What Is Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is defined as a marketing approach that primarily relies on the internet to connect with the target audience through various digital media channels and platforms.

In this article, we will look at the concept of digital marketing, the key digital marketing channels, the best practices to ensure you succeed in your digital marketing efforts, and how digital marketing can benefit your brand. We’ll also look at some evergreen digital marketing success stories to inspire you. Let’s begin!

What Is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is an all-encompassing term that consists of digital channels, such as content marketing, SEO, email marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing and so on, to create elaborate strategies to reach and connect with prospects and customers.

An average user consumes content via the television, computer, tablet, smartphone, radio, and other traditional media. This constant exposure to various types of media has led to information overload, further complicating the buyer’s journey. Digital marketing has allowed brands to stay relevant by making themselves visible through different channels and touchpoints.

Apart from traditional marketing channels, such as television, newspapers, billboards, and so on, marketers use these digital channels to guide prospects through their purchase journey and keep in touch with their existing customers.

Types of Digital Marketing Channels

Before we delve into other aspects of digital marketing, let’s quickly review the top eleven types of digital marketing channels:

1. Website

The website is often the home to your digital marketing efforts. Brands and organizations use websites to host content while using other mediums to distribute it. Most of your digital marketing activities will link back to your website, where an action is expected to take place, and the conversions are tracked. For example, the download of a file, booking of a product or a service, and so on.

2. Content Marketing

Content creation is the spine of your entire digital marketing strategy. Whether you’ve got a documented content marketing strategy or not, you’re creating content to inform, entertain, inspire, or persuade your buyers through other channels. Some of the most common formats of content include text (blog posts), videos, images, infographics, podcasts, slide decks, and ebooks.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO acts as a jetpack for your content marketing efforts. SEO consists of on-page and off-page activities to boost your website’s visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) for your preferred keywords. Earlier, SEO was primarily text-based, but in recent years voice search has gained prominence as well, which is why your SEO activities need to have a conversational approach.

4. Digital Advertising

Digital advertising is an umbrella term for various online advertising strategies. The typical pricing/bidding strategies for digital advertising are cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-mille (CPM), i.e., per thousand impressions. Common formats of digital advertising are search engine marketing (SEM), display advertising, native advertising, social media advertising, and programmatic advertising.

5. Email Marketing

Email marketing is the process of maintaining a database of cold and warm contacts and sending them email alerts about your brand, products and services. It is an effective channel to communicate with your audience on an ongoing basis. Email marketing is useful to build your subscriber base, onboard new customers, retain existing ones, promote discounts and offers, and distribute content.

6. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing ensure you are present on the platforms your users are spending the most time on. These include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Instagram, where you can distribute content through both – organic and paid channels. Social media has also played a vital role in propagating video marketing and the ephemeral content wave. It enables two-way communication and your fans and followers can interact with you on your content through likes, comments, direct messages, or by posting on your official pages.

7. Affiliate Marketing

The concept of affiliate marketing is similar to commission-based sales. Organizations provide custom links to their affiliates. Affiliates earn a specific cut/commission every time someone buys through their custom link. Influence marketing could be considered a modern and evolved spin-off of affiliate marketing.

8. Mobile Marketing

The number of smartphone users across the world is expected to grow to 3.5 billion in 2020. To bank on this opportunity, brands connect with their users on their smartphones through mobile apps, emails, mobile-friendly websites, and social media. By connecting with users on the go, brands have been able to optimize their marketing strategies and send timely messages.

9. Online PR

Online Public Relations is a type of earned media. This is when a member of the press (journalist or online publication) mentions your brand through their stories, interviews, and so on. Product reviews by customers and bloggers and Influencers mentioning your brand or products whether paid or organic also contribute to your online PR.

10. Conversational AI

The rise of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have paved the way for more evolved marketing strategies such as conversational AI. As the adoption of voice search, chatbots, and digital assistants becomes prevalent, conversational AI becomes vital to digital marketing.

11. Web Analytics

Web analytics is the practice of collecting, measuring, analyzing, and reporting data. This is commonly tracked through Google Analytics, but websites could also build their analytical tools. The data collected could be quantitative or qualitative. Web analytics helps marketers understand the sources of traffic, what's working and what's not, the return on investments (ROI), and how they can enhance their digital marketing efforts.