Digital marketing what is

Digital Marketing

Yarilet Perez is an experienced multimedia journalist and fact-checker with a Master of Science in Journalism. She has worked in multiple cities covering breaking news, politics, education, and more. Her expertise is in personal finance and investing, and real estate.

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What Is Digital Marketing?

The term digital marketing refers to the use of digital channels to market products and services in order to reach 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 a new way for companies to approach consumers and understand their behavior. Companies often combine traditional and digital marketing techniques in their strategies.

Key Takeaways

Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

Understanding Digital Marketing

Marketing refers to any activities that a company uses to promote its products and services and improve its market share. In order to be successful, marketing requires a combination of advertising savvy, sales, and the ability to deliver goods to end-users. This is normally undertaken by specific professionals or marketers who can work internally (for companies) or externally with other marketing firms.

Traditionally, corporations focused on marketing through print, television, and radio. Although these options still exist today, the rise of the internet led to a shift in the way companies reached consumers. That’s where digital marketing came into play. This form of marketing involves the use of websites, social media, search engines, apps—anything that incorporates marketing with customer feedback or a two-way interaction between the company and customer.

Increased technology and newer trends forced companies to change the way they marketed themselves. Email was a popular marketing tool in the early days of digital marketing. That focus shifted to search engines like Netscape, which allowed businesses to tag and keyword stuff to get themselves noticed. The development of sharing sites like Facebook made it possible for companies to track data to cater to consumer trends.

Smartphones and other digital devices are now making it easier for companies to market themselves along with their products and services to consumers. Studies show that people prefer using their phones to log on to the internet. So it should come as no surprise that 70% of individuals make buying decisions (usually on their phones) before they actually hit the purchase button.

Digital marketing can be interactive and is often used to target specific segments of the customer base.

Special Considerations

Advertisers are commonly referred to as sources, while members of the targeted ads are commonly called receivers. Sources frequently target highly specific, well-defined receivers.

For example, after extending the late-night hours, McDonald’s targeted shift workers and travelers with digital ads because the company knew these people made up a large segment of its late-night business. The company 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 commonly 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 are channels that still exist today. Digital marketing channels have evolved and continue to do so. The following are eight of the most common 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 (PPC) 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, or Facebook and show their ads to people searching for terms related to the products or services.

PPC campaigns can segment users based on their demographic characteristics (such as by age or gender), or even target their particular interests or location. The most popular PPC platforms are Google Ads and Facebook Ads.

Content Marketing

The goal of content marketing is to reach potential customers through the use of content. Content is usually published on a website and then promoted through social media, email marketing, search engine optimization, or even PPC 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 all about. This type of marketing allows companies to get in touch with potential customers and anyone interested in their brands.

Many digital marketers use all other digital marketing channels to add leads to their email lists and then, through email marketing, they create customer acquisition funnels to turn those leads into customers.

Social Media Marketing

The primary goal of a social media marketing campaign is brand awareness and establishing social trust. As you go deeper into social media marketing, you can use it to get leads or even as a direct 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 brought new life to this old standby. 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 like 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 users are turning to YouTube before making a buying decision, to learn something, read a review, or just to relax.

There are several video marketing platforms, including Facebook Videos, Instagram, and even TikTok to use 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 SMS or text messages to send information about their latest promotions or give opportunities to willing customers. Political candidates running for office also use SMS message campaigns to spread positive information about their own 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.

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, how they’re used by receivers, and how to use these channels to effectively market their products or services.

It’s becoming more difficult to capture receivers’ attention because receivers are 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 a company to analyze new forms of consumer behavior, such as using website heatmaps to learn more about the customer journey.

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 or SEO is the way that companies are able to increase their traffic through search engines with the goal of pushing their websites and names at the top of any search results page. This can be through search results done organically or editorially. When companies are able to successfully apply SEO in 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, in a business field such as marketing, or a related field such as communications. You may also want to take courses or bootcamps specifically in digital marketing. 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 get into the digital marketing field.

What Skills Are Needed in Digital Marketing?

You need to be skillful in writing content along with 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 while Wendy’s wowed individuals with its «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 tools. And you can expect things to keep evolving as technology continues to change.

Digital Marketing

Any marketing that uses electronic devices and can be used by marketing specialists to convey promotional messaging and measure its impact through your customer journey. In practice, digital marketing typically refers to marketing campaigns that appear on a computer, phone, tablet, or other device. It can take many forms, including online video, display ads, search engine marketing, paid social ads and social media posts. Digital marketing is often compared to “traditional marketing” such as magazine ads, billboards, and direct mail. Oddly, television is usually lumped in with traditional marketing.

Maximize your digital marketing

Use Mailchimp to promote your brand, reach your target audience, and grow your business.

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.

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:

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:

Content marketing matters, and there are plenty of stats to prove it:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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.

What is Digital Marketing?

Learn how digital marketing efforts drive business success in the modern world

From a general standpoint, 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 inbound leads and attract a large customer case. The traditional marketing cycle involves an analysis of market orientation, product mix and business environment. Even though marketing has deep roots in business history and culture, digital marketing is a relatively new practice.

With the explosion of digital technology—including widespread and pervasive use of computers and smartphones—businesses began to experiment with new marketing tactics. Thus, digital marketing was born.

Fast forward to the present and digital marketing is as important, if not more so, than traditional marketing methods. This divide seems destined to grow wider over time, as many businesses are diverting funds from traditional to digital marketing methods. Taken as a whole, it is vital for businesses to plan and execute a viable digital marketing strategy.

What Are the Basics of Digital Marketing?

In a nutshell, digital marketing refers to any marketing methods conducted through electronic devices which utilize some form of a computer. This includes 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:

As the list above indicates, 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.

More specifically, digital marketing can help businesses achieve any or all of the following benefits:

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:

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.

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.

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.

What is Digital Marketing: The Ultimate Online Marketing Guide

The internet is a beautiful place packed to the brim with information and cat videos.

The sheer size and scale of the internet are immense and almost incomprehensible. But the internet is more than a safe haven for adorable puppy videos and tutorials on how to boil water: it is any company’s marketing dream come true.

On a single platform, companies are able to connect and reach millions of people, communicate with them and share their message among them.

Companies have swarmed the internet in recent years to take advantage of this, a strategy known as Digital Marketing.

Now you may have heard of Digital Marketing along with various other hype words in seminars and other marketing-related events.

As much as you may not want to believe them, people overhyping the effectiveness of Digital Marketing are often right.

So if you have been somewhat hesitant in using Digital Marketing — it can be overwhelming — this post will help you slide right into the scene.

This guide will go over:

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What is Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing is any and all marketing efforts that rely on electronic devices, and in extension, the internet.

It’s the group of activities that a company (or individual) performs online to attract new business opportunities, create relationships, and develop a brand identity.

Digital Marketing is very diverse and versatile.

The sheer amount of tools, data and channels available on the internet creates opportunities for marketers to deliver effective content to specific people, through personalization.

Are you looking for a more direct advertising strategy for a very particular audience, that will help your brand to grow?

Well, Digital Marketing strategies such as using emails or sending out ads in specific social media groups can attract a very niche audience with a tailored message based on their intentions.

Are you looking forward to advertising your company to a mass market, garner massive appeal and brand awareness?

Video ads and regular ads on social media applications and search engines should put your brand in front of millions of people.

Regardless of the type of audience you want to reach and how niche your product may be, you can easily find the public that you want.

Inbound Marketing vs. Digital Marketing

Although you may occasionally see the terms “digital marketing” and “inbound marketing” used interchangeably, it’s essential to understand they’re not the same thing.

Digital marketing is a much more general term that applies to any marketing tactics involving digital media, platforms, or communication methods.

That said, inbound marketing is actually a type of digital marketing, especially as compared to outbound marketing.

Outbound marketing is probably what you think of when you picture a more traditional marketing approach. Think marketing tactics that attempt to reach as many people as possible, regardless of whether they’ve shown interest in the advertised product.

Examples include offline approaches like trade shows and cold calls, as well as online tactics like old-school banner ads and untargeted email blasts.

On the other hand, inbound marketing is about focused strategies designed to reach an ideal audience of potential customers.

These are people who have either shown active interest in the type of solution being sold or are struggling with pain points the solution could address.

Inbound marketing content is designed to be helpful, entertaining, or otherwise valuable to this audience.

Popular examples of effective inbound marketing techniques include subject-specific blogs, ebooks, videos, social media posts, and web-based seminars.

Why Your Company Needs Digital Marketing

Not all the people that have told you that Digital Marketing is the greatest thing since sliced bread are wrong.

A single place where you can have access to unlimited information, leads, and potential customers is an offer that no one should look over.

If you are not utilizing Digital Marketing, you are giving up on an incredibly lucrative marketing space.

That said, the most important reason for why your company needs to use Digital Marketing is simple: the internet.

The online world allows brands to communicate with all of their clients and possible clients. You don’t even need to be in the same country to find and engage your public.

And the technology turned simple phones, designed to make calls, into true computers with all the access the user needs to connect with other people. Apps, emails and websites are literally in the palm of their hands.

Smartphones are incredibly popular, especially among Millennials and Generation Z. With applications like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat taking up hours in their days, companies have very much found a direct link to their lives.

Facebook is a very famous social media site that has over 2 billion users and is a popular choice among companies to market their products.

Ads play before videos on Facebook, and it also has sponsored posts that appear on everyone’s news feed.

Instagram is another incredibly famous and popular social media site that companies use to market to a wide age group.

Although Instagram is mostly a photo and video sharing platform, companies are still able to make use and take advantage of it.

The best part about websites like Instagram and Facebook is that they all have a very wide and massive age demographic. So, on the same site, you can reach customers that are in their teens or customers that are reaching retirement age.

With such a massive reach, advertising for companies is often like shooting fish in a barrel.

Benefits of Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools for any company to use. And to prove our point, here are some of the benefits of using Digital Marketing.

1. The most measurable form of marketing

Let’s start with what is possibly the most obvious benefit of using Digital Marketing: you can track it.

We all know that the only way to ensure that a marketing strategy is working is to check its success over time. Since everything on the internet runs on numbers and algorithms, it is easy to keep track of just how effective a marketing strategy really is.

Although that may be a little difficult with more traditional mediums, it is very simple measuring the effectiveness of a strategy with Digital Marketing.

Digital Marketing analytics takes away the guessing games related to traditional forms of marketing.

Through these analytics, you can measure in real-time how many people are looking at your posts or ads, as well as how many users have opened your posts, along with all of the people that have replied, liked, or shared your post.

2. The most cost-effective marketing technique

Other than being able to track all of your posts, along with all of the likes, comments, and shares that it receives, it is also the most cost-effective marketing technique.

Now it is important to note that Digital Marketing is comparatively cheaper than most traditional forms of marketing.

While there was once a paywall between major companies and smaller ones in terms of advertising and exposure, that is no longer the case. Nowadays, smaller companies can get the attention of people that they otherwise could not.

Competing with bigger companies for the ad space in most forms of traditional marketing can be almost impossible for smaller businesses.

This is something that they can cover with the help of Digital Marketing, as they can reach an audience of their choice with minimal effort.

3. Allows you to choose any audience

Speaking of choosing your audience, another great benefit of Digital Marketing is that it can be as specific or broad as you want.

You can find specific groups or forums on social media websites like Instagram or Reddit to market to a very niche audience.

You can also market to a very broad audience through internet ads or sponsored posts on Facebook and Instagram. No matter who your target demographic is, you are sure to find them through Digital Marketing.

Other than directly marketing to your audience, you can also make use of influencer marketing, which allows you to directly tap into a specific market through mediators and familiar faces.

Sometimes influencers need the support of sponsors, and to help them, users will often follow the links they provide.

Moreover, getting a respected figure in the community you are tapping into can grow trust for your brand.

4. Everyone is already there

A common problem that people face with traditional forms of marketing is the question “Will anyone see it?”.

Most crowded places in the city are very expensive to rent. With Digital Marketing, you don’t have to worry about such a thing.

With billions of people using the internet and social media daily, the question is no longer will anyone see it, but rather when.

Print ads and other forms of traditional advertising also have a limit on just how many people they can reach.

No matter how big the network might be, there is a cap on just how many people a traditional marketing strategy can connect to.

On the other hand, Digital Marketing strategies have no peak of exposure and can grow along with the company itself.

5. Customers start their buying journey on the internet

Customers depend on the internet for everything, including their buying options and choices.

For more and more customers the buying journey starts with research and insight into the product or service. What better place to find out more about something than the internet?

Since the term “Google it” has become such a common part of our language, the first instinct of most people is to search for something on the internet.

A study published by Bazaarvoice in 2018 registered that 82% of smartphone owners consult the internet on purchases they are about to make.

That is the goal of designing a great Digital Marketing strategy: you can be the answer that these people are looking for.

6. The message can be customized

Another big advantage of Digital Marketing is that this strategy allows you to customize your message to the public.

Advertising today is different from the old days. Back then, when you wanted to talk to you public, you needed a generic message, that could be used in mass media such as billboards, TV broadcasts, flyers, etc.

The conversation with the public was not so effective, once you were talking to people of different genders, ages, interests.

Now, you can target groups by their similarities, customizing the message and making it more real and directed to them.

Email marketing, online advertising, niche marketing: all of these strategies can be customized to reach the audience that you want.

Best Digital Marketing Strategies

Now that you have a better understanding of Digital Marketing and how it is important for your company, we can move on to marketing strategies.

There are various types of Digital Marketing, each aimed to help a company in a specific area.

Each type has a different objective and is based on specific channels. It’s really important to mention that they are not mutually exclusive.

Every company, before starting its marketing, has to come up with a proper marketing strategy.

A marketing strategy often consists of all sorts of planning, from the financial side of marketing to the more intricate planning of software that they will use.

A good Digital Marketing strategy can go a long way in getting your company and brand the attention that it needs.

Choosing the right Digital Marketing strategy can be very difficult, seeing how each of them has its specific utility as well as its downfalls.

Therefore, if you are wondering what some of the best marketing strategies to use are, here is a list of the most effective Digital Marketing strategies for any company.

#1. Social media marketing

Social Media Marketing is possibly the most popular Digital Marketing trend of the current generation. It can be very hard to ignore the sheer force that social media has become over the past decade.

Social Media provides a new level of engagement that brands can leverage to increase brand awareness, positive perceptions and, if everything goes really well, even go viral!

Applications like Snapchat and Instagram allow users to connect with their friends and even celebrities. But it is also a great place for brands to show off their products and services, seeing how both the platforms rely on people sharing short videos or photos.

Other sites like Reddit rely greatly on the power of groups that share a common interest, making it a place for companies to know about the public’s current perception of their brands and publish content

These social media platforms only scratch the surface in terms of what Social Media Marketing can achieve. With over 2 billion people connected to each other through platforms like Facebook, social media cannot be ignored.

Nearly every company relies on social media to market their brand and for a good reason. To quote Todd Howard from Bethesda, “it just works.”

Since social media is so massive and branches out into various other platforms, it is difficult to be certain about which social media site to use.

The general rules fall into Facebook being the biggest social platform for any product regardless, while Instagram relies only on visual content and attracts more teenagers and young adults.

So, even though marketing is rarely about absolutes, we can certainly say that if you have a brand that’s targeted toward young adults, you need to be on Instagram.

There are many more social networks around: LinkedIn is focused on professional interactions, TikTok is a brand new contender and there’s always a new one just around the corner.

The “secret” to success in Social Media Marketing is having a valuable message on the right social network and to keep the conversation with your audience alive.

It’s a two-way communication platform. And people love to chat.

#2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Another very popular Digital Marketing strategy is using Search Engine Marketing to promote a brand.

SEM is a specific form of marketing that caters directly to people and what they are looking for. This can be done by two ways: buying ad space on search results page or by SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

When you use ad space you basically pay the search engine — oftentimes Google — for ad space on specific pages.

This means that your page will not appear as a regular search result and will be visibly different from the rest. This technique also applies to social media, such as Facebook and Instagram, seeing how both rely heavily on a search bar.

On the other hand, SEO is a organic way to attract more traffic to your blog or site by offering to the public relevant content that clarifies their doubts.

To better understand this concept, stay with us through this article.

#3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a very powerful Digital Marketing strategy. This is a set of techniques that optimize your blog or site to rank better in search engines, like Google and Bing.

This is one of the most important strategies you can do to create authority for your brand and increase your leads and clients.

SEO’s biggest goal is to rank your content higher in the search engines, increasing the organic traffic your blog or site receives. This is so relevant in a world where 90% of the people who make Google research click on the results that are shown on the first page of the engine.

And the Search Engine Optimization technique offers a great advantage: it is way cheaper than traditional marketing strategies, such as billboards and even online advertising.

If you write relevant content that answers the questions of the audience, while offering a good experience on your page, you have good chances to make it to the top of the search engine.

This allows companies with relatively less funding to still compete and acquire the exposure that they want.

#4. Content Marketing

Content Marketing is also a great way to market to your intended audience.

This strategy is based on the education of the market towards the solution your company offers. Using relevant content, you can increase your clients and possible clients by educating and engaging them.

This way, they will trust in you and advocate for your brand, creating a bond of fidelity between brand and customer.

While most people think that written content is the only thing that companies use in content marketing, the truth is there are different types of content that you can use for Digital Marketing.

Since your entire audience is living in the information age, traditional marketing and advertising methods are not as effective as before.

Catchy quotes, eye-pleasing pictures, and incredibly detailed videos of your brand and its personality can reach them just the way you want.

#5. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is the type of marketing where the affiliate receives a commission on every post they promote.

So an affiliate may make multiple posts and receive payments for each of these posts, based on sales they generate.

Anyone can be an affiliate: from customers to salespeople.

And if you wanna crossover strategies, you can join affiliate marketing with influence marketing. This way you’ll bring new audience by the popularity of those you invited to be affiliates.

This is often an option that companies offer to smaller influencers, like smaller YouTube channels.

#6. Blog

If you have embraced Digital Marketing as a way to get to more people and turn them into clients, you know that a website is an important tool for the process.

Blogging helps a website do its job. By posting relevant content on your blog and using the appropriate keywords, your website will be on a higher page rank at any search engine.

The higher the website ranks, the more likely it is to be seen and the more traffic you will have. That means that business blogging helps with SEO.

Providing content through a blog that answers your customers’ questions and offers real solutions, you will turn traffic into qualified leads.

By doing that you are building a relationship with those leads and nurturing them through the customer journey, which we will talk about later.

#7. Email Marketing

While each of the marketing tactics mentioned has its advantages, email marketing is the king of content and brings in an unbeatable return on investment compared to other Digital Marketing strategies.

By using email marketing, you can attract and retain customers with personalized messages that promote your content, product, and brand.

In addition, you can segment contacts and use personalization techniques to deliver important messages to your customers.

The fact is that email marketing is effective and cost-efficient. Besides, this is an incredible tool that allows you to measure the results of your campaigns.

#8. Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is the key to scaling your marketing production. By using marketing automation software your department can automate basic tasks and optimize its workflow.

Email marketing, social media posting, lead generation, lead nurturing workflows and metrics analysis can all be done with a marketing automation software.

Working with these tools, your team will be able to increase sales and leads, as well as decrease the customer acquisition cost.

All of this while having more information on your clients and potential clients, mapping all steps of the buyer’s journey and having more time to think about your marketing strategy instead of doing the manual work.

#9. Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is perhaps one of the most critical, relevant digital marketing strategies today, so it’s crucial that you make it part of your ongoing approach.

As a methodology, it’s about more than simply driving traffic to your website and generating leads. It’s truly about making genuine connections with your potential customers and building strong long-term relationships with them.

You do this by creating content and presenting insights that deliver genuine value to your target audience.

And how do you provide value? In one of the three following ways (or any combination of them).

When you, as a marketer or brand representative, give a consumer what they need in the form of helpful information, genuine assistance, and authentic connection, they’re much more likely to buy from you.

In this way, inbound marketing helps your brand build serious momentum.

#10. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has been a digital marketing mainstay for a long time and with good reason.

When approached correctly, it’s highly effective at driving high-quality traffic to your website and generating leads that are highly likely to convert.

Today, PPC ads — paid advertisements designed to accompany a variety of web experiences — can take a couple of different forms.

The one you’re likely most familiar with is the paid advertising that appears at the top of Google search results. However, advertisements that appear before YouTube videos, in mobile apps, and so forth also follow the PPC model.

One of the most significant advantages of PPC is it’s easy to scale your campaign to match your current budget since you only pay when someone clicks on an ad.

However, the actual cost of a particular campaign can vary greatly from one project to the next.

How much it will cost to run a particular ad depends mainly on how competitive your chosen keywords are, as you must bid on the key phrases you want.

But PPC as a digital marketing discipline is highly flexible. You can target consumers located anywhere globally, including local customers you want to attract through the doors of a brick-and-mortar business.

#11. Sponsored Content

Branded content is a huge deal in today’s digital marketing world for more reasons than one.

Not only does branding your content help boost ongoing brand recognition, but people tend to remember branded content roughly twice as long as they do standard content.

That’s because brands have more in common with people than you might realize, including distinct personalities, voices, and values.

So when you brand your content, you give it a unique identity that sets it apart from all the rest of the noise out there.

However, it’s not always time-effective or even desirable to produce all of your branded content yourself.

Sponsored content is content you pay an influencer or another brand to create or distribute on your behalf.

It offers you a great way to generate more of the type of branded content that delivers results and leverage other people’s followings to expose your brand to a larger audience.

Sponsored posts are most successful when you partner with companies, influencers, and other content creators who already specialize in topics that align with your brand.

The ideal result is material that is so in sync with your brand, it feels less like an ad and more like any other piece of helpful, entertaining content.

#12. Native Advertising

Native advertising is paid advertising that fits so seamlessly into the design of the surrounding media or website that it feels like it’s part of the experience.

Consider the way the ads you see while scrolling through your social media feeds look just like the rest of the posts versus how an old-school banner ad on a website sticks out as something that doesn’t quite belong.

While traditional online advertising can be jarring and disruptive to a person’s user experience, native advertising blends nicely into the editorial flow of the content around it.

It makes it easier to expose an audience to advertising without also making them feel intruded upon or otherwise interrupted.

Like other forms of paid advertising, native advertising can take many forms. One of the most popular, effective options is in-feed advertising that appears as part of the news feed flow on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

However, native ads can also occur as content suggestions at the ends of articles and promoted listings on SERPs or in sidebars.

#13. Online PR

Also known as digital PR, online PR is a digital marketing tactic focused on distributing select content to choice media outlets.

The idea is to boost coverage of a brand, company, product, or service and build that brand’s catalog of high-quality backlinks.

When a brand’s being talked about and linked to online, especially by trusted news sources and high-quality authorities, that’s a signal to search engines that it’s relevant and worth taking seriously.

An excellent online PR campaign also works wonders for building brand awareness and increasing a consumer’s likelihood of buying from that brand in the future.

Online PR differs from traditional PR in several fundamental ways. Traditional PR typically leverages standard media formats like radio, television, and print to spread the word about a brand and get people talking about it.

Since these methods tend to be less targeted than online alternatives, it can take longer to see the desired result.

Online PR tactics are more finely focused and use specially created content (like infographics, videos, articles, and interactive content) to reach specific audiences.

The results tend to manifest more quickly, and progress is much easier to measure thanks to extra-precise metrics and user-friendly tools.

#14. Instant Messaging Marketing

Over the years, instant messaging has become so much more than just another convenient way to keep in touch with friends, family, or colleagues.

It’s now a preferred means of communication for many people, including when communicating with businesses.

In fact, according to a recent survey by Avochato, nearly two-thirds of modern consumers — 63 percent — far prefer doing business with companies who offer text or instant message as a contact option.

Not only are instant message and text far more in step with the amount of time modern consumers spend on their phones, but they’re also more personal.

And although text and instant message are both good options for companies looking to stay connected to their customers, instant message marketing has some distinct advantages.

You’re far more likely to forget about a standard SMS text you receive from a brand about a sale or special deal.

However, an instant message integrates seamlessly with the rest of a person’s social media activity, so it’s more likely to attract a response.

Plus, instant marketing messages can transition naturally into a conversation if needed or desired, making it a terrific way to establish and maintain ongoing communication.

How to Do Digital Marketing

Creating an effective digital marketing strategy isn’t just a must in today’s increasingly web-based world. It’s easier to do than you might think, even if you’re brand new to the game.

Here’s a look at how to get started.

1. Set clear goals and objectives

Without a clearly defined goal, a digital marketing strategy is nothing more than a shot in the dark that may or may not hit the target.

So start your journey by figuring out what your goals are, because they will be the focus of all your future efforts.

Keep in mind that solid goals are never vague. They’re not only reachable and specific but measurable.

Otherwise, you can never be sure you’ve even made progress toward your goal, let alone reached it.

2. Build your customer personas

In the past, all a digital marketer really needed to create a solid campaign was enough information and collected data about their target demographic. (Think details like age, gender, location, interests, or profession.)

But these days, your strategy really isn’t complete until you also have a set of buyer personas in your corner.

Buyer personas are semi-fictional identities representing one or more of your desired customers.

They make it easier for marketers to put themselves in the customers’ shoes and are best created by interviewing actual members of the target group.

3. Conduct ongoing keyword research

Thorough ongoing keyword research is at the heart of any good digital marketing campaign.

It’s how you know what your target audience is out there searching for, so it’s naturally also the key to obtaining top ranking on Google, Bing, and the rest of the search engines.

Keyword research is an essential part of optimizing your social media marketing campaign, as well.

Start the process by choosing a keyword research tool that appeals to you and building a running list of options. Include both high-performing keywords and clever longtail alternatives to expand your potential reach.

4. Create and maintain a blog

Content marketing is one of the most important aspects of digital marketing today, and a blog is one of the most effective tools you can have in your corner.

Adding a blog to your company website gives you a terrific way to boost your site’s SEO and attract interested consumers to your site in the first place.

Set a content production schedule for your blog and stick to it, so your audience knows when to expect new content from you.

Fill your blog with content your target demographic would find useful, helpful, entertaining, or just plain interesting.

Think industry news and answers to burning questions someone shopping for products like yours might have.

5. Add variety with an omnichannel approach

Competition is fierce these days, so it’s crucial that you leverage your creativity to make your marketing material unique, engaging, and exciting.

Innovate using an omnichannel approach to digital marketing, learn where your target audience spends the most time, and meet them wherever that is.

And although written content is still the mainstay of a good content production effort, it’s far from the only type that yields results these days.

Modern consumers respond to dynamic imagery and exciting interactive content options, so be sure to include options like infographics, videos, professional-level images, eye-catching designs, etc.

Be open to diversifying your marketing strategies, as well, especially when looking to tap into brand new demographics.

Energetic, clever marketing material and timely, helpful content that’s in step with a market’s current interests and concerns are crucial to meeting your marketing goals and growing your customer base.

6. Optimize for mobile

Another critical factor to keep in mind when putting together a digital marketing campaign is how prevalent the use of mobile technology is today.

Mobile devices are no longer just items people occasionally use to shop, consume content, or search for information.

According to research by Dynamic Yield, 76 percent of modern consumers say they prefer mobile shopping because it saves them so much time.

That means you’re losing a lot of potential business if your website and content aren’t optimized for mobile use.

So if your site isn’t mobile-optimized, change that as soon as possible. And if it is optimized, go over your current mobile-responsive web design, go-to email templates, and so forth to ensure they’re in step with the latest standards.

7. Make yourself available to your customers

It’s no longer enough to simply add a contact page with your email address and phone number to your website and call it a day.

Today’s consumers expect a more intimate connection with the companies they do business with.

Your customers need to feel like you’re not just reachable but genuinely available, and it’s vital to meet this expectation.

Make sure your website’s contact page is complete and easy to find. Your landing pages should be clear, concise, and free of any requests for unnecessary information.

Calls to action should be highly visible and crystal clear. Guarantee that your customers know they can reach you on social media, as well, and always respond to questions, comments, and messages in a timely manner.

8. Distinguish yourself from the competition

Although the digital market is filled with opportunities for great companies to connect with the right audience, there’s a lot of competition out there, too.

And your competitors have more in common with you than you think. They’re selling similar products with similar selling points, and they’re certainly looking to sell to the same demographics you are.

If you’re not standing out from the rest of the crowd, you’re bound to get lost in the shuffle.

So consider what makes your company different. Maybe you offer more variety in your catalog than your competitors do.

Perhaps your products are more reliable, more efficient, or better suited to a particular type of customer than anything else out there.

Do some research to confirm your differentiating factors and make them the focus of your digital marketing campaign.

Be creative, get personal, and always keep your eyes open for ways you can connect on an even deeper level with your customers.

9. Keep track of your results

No digital marketing campaign is complete without an airtight plan for gathering and analyzing data, so be sure to monitor your progress on an ongoing basis.

The sooner you can determine whether or not an approach is working, the sooner you can correct anything that isn’t working as it should.

Celebrate successes, but learn from failures. And don’t forget to gather and consider customer feedback as part of your process.

Ultimately, your customers’ responses to your marketing efforts are the most telling as to whether or not they’re really working.

What Does a Digital Marketer Do

Even though Digital Marketing might seem easy in theory, it is quite complicated and requires a lot of knowledge as well as experience.

If you feel like having to learn the ins and outs of digital marketing is too much for you, then hiring a digital marketer might be just what you need.

A digital marketer — or a Digital Marketing Manager — is responsible for crafting a marketing strategy, as well as implementing and managing it.

These marketers have plenty of experience in their respective fields and can bring in an impressive amount of leads or customers to your business.

They use training and experience to find the most suitable marketing channels to promote your brand and products.

To put it simply, a digital marketer is responsible for the success of your Digital Marketing campaign.

They will accomplish the goals of the campaign while keeping in mind budgetary restrictions and other important aspects of the business.

They will also use their knowledge and experience to decide the best strategy to adopt for promoting a specific brand or product.

Although a marketing manager can be quite a lifesaver in certain situations, not every marketing manager may know what they are doing.

So if you are looking to outsource your Digital Marketing, here are a few tips on what to look for in a proper marketing manager.

What to look for in a good Digital Marketing manager

Digital Marketing can be quite challenging, especially when you are new to the whole affair.

You can learn a lot about Digital Marketing through online resources, courses, and training, but nothing quite matches the experience and knowledge that a dedicated professional has.

Professional marketing managers see that your strategy is successful throughout, with minimal expense.

However, you cannot just choose someone that claims to be an expert in Digital Marketing, which is why you should know exactly what to look for in a good digital marketer.

Here are traits that make for a great digital marketer:

Can use analytics and data effectively

One of the core characteristics of a good digital marketer is that they can use various quantitative data to their advantage.

Since the internet is completely based on numbers and algorithms, a good digital marketer will track the results of their strategy.

This means that they can actively track the success of their marketing strategy and make changes accordingly.

In other words, it is by keeping track of the performance of the strategy that digital marketers will gather data to their advantage, allowing them to make well-informed decisions.

Are true leaders

Digital marketers are much more than managers of your Digital Marketing campaign; they are proper leaders in their own right.

Since they will be leading an entire marketing team, they must have proper leadership skills as well as qualifications to lead your team.

Most importantly, they should be able to communicate their ideas very clearly with the rest of the team.

They should be understanding and sympathetic towards problems that their team members may be facing and should help them in overcoming such issues.

Finally, by setting up tangible goals and making sensible and fair decisions, they should be able to easily promote your brand in the most effective way.

What Type of Content is Better For Each Stage of The Buyer’s Journey

The buyer’s journey is the active research process a potential buyer goes through leading up to their purchase.

It follows them through four stages: becoming aware of a need, considering different solutions to fulfill that need, making a decision between the different solutions and becoming loyal to a brand.

The buyer’s journey is a very intricate process filled with doubts and many hassles for the customer.

To help your customers make more educated decisions through every step of the buyer’s journey, here is a small guide to what is relevant and engaging content at each of the steps.

Stages of the buyer’s journey

To better understand the different types of content that you should use through every step of the buyer’s journey, we will go over each step of it and the solution that you can use.

Awareness

Awareness is the first step in every buyer’s journey, as they start to identify the problem that they are facing and the possible solutions to it.

This step often includes extensive research by the customer, as they are not quite sure what they want.

So, this is where you step in to help them make a much smarter decision.

Since your customers will be researching the problem, they will need content that is precise and helps them better understand their situation.

You can provide them with this information through various social media posts, research studies, eBooks, and even blog posts, among other things.

Of course, your priority in each of these cases should be to inform your customers of their situation, and not sell your product or service.

You must give the impression that you genuinely care about your audience, and this content is less like marketing a product and more like informational content.

Consideration

Consideration is the next step in the buyer’s journey, and by now they have graduated to buyers that know the solution to their problem.

That means they are now looking for sellers that can provide them with solutions. In this case, the buyer may know about your company but are looking at other options, or may not know your company at all.

For the buyers that got into the consideration stage, you will have to change the perspective of the content as well as the type of content that you are sending their way.

While in the awareness stage you were referring to people that did not know much or anything about the source material, here your target audience knows what they want and are now looking for potential opportunities.

You will have to use videos, comparison papers, case studies, and expert guides to explain the best options.

Decision

The time has come. These customers are now willing to buy a product after doing plenty of research on its utility and more.

But now they are not just looking at products; they are looking for companies and brands that are willing to offer what they want.

Here you can take a more advertising approach to your customers so they can buy your products.

You will have to use content that perfectly represents your brand and the personality around it.

Content that works well with this specific step in the buyer’s journey are testimonials, product comparisons, product demonstrations, and even product reviews.

These types of content can be very effective in convincing your audience to get your product because of its unique selling point.

Loyalty

Once the customer purchases a product from you, this is a big win, especially with all of the competition in the market. However, your marketing to them does not end with their transactions.

In fact, this is the start of a new type of content marketing that will entice them to come back and make another purchase.

It is true some businesses do not follow up on their old customers, but these are often bigger companies like Amazon or Steam.

These larger companies have such a dominant market presence; it is often more convenient for customers to shop there exclusively.

On the other hand, smaller companies have to rely on these marketing techniques to make sure their older customers come back to shop.

Moreover, keeping in touch with your customers after their initial purchase is a great way of showing that you care.

This care can generate loyalty among buyers, making them more compelled to spend on your site.

Digital Marketing Examples

Naturally, not all digital marketing campaigns are equal. Some merely get the job done, while others absolutely knock it out of the park.

Here’s a look at some exceptionally terrific examples of digital marketing in action.

National Geographic

When it comes to publications, it doesn’t get much more recognizable than National Geographic.

This brand knows its strengths and leverages avenues like social media to use them to its advantage.

For instance, National Geographic has established quite a presence on Instagram thanks to its beautiful images and worldly take on current events.

With over 200 million followers, its account is a shining example of how to turn a free social media presence into a valuable digital marketing asset.

The Dove brand name is practically synonymous with concepts like authenticity, healthy self-esteem, and mindful natural beauty.

These values are further supported by intelligent digital marketing decisions.

For instance, Dove’s Reverse Selfie campaign spotlighted the impact of social media on today’s children and teens by showing the reverse of one teen girl’s selfie prep routine.

That campaign is a beautiful example of how powerful and intimate digital marketing can feel when a brand is truly in sync with its audience and gets straight to the heart of what matters to them.

Alice and Olivia

Alice and Olivia is a contemporary clothing company, so its team definitely knows its way around a modern digital marketing campaign.

The brand also happens to operate a popular blog that brings much value to its massive audience.

In other words, Alice and Olivia is a brand to watch if you want to see a stellar example of the value of digital marketing techniques at work.

Yes, it’s embraced paid advertising and other similar avenues, but its blog is where it really shines the brightest.

Always

Another example of a brand that’s great at creating successful individual campaigns is Always.

Take their #LikeAGirl campaign, for example. It tapped into the power of emotional marketing by asking people what does it mean to do something “like a girl”.

The idea behind the campaign was to inspire and empower an audience, and it does that very well.

However, very little of the marketing content directly mentioned the Always brand.

This helped place the ultimate focus where it belonged — on not only the values behind the brand but the women and girls who rely on Always as part of their everyday lives.

How B2B And B2C Companies Can Use Digital Marketing Strategies

Digital Marketing plays a major role in every company’s marketing strategy. In fact, most companies only rely on Digital Marketing strategies to promote their brand as well as their business.

Two very major types of companies — B2B and B2C (Business to Business and Business to Customer) — use Digital Marketing in very different ways.

Depending on your business model and your potential audience, your Digital Marketing can be informal, outdated, or just ineffective.

Major differences between B2B and B2C

These days, B2B and B2C marketing are somewhat similar. While traditional marketing methods were different for B2B and B2C companies, social media and the internet have bridged this gap.

Thanks to channels such as social media, companies can now advertise to both companies and customers alike with the same platform and the same strategies.

The difference between these strategies comes in how the company uses them and the type of content you should address them with.

The audience

The biggest difference between these two types of businesses is their target audience. This is the first thing you will have to consider when implementing a marketing strategy.

Customers in the B2B businesses include business owners and managers. In other words, people that know a lot about the industry that you are operating in.

Companies will have to make sure their content does not talk down to these professionals and instead talks to them.

On the other hand, B2C companies deal with customers who know a lot about the market but do not know the intricacies of the said market.

Companies will be able to market to them in an informative way, which will help them make more educated decisions.

Another big distinction between B2B and B2C customers is that one is looking for a product or service that has plenty of utility, while the other is looking for the best value.

B2C customers are often looking for products that give them the most utility for a lower price. However, B2B customers are rarely concerned with the price of a product and look more to its functionality, versatility, and utility.

Platform and tone

Another important distinction between the B2B and B2C companies is their marketing platform.

It is safe to say that social media plays a vital role in every company’s Digital Marketing strategy. The major difference between the two comes in the platform that they are using as well as the tone they choose.

B2C companies will often choose a very friendly, inviting and often very casual tone to attract their target audience.

This tone is also a reflection of the brand’s personality, which is why it is essential to every B2C business.

These companies will also use platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and even Snapchat — casual and relatable social media suites — to promote their brand.

B2B companies tend to have a more serious tone and a very straightforward message. These companies use very specific social media platforms like LinkedIn and AngelList, which are all business platforms.

People that are on these sites have a business mindset, allowing you to connect with them on a more professional level.

Size of the market

The size of the market is also a major differing factor in both types of businesses’ Digital Marketing strategies.

B2C companies are effectively advertising to a massive market with millions of possible customers.

On the other hand, you have B2B businesses that are always catering to a very specific niche of owners and managers.

Relationship with customers

B2B and B2C companies are also very different in the relationship that they form with their target audience through their marketing.

In other words, these two different types of businesses have very different business objectives.

B2C companies are more concerned with creating brand loyalty and increasing revenue.

B2B companies have a much more specific criterion that takes higher priority over increasing revenue.

Although that is not to say that increasing revenue is not one of their priorities, they are more focused on creating long-lasting relationships with their customers.

Wrap Up

And with that, we come to a close. This guide goes over what is Digital Marketing as well as everything revolving around it.

With the help of this content, you can now better implement Digital Marketing in your advertising strategy and use it to its fullest potential.

If you want to take leverage your strategy, take our Marketing Stack Assessment to identify the gaps in your marketing strategy.

After that, you will receive a customized report of technology recommendations that will improve your marketing stack!

The Who, What, Why, & How of Digital Marketing

HubSpot also recommends this fundamental guide for getting started with digital marketing.

Free Digital Marketing Guide for Small Business

HubSpot came together with MOO, an online print and design company, to give you an actionable guide on building your digital marketing strategy from the ground up.

Download Free Marketing Guide

Download Free Digital Marketing Guide for Small Business

Free Digital Marketing Guide for Small Business

HubSpot came together with MOO, an online print and design company, to give you an actionable guide on building your digital marketing strategy from the ground up.

Download Free Marketing Guide

Download Free Digital Marketing Guide for Small Business

With how accessible the internet is today, would you believe me if I told you the number of people who go online every day is still increasing?

It is. In fact, «constant» internet usage among adults increased by 5% in just the last three years, according to Pew Research. And although we say it a lot, the way people shop and buy really has changed along with it — meaning offline marketing isn’t as effective as it used to be.

Marketing has always been about connecting with your audience in the right place and at the right time. Today, that means you need to meet them where they are already spending time: on the internet.

Enter digital marketing — in other words, any form of marketing that exists online.

At HubSpot, we talk a lot about inbound marketing as a really effective way to attract, engage, and delight customers online. But we still get a lot of questions from people all around the world about digital marketing. So, we decided to answer them. Click the links below to jump to each question, or keep reading to see how digital marketing is carried out today.

So, how do you define digital marketing today?

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing, also called online marketing, refers to all marketing efforts that occur on the internet. Businesses leverage digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and other websites to connect with current and prospective customers. This also includes communication through text or multimedia messages.

A seasoned inbound marketer might say inbound marketing and digital marketing are virtually the same thing, but there are some minor differences. And conversations with marketers and business owners in the U.S., U.K., Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, I’ve learned a lot about how those small differences are being observed across the world.

How does a business define digital marketing?

At this stage, digital marketing is vital for your business and brand awareness. It seems like every other brand has a website. And if they don’t, they at least have a social media presence or digital ad strategy. Digital content and marketing is so common that consumers now expect and rely on it as a way to learn about brands. Because digital marketing has so many options and strategies associated with it, you can get creative and experiment with a variety of marketing tactics on a budget.

Digital marketing is defined by the use of numerous digital tactics and channels to connect with customers where they spend much of their time: online. The best digital marketers have a clear picture of how each digital marketing campaign supports their overarching goals. And depending on the goals of their marketing strategy, marketers can support a larger campaign through the free and paid channels at their disposal.

Free Marketing Plan Template

Fill out this form to access the template.

A content marketer, for example, can create a series of blog posts that generate leads from a new ebook the business recently created. The company’s social media marketer might then help promote these blog posts through paid and organic posts on the business’s social media accounts. Perhaps the email marketer creates an email campaign to send those who download the ebook more information on the company. We’ll talk more about these specific digital marketers in a minute.

Why is digital marketing important?

Digital marketing helps you reach a larger audience than you could through traditional methods, and target the prospects who are most likely to buy your product or service. Additionally, it’s often more cost-effective than traditional advertising, and enables you to measure success on a daily basis and pivot as you see fit.

There are a few major benefits of digital marketing:

You can focus your efforts on only the prospects most likely to purchase your product or service.

Digital marketing evens the playing field within your industry and allows you to compete with bigger brands.

Digital marketing is measurable.

It’s easier to adapt and change a digital marketing strategy.

Digital marketing can improve your conversion rate and the quality of your leads.

You can engage audiences at every stage with digital marketing.

Let’s dive into them now.

1. You can focus your efforts on only the prospects most likely to purchase your product or service.

If you place an advertisement on TV, in a magazine, or on a billboard, you have limited control over who sees the ad. Of course, you can measure certain demographics — including the magazine’s typical readership, or the demographic of a certain neighborhood — but it’s still largely a shot in the dark.

Digital marketing, on the other hand, allows you to identify and target a highly-specific audience, and send that audience personalized, high-converting marketing messages.

For instance, you might take advantage of social media’s targeting features to show social media ads to a certain audience based on variables such as age, gender, location, interests, networks, or behaviors. Alternatively, you might use PPC or SEO strategies to serve ads to users who’ve shown interest in your product or service, or who’ve searched for specific keywords that relate to your industry.

Ultimately, digital marketing enables you to conduct the research necessary to identify your buyer persona, and lets you refine your marketing strategy over time to ensure you’re reaching prospects most likely to buy. Best of all, digital marketing helps you market to sub-groups within your larger target audience. If you sell multiple products or services to different buyer personas, this is especially helpful.

2. It’s more cost-effective than outbound marketing methods.

Digital marketing enables you to track campaigns on a daily basis and decrease the amount of money you’re spending on a certain channel if it isn’t demonstrating high ROI. The same can’t be said for traditional forms of advertising. It doesn’t matter how your billboard performs — it still costs the same, whether or not it converts for you.

Plus, with digital marketing, you have complete control over where you choose to spend your money. Perhaps rather than paying for PPC campaigns, you choose to spend money on design software to create high-converting Instagram content. A digital marketing strategy allows you to continuously pivot, ensuring you’re never wasting money on channels that don’t perform well.

By and large, digital marketing is a more cost-effective solution, and provides you unique opportunities to ensure you’re getting the most bang for your buck.

For instance, if you work for a small business with a limited budget, you might try investing in social media, blogging, or SEO – three strategies that can give you high ROI even with minimal spend.

3. Digital marketing evens the playing field within your industry and allows you to compete with bigger brands.

If you work for a small business, it’s likely difficult for you to compete with the major brands in your industry, many of which have millions of dollars to invest in television commercials or nationwide campaigns. Fortunately, there are plenty of opportunities to outrank the big players through strategic digital marketing initiatives.

For instance, you might identify certain long-tail keywords that relate to your product or service, and create high-quality content to help you rank on search engines for those keywords. Search engines don’t care which brand is biggest — instead, search engines will prioritize content that resonates best with the target audience.

4. Digital marketing is measurable.

Digital marketing can give you a comprehensive, start-to-finish view of all the metrics that might matter to your company — including impressions, shares, views, clicks, and time on page. This is one of the biggest benefits of digital marketing. While traditional advertising can be useful for certain goals, its biggest limitation is measurability.

Unlike most offline marketing efforts, digital marketing allows marketers to see accurate results in real time. If you’ve ever put an advertisement in a newspaper, you’ll know how difficult it is to estimate how many people actually flipped to that page and paid attention to your ad. There’s no surefire way to know if that ad was responsible for any sales at all.

On the other hand, with digital marketing, you can measure the ROI of pretty much any aspect of your marketing efforts.

Here are some examples:

Website Traffic

With digital marketing, you can see the exact number of people who have viewed your website’s homepage in real time by using digital analytics software, available in marketing platforms like HubSpot.

You can also see how many pages they visited, what device they were using, and where they came from, amongst other digital analytics data.

This intelligence helps you to prioritize which marketing channels to spend more or less time on, based on the number of people those channels are driving to your website. For example, if only 10% of your traffic is coming from organic search, you know that you probably need to spend some time on SEO to increase that percentage.

With offline marketing, it’s very difficult to tell how people are interacting with your brand before they have an interaction with a salesperson or make a purchase. With digital marketing, you can identify trends and patterns in people’s behavior before they’ve reached the final stage in their buyer’s journey, meaning you can make more informed decisions about how to attract them to your website right at the top of the marketing funnel.

Content Performance and Lead Generation

Imagine you’ve created a product brochure and posted it through people’s letterboxes — that brochure is a form of content, albeit offline. The problem is that you have no idea how many people opened your brochure or how many people threw it straight into the trash.

Now imagine you had that brochure on your website instead. You can measure exactly how many people viewed the page where it’s hosted, and you can collect the contact details of those who download it by using forms. Not only can you measure how many people are engaging with your content, but you’re also generating qualified leads when people download it.

Attribution Modeling

An effective digital marketing strategy combined with the right tools and technologies allows you to trace all of your sales back to a customer’s first digital touchpoint with your business.

We call this attribution modeling, and it allows you to identify trends in the way people research and buy your product, helping you to make more informed decisions about what parts of your marketing strategy deserve more attention, and what parts of your sales cycle need refining.

Connecting the dots between marketing and sales is hugely important — according to Aberdeen Group, companies with strong sales and marketing alignment achieve a 20% annual growth rate, compared to a 4% decline in revenue for companies with poor alignment. If you can improve your customer’s journey through the buying cycle by using digital technologies, then it’s likely to reflect positively on your business’s bottom line.

5. It’s easier to adapt and change a digital marketing strategy.

A lot of work goes into developing a marketing strategy. Generally, you will follow through with that strategy until completion, allow it to take effect, and then judge its results. However, things do not always go according to plan. You may realize halfway through that a calculation was off, an assumption was incorrect, or an audience did not react how they were expected to. Being able to pivot or adjust the strategy along the way is highly beneficial because it prevents you from having to start over completely.

Being able to change your strategy easily is a great benefit of digital marketing. Adapting a digital marketing strategy is a lot easier than other more traditional forms of marketing, like mailers or billboard advertising. For instance, if an online ad isn’t delivering as expected, you can quickly adjust it or pause it to yield better results.

6. Digital marketing can improve your conversion rate and the quality of your leads.

As digital marketing makes it simpler to measure your marketing efforts, this makes improving your conversion rate simpler as well. Being able to measure the effectiveness of each tactic helps you develop better strategies. Continuously refining your methods improves your conversion rate. Investing in online marketing ensures that everything is optimized for the highest amount of conversions.

Additionally, all leads do not offer the same value for your business. Digital marketing provides an opportunity for you to target a specific audience that will yield higher quality leads that are more likely to become customers. Connecting your business with the most valuable leads will directly improve your conversion rate.

7. You can engage audiences at every stage with digital marketing.

It’s essential to begin engaging your audience as early as possible. Making a connection at the first stage of the buyer’s journey helps push the lead through the customer funnel. Using digital marketing allows you to accomplish that from start to finish and at every point in between.

Online channels allow you to follow the entire buying journey of your customers. Understanding and analyzing how customers are moving and operating is important for converting leads. Digital marketing allows you to track them through that process. And, even if they don’t convert in the early stages, it at least helps ensure they have made a connection with your business.

Types of Digital Marketing

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the most common digital marketing tactics and the channels involved in each one.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This is the process of optimizing your website to «rank» higher in search engine results pages, thereby increasing the amount of organic (or free) traffic your website receives. The channels that benefit from SEO include websites, blogs, and infographics.

There are a number of ways to approach SEO in order to generate qualified traffic to your website. These include:

For a real-life example on how to successfully implement SEO into your digital marketing strategy, check out our case study on Canva here:

2. Content Marketing

This term denotes the creation and promotion of content assets for the purpose of generating brand awareness, traffic growth, lead generation, and customers.

The channels that can play a part in your content marketing strategy include:

Stumped? Download 150+ content creation templates by clicking below:

3. Social Media Marketing

This practice promotes your brand and your content on social media channels to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, and generate leads for your business.

If you’re new to social platforms, you can use tools like HubSpot to connect channels like LinkedIn and Facebook in one place. This way, you can easily schedule content for multiple channels at once, and monitor analytics from the platform as well.

On top of connecting social accounts for posting purposes, you can also integrate your social media inboxes into HubSpot, so you can get your direct messages in one place.

The channels you can use in social media marketing include:

Many marketers will use these social media platforms to create a viral campaign. Partnering with a popular content creator or taking part in a trend that’s currently resonating with a wide audience is a strategy of viral marketing. The purpose is to create something shareworthy in the hopes that it will organically spread across a social media channel.

Don’t know how to get started with social media marketing? Download our free social media content calendar to get your social strategy up and running.

4. Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC is 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, which allows 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 include:

PPC can be hard to grasp at first, so we’ve created a beginner-friendly guide to get you started. Download it below:

5. Affiliate Marketing

This is a type of performance-based advertising where you receive commission for promoting someone else’s products or services on your website. Affiliate marketing channels include:

6. Native Advertising

Native advertising refers to advertisements that are primarily content-led and featured on a platform alongside other, non-paid content. BuzzFeed-sponsored posts are a good example, but many people also consider social media advertising to be «native» — Facebook advertising and Instagram advertising, for example.

7. Marketing Automation

Marketing automation refers to the software that serves to automate your basic marketing operations. Many marketing departments can automate repetitive tasks they would otherwise do manually, such as:

8. Email Marketing

Companies use email marketing as a way of communicating with their audiences. Email is often used to promote content, discounts and events, as well as to direct people toward the business’s website. The types of emails you might send in an email marketing campaign include:

Learn more about email marketing with our free guide:

9. Online PR

Online PR is the practice of securing earned online coverage with digital publications, blogs, and other content-based websites. It’s much like traditional PR, but in the online space. The channels you can use to maximize your PR efforts include:

If you don’t have a dedicated PR team, it can be hard to get started. Luckily, we’ve got you covered. Download our free PR kit below:

10. Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing refers to a marketing methodology wherein you attract, engage, and delight customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey. You can use every digital marketing tactic listed above, throughout an inbound marketing strategy, to create a customer experience that works with the customer, not against them. Here are some classic examples of inbound marketing versus traditional marketing:

11. Sponsored Content

With sponsored content, you as a brand pay another company or entity to create and promote content that discusses your brand or service in some way.

One popular type of sponsored content is influencer marketing. 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.

Another type of sponsored content could be a blog post or article that is written to highlight a topic, service, or brand.

12. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

When a potential lead is searching for a product or business that is related to yours, it’s a great opportunity for a promotion. Paid advertising and SEO are two great strategies for promoting your business to capitalize on those future leads. Search engine marketing is another way to increase website traffic by placing paid ads on search engines. The two most popular SEM services are Bing Ads and Google Ads. These paid ads fit seamlessly on the top of search engine results pages, giving instant visibility. This is also an example of effective native advertising.

13. Instant Messaging Marketing

Marketing your products through messaging platforms is a fast way to reach potential leads, even for those who haven’t offered up their cell phone number. It’s a simple way to let your audience know about flash sales, new products, or updates about their orders. If your customers have questions or need more information, it’s also a convenient way for them to connect to customer service. You can choose to send messages directly to a mobile phone by text or through messages on platforms like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.

What does a digital marketer do?

Digital marketers are in charge of driving brand awareness and lead generation through all the digital channels — both free and paid — that are at a company’s disposal. These channels include social media, the company’s own website, search engine rankings, email, display advertising, and the company’s blog.

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. A digital marketer who’s in charge of SEO, for example, measures their website’s «organic traffic.» In small companies, one generalist might own many of the digital marketing tactics described above at the same time. In larger companies, these tactics have multiple specialists that each focus on just one or two of the brand’s digital channels.

Here are some examples of these specialists:

SEO Manager

Main KPIs: Organic traffic

In short, SEO managers get the business to rank on Google. Using a variety of approaches to search engine optimization, this person might work directly with content creators to ensure the content they produce performs well on Google — even if the company also posts this content on social media.

Content Marketing Specialist

Main KPIs: Time on page, overall blog traffic, YouTube channel subscribers

Content marketing specialists are the digital content creators. They frequently keep track of the company’s blogging calendar, and come up with a content strategy that includes video as well. These professionals often work with people in other departments to ensure the products and campaigns the business launches are supported with promotional content on each digital channel.

Social Media Manager

Main KPIs: Follows, Impressions, Shares

The role of a social media manager is easy to infer from the title, but which social networks they manage for the company depends on the industry. Above all, social media managers establish a posting schedule for the company’s written and visual content. This employee might also work with the content marketing specialist to develop a strategy for which content to post on which social network.

(Note: Per the KPIs above, «impressions» refers to the number of times a business’s posts appear on the newsfeed of a user.)

Marketing Automation Coordinator

Main KPIs: Email open rate, campaign click-through rate, lead-generation (conversion) rate

The marketing automation coordinator helps choose and manage the software that allows the whole marketing team to understand their customers’ behavior and measure the growth of their business. Because many of the marketing operations described above might be executed separately from one another, it’s important for there to be someone who can group these digital activities into individual campaigns and track each campaign’s performance.

Inbound Marketing vs. Digital Marketing: Which Is It?

Inbound marketing is a methodology that uses digital marketing assets to attract, engage, and delight customers online. Digital marketing, on the other hand, is simply an umbrella term to describe online marketing tactics of any kind, regardless of whether they’re considered inbound or outbound.

Digital marketing is often compared to inbound marketing, but it doesn’t differentiate between ‘inbound’ and ‘outbound’ methods. It’s more of an umbrella term for all marketing that involves digital communication, while inbound marketing is more of a strategy.

Digital outbound tactics aim to put a marketing message in front of as many people as possible in the online space — regardless of whether it’s relevant or welcomed. For example, the garish banner ads you see at the top of many websites try to push a product or promotion onto people who aren’t necessarily ready to receive it.

On the other hand, marketers who employ digital inbound tactics use online content to attract their target customers onto their websites by providing assets that are helpful to them. One of the simplest yet most powerful inbound digital marketing assets is a blog, which allows your website to capitalize on the terms which your ideal customers are searching for.

Does digital marketing work for all businesses?

Digital marketing can work for any business in any industry. Regardless of what your company sells, digital marketing still involves building out buyer personas to identify your audience’s needs, and creating valuable online content. However, that’s not to say all businesses should implement a digital marketing strategy in the same way.

B2B Digital Marketing

If your company is business-to-business (B2B), your digital marketing efforts are likely to be centered around online lead generation, with the end goal being for someone to speak to a salesperson. For that reason, the role of your marketing strategy is to attract and convert the highest quality leads for your salespeople via your website and supporting digital channels.

Beyond your website, you’ll probably choose to focus your efforts on business-focused channels like LinkedIn where your demographic is spending their time online.

B2C Digital Marketing

If your company is business-to-consumer (B2C), depending on the price point of your products, it’s likely that the goal of your digital marketing efforts is to attract people to your website and have them become customers without ever needing to speak to a salesperson.

For that reason, you’re probably less likely to focus on ‘leads’ in their traditional sense, and more likely to focus on building an accelerated buyer’s journey, from the moment someone lands on your website, to the moment that they make a purchase. This will often mean your product features in your content higher up in the marketing funnel than it might for a B2B business, and you might need to use stronger calls-to-action (CTAs).

For B2C companies, channels like Instagram and Pinterest can often be more valuable than business-focused platforms like LinkedIn.

What types of digital content should I create?

The kind of content you create depends on your audience’s needs at different stages in the buyer’s journey. You should start by creating buyer personas (use these free templates, or try makemypersona.com) to identify what your audience’s goals and challenges are in relation to your business. On a basic level, your online content should aim to help them meet these goals, and overcome their challenges.

Then, you’ll need to think about when they’re most likely to be ready to consume this content in relation to what stage they’re at in their buyer’s journey. We call this content mapping.

With content mapping, the goal is to target content according to:

In terms of the format of your content, there are a lot of different things to try. Here are some options we’d recommend using at each stage of the buyer’s journey:

Awareness Stage

Consideration Stage

Decision Stage

How to Do Digital Marketing

1. Define your goals.

When you’re first getting started with digital marketing, it’s critical you start by identifying and defining your goals, since you’ll craft your strategy differently depending on those goals. For instance, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, you might want to pay more attention to reaching new audiences via social media.

Alternatively, perhaps you want to increase sales on a specific product — if that’s the case, it’s more important you focus on SEO and optimizing content to get potential buyers on your website in the first place. Additionally, if sales is your goal, you might test out PPC campaigns to drive traffic through paid ads.

Whatever the case, it’s easiest to shape a digital marketing strategy after you’ve determined your company’s biggest goals.

2. Identify your target audience.

We’ve mentioned this before, but one of the biggest benefits of digital marketing is the opportunity to target specific audiences – however, you can’t take advantage of that benefit if you haven’t first identified your target audience.

Of course, it’s important to note, your target audience might vary depending on the channel or goal(s) you have for a specific product or campaign.

For instance, perhaps you’ve noticed most of your Instagram audience is younger and prefers funny memes and quick videos — but your LinkedIn audience tends to be older professionals who are looking for more tactical advice. You’ll want to vary your content to appeal to these different target audiences.

If you’re starting from scratch, feel free to take a look at How to Find Your Target Audience.

3. Establish a budget for each digital channel.

As with anything, the budget you determine really depends on what elements of digital marketing you’re looking to add to your strategy.

If you’re focusing on inbound techniques like SEO, social media, and content creation for a preexisting website, the good news is you don’t need very much budget at all. With inbound marketing, the main focus is on creating high quality content that your audience will want to consume, which unless you’re planning to outsource the work, the only investment you’ll need is your time.

You can get started by hosting a website and creating content using HubSpot’s CMS. For those on a tight budget, you can get started using WordPress hosted on WP Engine, using a simple them from StudioPress, and building your site without code using the Elementor Website Builder for WordPress.

With outbound techniques like online advertising and purchasing email lists, there is undoubtedly some expense. What it costs comes down to what kind of visibility you want to receive as a result of the advertising.

For example, to implement PPC using Google AdWords, you’ll bid against other companies in your industry to appear at the top of Google’s search results for keywords associated with your business. Depending on the competitiveness of the keyword, this can be reasonably affordable, or extremely expensive, which is why it’s a good idea to focus building your organic reach, too.

4. Strike a good balance between paid and free digital strategies.

A digital marketing strategy likely needs both paid and free aspects to truly be effective.

For instance, if you spend time building comprehensive buyer personas to identify the needs of your audience, and you focus on creating quality online content to attract and convert them, then you’re likely to see strong results within the first six months despite minimal ad spend.

However, if paid advertising is part of your digital strategy, then the results might come even quicker.

Ultimately, it’s recommended to focus on building your organic (or ‘free’) reach using content, SEO, and social media for more long-term, sustainable success.

When in doubt, try both, and iterate on your process as you learn which channels — paid or free – perform best for your brand.

5. Create engaging content.

Once you know your audience and you have a budget, it’s time to start creating content for the various channels you’re going to use. This content can be social media posts, blog posts, PPC ads, sponsored content, email marketing newsletters, and more.

Of course, any content you create should be interesting and engaging to your audience because the point of marketing content is to increase brand awareness and improve lead generation.

6. Optimize your digital assets for mobile.

Another key component of digital marketing is mobile marketing. In fact, smartphone usage as a whole accounts for 69% of time spent consuming digital media in the U.S., while desktop-based digital media consumption makes up less than half — and the U.S. still isn’t mobile’s biggest fan compared to other countries.

This means it’s essential to optimize your digital ads, web pages, social media images, and other digital assets for mobile devices. If your company has a mobile app that enables users to engage with your brand or shop your products, your app falls under the digital marketing umbrella, too.

Those engaging with your company online via mobile devices need to have the same positive experience as they would on desktop. This means implementing a mobile-friendly or responsive website design to make browsing user-friendly for those on mobile devices. It might also mean reducing the length of your lead generation forms to create a hassle-free experience for people downloading your content on-the-go. As for your social media images, it’s important to always have a mobile user in mind when creating them, as image dimensions are smaller on mobile devices and text can be cut-off.

There are lots of ways you can optimize your digital marketing assets for mobile users, and when implementing any digital marketing strategy, it’s hugely important to consider how the experience will translate on mobile devices. By ensuring this is always front-of-mind, you’ll be creating digital experiences that work for your audience, and consequently achieve the results you’re hoping for.

7. Conduct keyword research.

Digital marketing is all about reaching targeted audiences through personalized content — all of which can’t happen without effective keyword research.

Conducting keyword research is critical for optimizing your website and content for SEO and ensuring people can find your business through search engines. Additionally, social media keyword research can be helpful for marketing your products or services on various social channels, as well.

Even if you don’t have a full-time SEO strategist, you’ll still want to conduct keyword research. Try creating a list of high-performing keywords that relate to your products or services, and consider long-tail variations for added opportunities.

8. Iterate based on the analytics you measure.

Finally, to create an effective digital marketing strategy for the long-term, it’s vital your team learn how to pivot based on analytics.

For instance, perhaps after a couple of months you find your audience isn’t as interested in your content on Instagram anymore — but they love what you’re creating on Twitter. Sure, this might be an opportunity to re-examine your Instagram strategy as a whole, but it might also be a sign that your audience prefers a different channel to consume branded content.

Alternatively, perhaps you find an older web page isn’t getting the traffic it used to. You might consider updating the page or getting rid of it entirely to ensure visitors are finding the freshest, most relevant content for their needs.

Digital marketing provides businesses with incredibly flexible opportunities for continuous growth — but it’s up to you to take advantage of them.

I’m ready to try digital marketing. Now what?

If you’re already doing digital marketing, it’s likely that you’re at least reaching some segments of your audience online. No doubt you can think of some areas of your strategy that could use a little improvement, though.

That’s why we created a step-by-step guide to help you build a digital marketing strategy that’s truly effective, whether you’re a complete beginner or have a little more experience.

Next, let’s look at some examples of digital marketing that will be sure to inspire you.

Digital Marketing Examples

1. Lego’s Rebuild the World Campaign

This is a great example of a digital marketing campaign because it says something about the brand. In this campaign, Lego takes a stance on important global issues as a way to connect with its audience.

In this day and age, it’s becoming increasingly important for companies to discuss global issues and show alignment with their customers in that way. The major play with this campaign is to help share the brand’s story and messaging.

Given that 89% of customers shop from brands that share their values, this was a good move for the toy brand.

2. Dove’s Reverse Selfie Campaign

As we continue to learn how social media is affecting children, especially young girls, Dove decided to send a message. The Reverse Selfie campaign shows the reverse of what a teen girl did to prepare for a selfie and photoshop the picture. The purpose is to increase awareness of how social media can negatively impact self-esteem.

This is an excellent example of what marketing content can look like when you know your audience intimately. By knowing its audience of real women, many of them parents, Dove was able to bring light to an often overlooked consequence of the growth of social media.

3. Jennifer Lopez’s #InTheMorningChallenge

In this social media campaign, Jennifer Lopez created a dance challenge to promote her new song. With this challenge, fans would do the same dance in their pajamas and in dress up clothes.

This was a successful social media campaign as the video had over 13 million views and over 5,000 posts.

Using social media is a great way to engage your audience and get them to participate with your brand one on one.

4. Always’ #DayoftheGirl Campaign

This is another digital campaign that focuses on emotional marketing. With this campaign, Always asked their own employees what tips they would give to girls. The women offer their valuable insight in a way meant to inspire everyone for International Day of the Girl, an international holiday that occurs annually in October.

Again, this isn’t a campaign where the product is mentioned much, but that isn’t the point. The point of this digital campaign was to inspire its audience. With that message, they could reach even more people, increase brand awareness, and show their audience that the brand aligns with their values.

Integrate Digital Marketing Into Your Strategy

Any opportunity where you can connect to your audience is an opportunity to convert a lead or acquire a customer. Digital marketing creates so many more of those opportunities by allowing you to reach prospective buyers through a wide variety of channels. Whether it’s social media platforms, websites, text messages, or any online medium, it’s an invaluable way to promote your business, service, or product.

Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in September 2019, but was updated for comprehensiveness.

Originally published Feb 10, 2022 7:04:00 AM, updated August 09 2022