What is digital marketing? And why is it important? Today, I’ll explain it all.
Digital marketing is a great way to let people know about your products or services and get them interested in buying them. It’s done using the internet and other digital tools, like social media, websites, search engines, email, and text messages.
To make sure digital marketing works well for you, you need to figure out which ways are best to reach the people you want to sell to. This article will tell you about the best digital marketing strategies and how to use them to reach your business goals.
What Is Digital Marketing?
Also known as online marketing, digital marketing communicates messages through digital channels accessed through electronic devices, including phones, computers and tablets.
Digital marketing and traditional marketing, such as print ads and direct mail, share the same ultimate goal: generating product awareness and influencing purchasing decisions to drive sales. The main difference between traditional and digital marketing is that digital marketing uses internet-connected technologies to communicate and engage with targeted audiences.
The launch of the World Wide Web in 1989 set the stage for the emergence of digital marketing. The proliferation of business websites, advancements in email technologies and the introduction of wildly popular social channels have sparked meteoric growth in digital marketing. Online marketing is now a key component in most businesses’ marketing plans primarily because of the widespread use of digital technologies but also because it can deliver outstanding results.
Why Digital Marketing Is Important?
For businesses to succeed, they need to let people know about their products and services. This is harder than ever before because there are so many choices available, and everyone is trying to get people’s attention. One way to stand out is to use digital marketing to create interesting content.
Another reason digital marketing is important is because it’s where your customers are. In 2023, there are over 5 billion people who use the internet and over 4.8 billion people who use social media. People spend an average of six hours and 40 minutes online every day.
This means that there are a lot of people online who could be interested in your products and services. Digital marketing is a great way to reach these people and it’s an important part of almost every business’s marketing plan.
Types and Strategies of Digital Marketing
To make a good digital marketing plan for your business, you need to know about the different ways to use digital marketing that work best. Here are six types of digital marketing: social media marketing, search engine marketing (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, email marketing, mobile marketing, and content marketing.
1. Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is one of the most popular forms of digital marketing. In the United States alone, over 308 million people access a social network at least once per month. People of all ages use social media for entertainment, interacting with others, gaining information about specific interests and shopping.
For businesses hoping to gain visibility and sales, social media statistics reveal that incorporating social media into your marketing mix can be a sound strategy. Social media is the go-to source for brand information for 78% of internet users. Nearly half of U.S. consumers report they’ve made a purchase through social media.
Top social platforms include YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat and X (formerly Twitter). New platforms, such as BeReal and Poparazzi, are entering the market regularly.
The social landscape is ever-evolving. For example, Twitter, now X, was once a top platform, but the social channel now appears to be struggling. Twitter has lost approximately 32 million users since Elon Musk purchased the platform in 2022. TikTok didn’t even come on the international scene until 2017, but now has more than 1.7 billion monthly active users. Digital marketers need to remain attentive to social media channel changes.
2. SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a vital digital marketing strategy for businesses that benefit from driving traffic to their websites. SEO is the process of optimizing your website so search engines, such as Google rank your website high on search engine results pages (SERPs).
SEO is all about driving organic traffic to your site. Unlike paid advertising, with SEO, visitors who find your site come from unpaid searches. Approximately 8.5 billion searches are done on Google daily, which presents a lot of opportunities for businesses that want to promote their product and services. Ranking high on Google is key to driving more traffic to your website.
In a survey conducted by Search Engine Journal, 49% of respondents reported that SEO delivers the highest return on investment (ROI) of any digital marketing channel. You can get started with SEO on your own for free by learning more about Google Ranking Factors or with the help of top SEO tools and software. You can also work with an SEO service or agency to create an SEO plan and manage your SEO for you.
3. PPC Advertising
PPC advertising is precisely what the name implies: you pay a fee every time someone clicks on your digital ads. The amount you’ll pay is determined by the platform you’re advertising on, the potential traffic for your promoted post and the number of competitors willing to pay for similar ads.
Google Ads is the largest PPC platform in the world. Many businesses who engage in SEO marketing also engage in PPC advertising on Google. Paid ads on Google appear above organic search results and that positioning advantage can drive even more traffic to your website.
Google Ads is not your only avenue for PPC advertising. You can also purchase PPC ads via the Microsoft Search Network on Bing and partner sites as well as on top social channels, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Amazon and TikTok.
4. Email Marketing
Email marketing is another top digital marketing strategy you’ll likely want to add to your marketing mix. According to Statista, businesses earn an average of at least $32 for every dollar spent on email marketing. For some sectors, such as retail, e-commerce and consumer goods, that number is $45.
To be effective at email marketing, you must develop a strategy for collecting email addresses from clients and prospects. Many businesses collect emails with every customer encounter, sometimes offering a special incentive for joining an email list. Your business website is also a terrific place to offer incentives to visitors so you can grow your email database.
Growing and nurturing your email list is vital to successful email marketing. You also must respect the communication preferences of your list and only send relevant information that your base wants to receive. Also, failing to manage the legal aspects of email marketing, including staying compliant with CAN/SPAM Act mandates, is paramount for email marketing success.
Rather than managing business email manually, most marketers acquire email marketing software. The best email marketing software makes it effortless to keep your email database updated, handling new subscribers and unsubscribes for you.
Your email software should also make it easy to segment your email database based on customer interests, create attractive email designs, manage email scheduling and measure email metrics, including open rates, click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates and bounce rates.
5. Mobile Marketing
There are more than 310 million smartphone users in the U.S. alone, so it should be no surprise that mobile marketing has become a popular digital marketing strategy for businesses.
Mobile marketing typically is conducted via text, also called short message service (SMS). Text open rates are estimated to be as high as 98%, which is one reason mobile marketing can be so effective. While text messaging is the most common way to market via mobile devices, notifications from mobile apps and social channels can also be received on smartphones. The business applications for mobile marketing are expanding every day.
6. Content Marketing
Every form of digital marketing relies on compelling content to attract interest and engage prospects and customers. Content marketing is the term used to describe the different types of content you can develop to deploy in your digital marketing campaigns.
Content marketing can take many forms, including blogs, infographics, whitepapers, ebooks, videos, podcasts, quizzes, slide decks and webinars. Unlike advertising, content marketing is not blatantly promotional but instead employs more subtle tactics to inform, educate or influence a desired target market.
You can use content marketing to become an expert in certain areas or get people talking about your brand. A big benefit of content marketing is that you can do it with almost no money. You can make your own content for very little money, or if you have more money, you can hire people to help you create it.
Benefits of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing has many great benefits, including:
- Cheap: Some digital marketing, like email and social media, can be done for free or very little money.
- Easy to track: You can see how well your digital marketing is working by tracking things like how many people see your ads, click on your links, and buy your products.
- Good for brand awareness: Lots of people use digital devices, so you can reach a lot of people with digital marketing.
- Engaging: You can use text, images, and videos to make your digital marketing more interesting and engaging.
- Cost-effective: Digital marketing often gets you a better return on investment (ROI) than traditional marketing.
- Global or local: You can use digital marketing to reach people all over the world or just in your local area.
- Flexible: You can change your digital marketing strategies quickly and easily.
Digital Marketing Best Practices
Using digital marketing to improve your business can be very helpful, but you need to know how to do it well. If you follow the best practices for direct marketing, you’ll have a better chance of getting the great results you’re looking for.
1. Establish Your Digital Marketing Goals
Before engaging in any type of digital marketing, you must establish SMART goals. Specifically, what do you want to accomplish? Examples of top digital marketing goals include:
- Increase website traffic
- Build brand awareness
- Boost brand engagement
- Become known as an expert in your industry
- Generate more qualified leads
- Expand your email prospect database
- Increase sales
2. Define Your Target Audience
You must have a well-defined audience in mind before selecting digital marketing channels and content marketing strategies. Otherwise, you risk creating messaging or using digital marketing tactics that are off the mark.
To figure out who your target audience is, start by thinking about who they are. This includes their age, gender, how much money they make, their education level, where they live, what they like to do, and how they shop. Once you know more about your audience, you can figure out what their problems are and what they want. Then, you can create marketing messages that show how your product or service can help them.
3. Determine Your Digital Marketing Budget
Establishing a digital marketing budget will keep you from under or overspending. Setting clear marketing goals and success targets will ensure your digital marketing spend is on target.
You may choose to establish a budget for each digital channel or an overall budget for all efforts. It’s important to have a good handle on digital marketing costs to set a strong budget. Be sure to consider the technologies you’ll need to deploy your digital marketing efforts, including SEO software, email marketing software, website hosting services and social media management tools.
If you plan to do PPC advertising, you must research costs related to the platforms you intend to use. PPC costs are platform-specific and Google Ads and most social media channels offer extensive information about PPC costs on their advertising portals.
Besides the cost of advertising, you may also need to pay for marketing services like writing, video production, and design. If you have enough money, you can hire a marketing agency, which typically charges between $75 and $300 per hour. If you don’t have much money, you can find freelancers on websites like Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer.com, who may charge as little as $15 per hour.
4. Select Your Digital Marketing Methods
Launching a company website is the first step in digital marketing for many businesses. The additional digital marketing methods you choose depend on what you’re selling, where your ideal audience is spending their time and how much money you want to spend on digital marketing. Social media, SEO and email are the most popular digital marketing techniques, but you may find a different mix works best for your target market.
5. Track and Analyze Results
The beauty of digital marketing is that it’s relatively easy to track results. In setting your goals, you establish what you’re hoping to achieve. In the analysis stage of digital marketing, you measure how well you’re performing against established goals.
Set a cadence for how often you’ll monitor digital marketing performance data: daily (which is only advised in initial stages or when digital marketing spending is high), weekly or monthly. Very few digital efforts achieve stellar results out of the gate, so don’t be disheartened if you aren’t hitting stretch goals on the first iteration of your marketing efforts. Learn from your analyses to refine your digital marketing strategies accordingly going forward.
Final Note
Digital marketing is one of the most powerful tools businesses have to generate attention and sales for their products and services. Several digital marketing techniques, including social media marketing, email marketing, SEO, PPC advertising and content marketing, offer exceptional ROI potential. You don’t need a large budget to get started, so digital marketing can be an effective tool for all types of businesses.