can adjust their digital efforts on the fly, enabling quick pivots when necessary to realize commercial opportunity.
Immediate Connection — Before making a purchase, modern customers generally conduct online research and evaluate reviews. The first step in this process typically starts with a search engine. In this way, businesses with developed SEO, SEM and PPC strategies can connect immediately with customers.
Relationship Building — The rise of social media has turned it into a dominant communications platform for many customer demographics. Furthermore, customers increasingly want to interact with businesses on their terms and on their preferred platform. As a result, businesses that engage in effective SMM practices can build longtime and loyal relationships with current and prospective customers.
Overall, businesses of every shape and size can achieve powerful benefits through effective use of digital marketing methods. Furthermore, the cost of digital marketing can be tailored to each specific business, stripping many barriers to entry of traditional methods. With so many benefits available for just about any budget, it makes sense why so many businesses are succeeding with digital marketing efforts.
How Much Will Digital Marketing Cost My Business?
The simple answer is that there is a digital marketing strategy for every budget. The flexibility of digital marketing strategies yields benefits for just about every size of business, from small to large. With such a wide range of methods and strategies, it is not possible to provide a one-size-fits-all price tag for digital marketing.
Instead, it is helpful to examine the digital marketing spend for different levels of business, as small companies will spend less than larger ones. For example:
Basic Digital Marketing — Startups and small businesses do not generally have a large budget available for digital marketing. These businesses focus on low-cost methods, typically leveraging websites, blogs and social media to drive revenue at a low price point. The cost for basic digital marketing can be several hundred dollars per month.
Intermediate Digital Marketing — Medium-sized businesses tend to have established revenue streams and the capability to spend more on digital marketing. This is where SEO, SEM, PPC and email marketing start to become prevalent. The cost for intermediate digital marketing can be several thousand dollars per month.
Advanced Digital Marketing — Large or enterprise businesses will use digital marketing in a comprehensive and often global manner. These businesses tend to have developed strategies across most digital marketing channels. These businesses often spend substantial resources developing a digital marketing strategy across many available channels. The cost for advanced digital marketing can be tens of thousands of dollars per month.
As demonstrated above, the cost of digital marketing varies greatly based on business size, revenue and goals. Smaller companies will often start with a basic strategy and develop intermediate or advanced methods down the road. Ultimately, it is possible for just about every business to create and implement a digital marketing strategy that meets their needs and budget.
How Do I Create and Implement a Digital Marketing Strategy?
The process for creating and implementing a digital marketing strategy involves many steps and required considerations. In this context, it is critical to devote time and resources to planning and creation. Information, analytics and research collected while planning and creating can have a tremendous impact during implementation.
Digital Marketing Strategy
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You already know why marketing is important for your business, and digital is an essential component of your overall marketing strategy. Here’s what you need to get started.
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A strong digital marketing strategy is crucial to organizational success in today’s business landscape. Companies thriving in the digital world typically allocate significant resources to the development of digital marketing strategies. In the process, organizations reach customers across various digital and social platforms, driving positive revenue gains, improved conversion rates and engage with their customers. […]
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Most of our consumption of content today exists online. Because of this, companies have had to shift to digital marketing in order to get the word out about their products and services. However, you cannot simply make content for online platforms and hope for the best. You need to build a digital marketing strategy to […]
It is true that every business has unique needs and goals. Correspondingly, the creation and implementation of a digital marketing strategy will change from business to business. But in common practice, many businesses employ a similar process for creating and implementing a digital marketing strategy, as outlined below.
Identify Marketing Goals — The first step in this process involves identifying specific goals, such as driving sales, generating leads, building brand recognition or increasing subscribers.
Solidify Sales Process — To maximize the benefits of digital marketing, it is necessary to understand the digital sales process and exactly how customers will make digital purchases.
Isolate Target Customers — Creating a strong target demographic with refined buyer personas helps isolate the ideal customers to purchase business goods or services.
Choose Marketing Channels — Armed with target demographic and buyer personas, it is important to identify the best digital marketing channels to reach those ideal customers.
Set Clear Benchmarks — In order to evaluate a digital marketing strategy, it is advisable to establish clear benchmarks for success and measure progress along the way.
Make Necessary Adjustments — After creating and implementing a digital marketing strategy, it is important to monitor progress toward goals and adjust as needed.
An effective digital marketing strategy must take into the account the individual needs and goals of the business in question. Accordingly, a digital marketing strategy that works for a small “mom-and-pop” store is likely inappropriate for a global brand. The good news is that digital marketing offers a wide range of methods, channels and strategies. So, businesses of just about any size and in just about any industry can leverage digital marketing to great effect.
Digital marketing, or online marketing, is a form of advertising that uses the internet and digital technologies to connect with customers. Rather than traditional media, such as print, radio, or television, digital marketing uses computers, mobile, social media, search engines, and other digital channels to reach consumers wherever they spend the most time.
Learn all you need to know about digital marketing, its methodologies, and how to get started in this career.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is a form of marketing that leverages the internet and digital technologies, such as computers and smartphones, to connect with customers. More than running a sponsored Instagram ad to drive sales, it’s a set of practices that interacts with customers at every stage of the buying journey.
Digital marketing includes email, social media, advertising, and multimedia messaging that is distributed through mobile and web. Over 60 percent of the global population is online, and more people are joining them every day [1]. That’s why companies are now increasing their digital marketing budgets by double-digit figures while traditional marketing gets slashed [2].
Data plays a big part in digital marketing. Marketers can collect valuable information by tracking a customer’s journey in real time and target specific audiences by tailoring content to their preferred digital channels. For example, Starbucks has collected data from their rewards mobile apps to help identify seasonal trends and create tailored promotions [3].
Watch this short video from Google on how digital marketing creates value:
5 types of digital marketing (with examples)
Digital marketers connect with potential customers through different channels. The following digital marketing tactics, used by small companies and big businesses alike, remain among the most popular and impactful used today.
1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a technique that seeks to improve the ranking of online material on search engines such as Google or Bing. If you have ever searched for something on Google, you’ve likely noticed that even the simplest search can yield millions of results. Yet, you probably rarely go past the first few suggestions, let alone the next page.
In such a highly crowded space, digital marketers use SEO to ensure that potential customers actually find their products or services online. Some common ways to go about SEO include:
Creating quality content that meets searcher intent
Using keywords to help search engines identify relevant material
Using long-tail keywords (specific phrases that searchers use) to help content reach its target audience
Ensuring that content loads quickly and is compatible with mobile devices
Data drives SEO marketing
In SEO marketing, you’ll be in charge of monitoring data, such as the bounce rate or clickthrough rate, to measure how well a blog, product page, or social media post is doing. You’ll need to become familiar with tools like SEMRush and Google Analytics, as well as business intelligence tools like Tableau and Looker to generate and analyze data from your organization.
Read more: What Is SEO Marketing? + How to Improve Your SEO
2. Content marketing
Content marketing connects with target audiences through original content, such as blogs, articles, and newsletters. It is often used to raise brand awareness through material that appeals to a particular audience.
Content marketing can take many forms across a range of digital media channels, including:
Informative articles and blogs
Original videos
Podcasts
Newsletters (like Substack, Medium, or LinkedIn)
3. Email marketing
Marketers send out timely emails to large groups of people who have signed up for their contact list to inform potential customers of sales, discounts, and product launches. The impact of email marketing is clear: When used strategically, it can have an average return on investment (ROI) of 4,200 percent for every dollar invested [4].
Some common examples of emailing marketing include:
Timed emails that raise brand awareness during holiday seasons
Blast emails that inform recipients about upcoming sales events
Targeted emails that send personalized offers and messages to specific groups on an email list
4. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a digital marketing model that involves an advertiser paying a publisher each time their ads are clicked. Typically, the publisher is a website owner, search engine operator, or social network platforms, such as Facebook or Instagram.
Typical examples of PPC advertising include:
Banner ads that flank web content on the sides or top of the page
Social media ads that appear in the feeds of targeted audiences
Ads that appear when a specific keyword is searched on a search engine, such as Google
5. Social media marketing
Social media marketing is a form of digital marketing that uses social networks such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, to reach customers. It leverages the reach of social network platforms with data-driven efforts to reach targeted consumers.
Whether through computers, mobile devices, or mobile apps, social media offers the opportunity to reach a wide—and targeted—audience of possible consumers.
Examples of social media marketing include:
Videos posted onto social media as a part of a larger campaign, such as this 80s-themed music video produced by peanut company Planters for the holidays
Pictures posted on Instagram that reflect a brand’s identity, such as Patagonia’s nature-filled Instagram account
Digital marketing salary and job outlook
Digital marketing is an in-demand field with a growing impact because it offers brands the opportunity to reach billions of people using the internet and social media today.
On average, advertising, promotions, and marketing manager roles are projected to grow by 10 percent between 2021 and 2031, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics [6]. Glassdoor estimates that the average annual salary for a digital marketing manager in the United States is $79,179 as of March 2023.
How to become a digital marketer
Digital marketers need to be familiar with marketing, business, communications, and digital technologies. You’ll need to be creative, strategic, and analytical.
Many employers prefer candidates with a bachelor’s degree in either business or communications, but a degree isn’t always necessary if you have the right skills. It is helpful for candidates to have done an internship while in school.
Skills needed in a digital marketing career:
Communication
Collaboration with designers, strategists, and product developers
Creative thinking
Data analysis and familiarity with data analytics
Social media marketing
Content creation
SEM/SEO and CRM tools
Digital marketing with Google
A career in digital marketing is possible with the proper preparation, training, and approach. Start building the skills that companies are looking for with the Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce Professional Certificate on Coursera. Go from beginner to job-ready in months as you learn at your own pace.
Did you know that more than 3 quarters of Americans go online on a daily basis? Not only that, but 43% go on more than once a day and 26% are online “almost constantly.”
These figures are even higher among mobile internet users. 89% of Americans go online at least daily, and 31% are online almost constantly. As a marketer, it’s important to take advantage of the digital world with an online advertising presence, by building a brand, providing a great customer experience that also brings more potential customers and more, with a digital strategy.
A digital marketing strategy allows you to leverage different digital channels–such as social media, pay-per-click, search engine optimization, and email marketing–to connect with existing customers and individuals interested in your products or services. As a result, you can build a brand, provide a great customer experience, bring in potential customers, and more.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing, also called online marketing, is the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the internet and other forms of digital communication. This includes not only email, social media, and web-based advertising, but also text and multimedia messages as a marketing channel.
Essentially, if a marketing campaign involves digital communication, it’s digital marketing.
Inbound marketing versus digital marketing
Digital marketing and inbound marketing are easily confused, and for good reason. Digital marketing uses many of the same tools as inbound marketing—email and online content, to name a few. Both exist to capture the attention of prospects through the buyer’s journey and turn them into customers. But the 2 approaches take different views of the relationship between the tool and the goal.
Digital marketing considers how individual tools or digital channels can convert prospects. A brand’s digital marketing strategy may use multiple platforms or focus all of its efforts on 1 platform. For example, a company may primarily create content for social media platforms and email marketing campaigns while ignoring other digital marketing avenues.
On the other hand, inbound marketing is a holistic concept. It considers the goal first, then looks at the available tools to determine which will effectively reach target customers, and then at which stage of the sales funnel that should happen. As an example, say you want to boost website traffic to generate more prospects and leads. You can focus on search engine optimization when developing your content marketing strategy, resulting in more optimized content, including blogs, landing pages, and more.
The most important thing to remember about digital marketing and inbound marketing is that as a marketing professional, you don’t have to choose between the 2. In fact, they work best together. Inbound marketing provides structure and purpose for effective digital marketing to digital marketing efforts, making sure that each digital marketing channel works toward a goal.
Why is digital marketing important?
Any type of marketing can help your business thrive. However, digital marketing has become increasingly important because of how accessible digital channels are. In fact, there were 5 billion internet users globally in April 2022 alone.
From social media to text messages, there are many ways to use digital marketing tactics in order to communicate with your target audience. Additionally, digital marketing has minimal upfront costs, making it a cost-effective marketing technique for small businesses.
B2B versus B2C digital marketing
Digital marketing strategies work for B2B (business to business) as well as B2C (business to consumer) companies, but best practices differ significantly between the 2. Here’s a closer look at how digital marketing is used in B2B and B2C marketing strategies.
B2B clients tend to have longer decision-making processes, and thus longer sales funnels. Relationship-building strategies work better for these clients, whereas B2C customers tend to respond better to short-term offers and messages.
B2B transactions are usually based on logic and evidence, which is what skilled B2B digital marketers present. B2C content is more likely to be emotionally-based, focusing on making the customer feel good about a purchase.
B2B decisions tend to need more than 1 person’s input. The marketing materials that best drive these decisions tend to be shareable and downloadable. B2C customers, on the other hand, favor one-on-one connections with a brand.
Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. A B2C company with a high-ticket product, such as a car or computer, might offer more informative and serious content. As a result, your digital marketing strategy always needs to be geared toward your own customer base, whether you’re B2B or B2C.
Take a look at your current audience to create well-informed and targeted online marketing campaigns. Doing so ensures your marketing efforts are effective and you can capture the attention of potential customers.
Types of digital marketing
There are as many specializations within digital marketing as there are ways of interacting using digital media. Here are a few key examples of types of digital marketing tactics.
Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is technically a marketing tool rather than a form of marketing in itself. The Balance defines it as “the art and science of making web pages attractive to search engines.”
The “art and science” part of SEO is what’s most important. SEO is a science because it requires you to research and weigh different contributing factors to achieve the highest possible ranking on a serch engine results page (SERP).
Today, the most important elements to consider when optimizing a web page for search engines include:
Quality of content
Level of user engagement
Mobile-friendliness
Number and quality of inbound links
In addition to the elements above, you need to optimize technical SEO, which is all the back-end components of your site. This includes URL structure, loading times, and broken links. Improving your technical SEO can help search engines better navigate and crawl your site.
The strategic use of these factors makes search engine optimization a science, but the unpredictability involved makes it an art.
Ultimately, the goal is to rank on the first page of a search engine’s result page. This ensures that those searching for a specific query related to your brand can easily find your products or services. While there are many search engines, digital marketers often focus on Google since it’s a global leader in the search engine market.
In SEO, there’s no quantifiable rubric or consistent rule for ranking highly on search engines. Google and other search engines change their algorithm almost constantly, so it’s impossible to make exact predictions. What you can do is closely monitor your page’s performance and make adjustments to your strategy accordingly.
Content marketing
As mentioned, the quality of your content is a key component of an optimized page. As a result, SEO is a major factor in content marketing, a strategy based on the distribution of relevant and valuable content to a target audience.
As in any marketing strategy, the goal of content marketing is to attract leads that ultimately convert into customers. But it does so differently than traditional advertising. Instead of enticing prospects with potential value from a product or service, it offers value for free in the form of written material, such as:
Blog posts
E-books
Newsletters
Video or audio transcripts
Whitepapers
Infographics
Content marketing matters, and there are plenty of stats to prove it:
84% of consumers expect companies to produce entertaining and helpful content experiences
62% of companies that have at least 5,000 employees produce content daily
92% of marketers believe that their company values content as an important asset
As effective as content marketing is, it can be tricky. Content marketing writers need to be able to rank highly in search engine results while also engaging people who will read the material, share it, and interact further with the brand. When the content is relevant, it can establish strong relationships throughout the pipeline.
To create effective content that’s highly relevant and engaging, it’s important to identify your audience. Who are you ultimately trying to reach with your content marketing efforts? Once you have a better grasp of your audience, you can determine the type of content you’ll create. You can use many formats of content in your content marketing, including videos, blog posts, printable worksheets, and more.
Regardless of which content you create, it’s a good idea to follow content marketing best practices. This means making content that’s grammatically correct, free of errors, easy to understand, relevant, and interesting. Your content should also funnel readers to the next stage in the pipeline, whether that’s a free consultation with a sales representative or a signup page.
Social media marketing
Social media marketing means driving traffic and brand awareness by engaging people in discussion online. You can use social media marketing to highlight your brand, products, services, culture, and more. With billions of people spending their time engaging on social media platforms, focusing on social media marketing can be worthwhile.
The most popular digital platforms for social media marketing are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, with LinkedIn and YouTube not far behind. Ultimately, which social media platforms you use for your business depends on your goals and audience. For example, if you want to find new leads for your FinTech startup, targeting your audience on LinkedIn is a good idea since industry professionals are active on the platform. On the other hand, running social media ads on Instagram may be better for your brand if you run a B2C focused on younger consumers.
Because social media marketing involves active audience participation, it has become a popular way of getting attention. It’s the most popular content medium for B2C digital marketers at 96%, and it’s gaining ground in the B2B sphere as well. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 61% of B2B content marketers increased their use of social media this year.
Social media marketing offers built-in engagement metrics, which are extremely useful in helping you to understand how well you’re reaching your audience. You get to decide which types of interactions mean the most to you, whether that means the number of shares, comments, or total clicks to your website.
Direct purchase may not even be a goal of your social media marketing strategy. Many brands use social media marketing to start dialogues with audiences rather than encourage them to spend money right away. This is especially common in brands that target older audiences or offer products and services not appropriate for impulse buys. It all depends on your company’s social media marketing goals.
To create an effective social media marketing strategy, it’s crucial to follow best practices. Here are a few of the most important social media marketing best practices:
Craft high-quality and engaging content
Reply to comments and questions in a professional manner
Create a social media posting schedule
Post at the right time
Hire social media managers to support your marketing efforts
Know your audience and which social media channels they’re most active on
To learn more about how Mailchimp can help with your social media strategy, check out the comparison of our free social media management tools versus others.
Pay-per-click marketing
Pay-per-click, or PPC, is a form of digital marketing in which you pay a fee every time someone clicks on your digital ads. So, instead of paying a set amount to constantly run targeted ads on online channels, you only pay for the ads individuals interact with. How and when people see your ad is a bit more complicated.
One of the most common types of PPC is search engine advertising, and because Google is the most popular search engine, many businesses use Google Ads for this purpose. When a spot is available on a search engine results page, also known as a SERP, the engine fills the spot with what is essentially an instant auction. An algorithm prioritizes each available ad based on a number of factors, including:
Ad quality
Keyword relevance
Landing page quality
Bid amount
PPC ads are then placed at the top of search engine result pages based on the factors above whenever a person searches for a specific query.
Each PPC campaign has 1 or more target actions that viewers are meant to complete after clicking an ad. These actions are known as conversions, and they can be transactional or non-transactional. Making a purchase is a conversion, but so is a newsletter signup or a call made to your home office.
Whatever you choose as your target conversions, you can track them via your chosen digital marketing channels to see how your campaign is doing.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a digital marketing tactic that lets someone make money by promoting another person’s business. You could be either the promoter or the business who works with the promoter, but the process is the same in either case.
It works using a revenue sharing model. If you’re the affiliate, you get a commission every time someone purchases the item that you promote. If you’re the merchant, you pay the affiliate for every sale they help you make.
Some affiliate marketers choose to review the products of just 1 company, perhaps on a blog or other third-party site. Others have relationships with multiple merchants.
Whether you want to be an affiliate or find one, the first step is to make a connection with the other party. You can use digital channels designed to connect affiliates with retailers, or you can start or join a single-retailer program.
If you’re a retailer and you choose to work directly with affiliates, there are many things you can do to make your program appealing to potential promoters. You’ll need to provide those affiliates with the tools that they need to succeed. That includes incentives for great results as well as marketing tools and pre-made materials.
Native advertising
Native advertising is digital marketing in disguise. Its goal is to blend in with its surrounding content so that it’s less blatantly obvious as advertising.
Native advertising was created in reaction to the cynicism of today’s consumers toward ads. Knowing that the creator of an ad pays to run it, many consumers will conclude that the ad is biased and consequently ignore it.
A native ad gets around this bias by offering information or entertainment before it gets to anything promotional, downplaying the “ad” aspect.
It’s important to always label your native ads clearly. Use words like “promoted” or “sponsored.” If those indicators are concealed, readers might end up spending significant time engaging with the content before they realize that it’s advertising.
When your consumers know exactly what they’re getting, they’ll feel better about your content and your brand. Native ads are meant to be less obtrusive than traditional ads, but they’re not meant to be deceptive.
Influencer marketing
Like affiliate marketing, influencer marketing relies on working with an influencer–an individual with a large following, such as a celebrity, industry expert, or content creator–in exchange for exposure. In many cases, these influencers will endorse your products or services to their followers on several social media channels.
Influencer marketing works well for B2B and B2C companies who want to reach new audiences. However, it’s important to partner with reputable influencers since they’re essentially representing your brand. The wrong influencer can tarnish the trust consumers have with your business.
Marketing automation
Marketing automation uses software to power digital marketing campaigns, improving the efficiency and relevance of advertising. As a result, you can focus on creating the strategy behind your digital marketing efforts instead of cumbersome and time-consuming processes.
While marketing automation may seem like a luxury tool your business can do without, it can significantly improve the engagement between you and your audience.
According to statistics:
Marketing automation lets companies keep up with the expectation of personalization. It allows brands to:
Many marketing automation tools use prospect engagement (or lack thereof) with a particular message to determine when and how to reach out next. This level of real-time customization means that you can effectively create an individualized marketing strategy for each customer without any additional time investment.
Mailchimp’s marketing automation tools ensure you can interact with your audience via behavior-based automations, transactional emails, date-based automations, and more.
Email marketing
The concept of email marketing is simple—you send a promotional message and hope that your prospect clicks on it. However, the execution is much more complex. First of all, you have to make sure that your emails are wanted. This means having an opt-in list that does the following:
Individualizes the content, both in the body and in the subject line
States clearly what kind of emails the subscriber will get
An email signature that offers a clear unsubscribe option
Integrates both transactional and promotional emails
You want your prospects to see your campaign as a valued service, not just as a promotional tool.
Email marketing is a proven, effective technique all on its own: 89% of surveyed professionals named it as their most effective lead generator.
It can be even better if you incorporate other digital marketing techniques such as marketing automation, which lets you segment and schedule your emails so that they meet your customer’s needs more effectively.
If you’re considering email marketing, here are a few tips that can help you craft great email marketing campaigns:
Segment your audience to send relevant campaigns to the right people
Ensure emails look good on mobile devices
Create a campaign schedule
Run A/B tests
Mobile marketing
Mobile marketing is a digital marketing strategy that allows you to engage with your target audience on their mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. This can be via SMS and MMS messages, social media notifications, mobile app alerts, and more.
It’s crucial to ensure that all content is optimized for mobile devices. According to the Pew Research Center, 85% of Americans own a smartphone, so your marketing efforts can go a long way when you create content for computer and mobile screens.
The benefits of digital marketing
Digital marketing has become prominent largely because it reaches such a wide audience of people. However, it also offers a number of other advantages that can boost your marketing efforts. These are a few of the benefits of digital marketing.
A broad geographic reach
When you post an ad online, people can see it no matter where they are (provided you haven’t limited your ad geographically). This makes it easy to grow your business’s market reach and connect with a larger audience across different digital channels.
Cost efficiency
Digital marketing not only reaches a broader audience than traditional marketing but also carries a lower cost. Overhead costs for newspaper ads, television spots, and other traditional marketing opportunities can be high. They also give you less control over whether your target audiences will see those messages in the first place.
With digital marketing, you can create just 1 content piece that draws visitors to your blog as long as it’s active. You can create an email marketing campaign that delivers messages to targeted customer lists on a schedule, and it’s easy to change that schedule or the content if you need to do so.
When you add it all up, digital marketing gives you much more flexibility and customer contact for your ad spend.
Quantifiable results
To know whether your marketing strategy works, you have to find out how many customers it attracts and how much revenue it ultimately drives. But how do you do that with a non-digital marketing strategy?
There’s always the traditional option of asking each customer, “How did you find us?”
Unfortunately, that doesn’t work in all industries. Many companies don’t get to have one-on-one conversations with their customers, and surveys don’t always get complete results.
With digital marketing, results monitoring is simple. Digital marketing software and platforms automatically track the number of desired conversions that you get, whether that means email open rates, visits to your home page, or direct purchases.
Easier personalization
Digital marketing allows you to gather customer data in a way that offline marketing can’t. Data collected digitally tends to be much more precise and specific.
Imagine you offer financial services and want to send out special offers to internet users people who have looked at your products. You know you’ll get better results if you target the offer to the person’s interest, so you decide to prepare 2 campaigns. One is for young families who have looked at your life insurance products, and the other is for millennial entrepreneurs who have considered your retirement plans.
How do you gather all of that data without automated tracking? How many phone records would you have to go through? How many customer profiles? And how do you know who has or hasn’t read the brochure you sent out?
With digital marketing, all of this information is already at your fingertips.
More connection with customers
Digital marketing lets you communicate with your customers in real-time. More importantly, it lets them communicate with you.
Think about your social media strategy. It’s great when your target audience sees your latest post, but it’s even better when they comment on it or share it. It means more buzz surrounding your product or service, as well as increased visibility every time someone joins the conversation.
Interactivity benefits your customers as well. Their level of engagement increases as they become active participants in your brand’s story. That sense of ownership can create a strong sense of brand loyalty.
Easy and convenient conversions
Digital marketing lets your customers take action immediately after viewing your ad or content. With traditional advertisements, the most immediate result you can hope for is a phone call shortly after someone views your ad. But how often does someone have the time to reach out to a company while they’re doing the dishes, driving down the highway, or updating records at work?
With digital marketing, they can click a link or save a blog post and move along the sales funnel right away. They might not make a purchase immediately, but they’ll stay connected with you and give you a chance to interact with them further.
How to create a digital marketing strategy
For many small businesses and beginner digital marketers, getting started with digital marketing can be difficult. However, you can create an effective digital marketing strategy to increase brand awareness, engagement, and sales by using the following steps as your starting point.
Set SMART goals
Setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely (SMART) goals is crucial for any marketing strategy. While there are many goals you may want to achieve, try to focus on the ones that will propel your strategy forward instead of causing it to remain stagnant.
Identify your audience
Before starting any marketing campaign, it’s best to identify your target audience. Your target audience is the group of people you want your campaign to reach based on similar attributes, such as age, gender, demographic, or purchasing behavior. Having a good understanding of your target audience can help you determine which digital marketing channels to use and the information to include in your campaigns.
Create a budget
A budget ensures you’re spending your money effectively towards your goals instead of overspending on digital marketing channels that may not provide the desired results. Consider your SMART goals and the digital channel you’re planning to use to create a budget.
Select your digital marketing channels
From content marketing to PPC campaigns and more, there are many digital marketing channels you can use to your advantage. Which digital marketing channels you use often depends on your goals, audience, and budget.
Refine your marketing efforts
Make sure to analyze your campaign’s data to identify what was done well and areas for improvement once the campaign is over. This allows you to create even better campaigns in the future. With the help of digital technologies and software, you can obtain this data in an easy-to-view dashboard. Mailchimp’s digital marketing analytics reports will help you keep track of all your marketing campaigns in one centralized location.
Digital marketing creates growth
Digital marketing should be one of the primary focuses of almost any business’s overall marketing strategy. Never before has there been a way to stay in such consistent contact with your customers, and nothing else offers the level of personalization that digital data can provide. The more you embrace the possibilities of digital marketing, the more you’ll be able to realize your company’s growth potential.
Generative AI provides new and disruptive opportunities to increase revenue, reduce costs, improve productivity and better manage risk. In the near future, it will become a competitive advantage and differentiator.
Gartner splits the opportunities into three categories.
Revenue opportunities
Product development: Generative AI will enable enterprises to create new products more quickly. These may include new drugs, less toxic household cleaners, novel flavors and fragrances, new alloys, and faster and better diagnoses.
New revenue channels: Gartner research shows that enterprises with greater levels of AI maturity will gain greater benefits to their revenue.
Cost and productivity opportunities
Worker augmentation: Generative AI can augment workers’ ability to draft and edit text, images and other media. It can also summarize, simplify and classify content; generate, translate and verify software code; and improve chatbot performance. At this stage, the technology is highly proficient at creating a wide range of artifacts quickly and at scale.
Long-term talent optimization: Employees will be distinguished by their ability to conceive, execute and refine ideas, projects, processes, services and relationships in partnership with AI. This symbiotic relationship will accelerate time to proficiency and greatly extend the range and competency of workers across the board.
Process improvement: Generative AI can derive real, in-context value from vast stores of content, which until now may have gone largely unexploited. This will change workflows.
Risk opportunities
Risk mitigation: Generative AI’s ability to analyze and provide broader and deeper visibility of data, such as customer transactions and potentially faulty software code, enhances pattern recognition and the ability to identify potential risks to the enterprise more quickly.
Sustainability: Generative AI may help enterprises comply with sustainability regulations, mitigate the risk of stranded assets, and embed sustainability into decision making, product design and processes.
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