What Is Digital Marketing? Types, Strategies & Best Practices
What Is Digital Marketing?
Also known as online marketing or internet marketing, digital marketing communicates messages through digital channels accessed through electronic devices, including phones, computers and tablets.
Digital marketing and traditional marketing, such as print ads and direct mail, share the same ultimate goal: generating product awareness and influencing purchasing decisions to drive sales. The main difference between traditional and digital marketing is that digital marketing uses internet-connected technologies to communicate and engage with targeted audiences.
The launch of the World Wide Web in 1989 set the stage for the emergence of digital marketing. The proliferation of business websites, advancements in email technologies and the introduction of wildly popular social channels have sparked meteoric growth in digital marketing. Online marketing is now a key component in most businesses’ marketing plans primarily because of the widespread use of digital technologies but also because it can deliver outstanding results.
Why Digital Marketing Is Important
To succeed, businesses must find effective ways to spread the word about their products and services and that’s never been more challenging than today. Consumers face more choices from more providers, all clamoring for their attention. Deploying compelling content on digital marketing platforms is one way to stand out from the crowd.
Another reason digital marketing is so important to businesses is simply this: it’s where your ideal customer is hanging out. According to the research experts at Statista, as of 2023, there are 5.19 billion internet users and 4.88 social media users worldwide. On average, internet users spend six hours and 40 minutes online every day.
This enormous, highly engaged online audience presents tremendous opportunities for businesses that want to gain visibility for their goods and services. Digital marketing offers near-endless opportunities for connecting with potential customers and is a vital component of nearly every business’s marketing mix.
Types and Strategies of Digital Marketing
Creating a solid digital marketing strategy for your business begins with a better understanding of the types of digital marketing methods that yield the best returns. Below, we introduce you to six types of digital marketing: social media marketing, search engine marketing (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, email marketing, mobile marketing and content marketing.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is one of the most popular forms of digital marketing. In the United States alone, over 308 million people access a social network at least once per month. People of all ages use social media for entertainment, interacting with others, gaining information about specific interests and shopping.
For businesses hoping to gain visibility and sales, social media statistics reveal that incorporating social media into your marketing mix can be a sound strategy. Social media is the go-to source for brand information for 78% of internet users. Nearly half of U.S. consumers report they’ve made a purchase through social media.
Top social platforms include YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat and X (formerly Twitter). New platforms, such as BeReal and Poparazzi, are entering the market regularly.
The social landscape is ever-evolving. For example, Twitter, now X, was once a top platform, but the social channel now appears to be struggling. Twitter has lost approximately 32 million users since Elon Musk purchased the platform in 2022. TikTok didn’t even come on the international scene until 2017, but now has more than 1.7 billion monthly active users. Digital marketers need to remain attentive to social media channel changes.
SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a vital digital marketing strategy for businesses that benefit from driving traffic to their websites. SEO is the process of optimizing your website so search engines, such as Google rank your website high on search engine results pages (SERPs).
SEO is all about driving organic traffic to your site. Unlike paid advertising, with SEO, visitors who find your site come from unpaid searches. Approximately 8.5 billion searches are done on Google daily, which presents a lot of opportunities for businesses that want to promote their product and services. Ranking high on Google is key to driving more traffic to your website.
In a survey conducted by Search Engine Journal, 49% of respondents reported that SEO delivers the highest return on investment (ROI) of any digital marketing channel. You can get started with SEO on your own for free by learning more about Google Ranking Factors or with the help of top SEO tools and software. You can also work with an SEO service or agency to create an SEO plan and manage your SEO for you.
PPC Advertising
PPC advertising is precisely what the name implies: you pay a fee every time someone clicks on your digital ads. The amount you’ll pay is determined by the platform you’re advertising on, the potential traffic for your promoted post and the number of competitors willing to pay for similar ads.
Google Ads is the largest PPC platform in the world. Many businesses who engage in SEO marketing also engage in PPC advertising on Google. Paid ads on Google appear above organic search results and that positioning advantage can drive even more traffic to your website.
Google Ads is not your only avenue for PPC advertising. You can also purchase PPC ads via the Microsoft Search Network on Bing and partner sites as well as on top social channels, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Amazon and TikTok.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is another top digital marketing strategy you’ll likely want to add to your marketing mix. According to Statista, businesses earn an average of at least $32 for every dollar spent on email marketing. For some sectors, such as retail, e-commerce and consumer goods, that number is $45.
To be effective at email marketing, you must develop a strategy for collecting email addresses from clients and prospects. Many businesses collect emails with every customer encounter, sometimes offering a special incentive for joining an email list. Your business website is also a terrific place to offer incentives to visitors so you can grow your email database.
Growing and nurturing your email list is vital to successful email marketing. You also must respect the communication preferences of your list and only send relevant information that your base wants to receive. Also, failing to manage the legal aspects of email marketing, including staying compliant with CAN/SPAM Act mandates, is paramount for email marketing success.
Rather than managing business email manually, most marketers acquire email marketing software. The best email marketing software makes it effortless to keep your email database updated, handling new subscribers and unsubscribes for you.
Your email software should also make it easy to segment your email database based on customer interests, create attractive email designs, manage email scheduling and measure email metrics, including open rates, click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates and bounce rates.
Mobile Marketing
There are more than 310 million smartphone users in the U.S. alone, so it should be no surprise that mobile marketing has become a popular digital marketing strategy for businesses.
Mobile marketing typically is conducted via text, also called short message service (SMS). Text open rates are estimated to be as high as 98%, which is one reason mobile marketing can be so effective. While text messaging is the most common way to market via mobile devices, notifications from mobile apps and social channels can also be received on smartphones. The business applications for mobile marketing are expanding every day.
Content Marketing
Every form of digital marketing relies on compelling content to attract interest and engage prospects and customers. Content marketing is the term used to describe the different types of content you can develop to deploy in your digital marketing campaigns.
Content marketing can take many forms, including blogs, infographics, whitepapers, ebooks, videos, podcasts, quizzes, slide decks and webinars. Unlike advertising, content marketing is not blatantly promotional but instead employs more subtle tactics to inform, educate or influence a desired target market.
You can use content marketing to establish authority on particular subjects or create buzz for your brand. One of the key advantages of content marketing is that you can do it on virtually any budget. A do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to content marketing will cost you mere pennies or, if your budget allows, you can work with copywriters, videographers, designers and other content development experts to create content for your business.
Benefits of Digital Marketing
There are several key advantages of using digital marketing. Here are the top benefits:
- Budget-friendly: You can engage in some forms of digital marketing, such as email and social media, with little to no money.
- Measurable results: Most forms of digital marketing allow you to measure key performance metrics, including total number of impressions, CTRs, cost per conversion, overall conversion rates and more.
- Improved brand awareness: With so many people using digital devices to access social channels, texts and emails, you have near-unlimited potential to generate awareness for your brand and products.
- Strong engagement: Digital marketing lets you create compelling content via text, images and video, leading to strong customer engagement.
- Strong ROI potential: Digital marketing often earns a more substantial ROI than traditional marketing and advertising tactics.
- Global and regional reach: Depending on the digital marketing tactics you choose, you can limit your reach to a local or regional area or use digital channels, such as YouTube and TikTok, where your content can reach a global audience.
- Flexibility: You can change or adopt new digital marketing strategies relatively quickly.
Digital Marketing Best Practices
While digital marketing can be very effective for building business results, you must understand the drivers of success. When you embrace direct marketing best practices, you’re far more likely to achieve the stellar results you want.
Establish Your Digital Marketing Goals
Before engaging in any type of digital marketing, you must establish SMART goals. Specifically, what do you want to accomplish? Examples of top digital marketing goals include:
- Increase website traffic
- Build brand awareness
- Boost brand engagement
- Become known as an expert in your industry
- Generate more qualified leads
- Expand your email prospect database
- Increase sales
Define Your Target Audience
You must have a well-defined audience in mind before selecting digital marketing channels and content marketing strategies. Otherwise, you risk creating messaging or using digital marketing tactics that are off the mark.
Defining your target audience begins with identifying shared attributes, including age, gender, income and education levels, geographic locations, interests and purchasing patterns. Next, you need to identify the specific problems your audience is facing or the pressing desires they have. Once your target audience is defined clearly, you can develop digital marketing messaging that highlights how your business solves their top problems or satisfies their needs.
Determine Your Digital Marketing Budget
Establishing a digital marketing budget will keep you from under or overspending. Setting clear marketing goals and success targets will ensure your digital marketing spend is on target.
You may choose to establish a budget for each digital channel or an overall budget for all efforts. It’s important to have a good handle on digital marketing costs to set a strong budget. Be sure to consider the technologies you’ll need to deploy your digital marketing efforts, including SEO software, email marketing software, website hosting services and social media management tools.
If you plan to do PPC advertising, you must research costs related to the platforms you intend to use. PPC costs are platform-specific and Google Ads and most social media channels offer extensive information about PPC costs on their advertising portals.
Other costs you may need to incorporate into your digital marketing budget include marketing services for copywriting, videography and design. If your budget allows, you can work with a traditional marketing agency, which can cost anywhere from $75 to $300 per hour. If you’re on a shoestring budget, you may want to hire freelancers from popular gig sites, such as Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer.com, which can cost as little as $15 per hour.
Select Your Digital Marketing Methods
Launching a company website is the first step in digital marketing for many businesses. The additional digital marketing methods you choose depend on what you’re selling, where your ideal audience is spending their time and how much money you want to spend on digital marketing. Social media, SEO and email are the most popular digital marketing techniques, but you may find a different mix works best for your target market.
Track and Analyze Results
The beauty of digital marketing is that it’s relatively easy to track results. In setting your goals, you establish what you’re hoping to achieve. In the analysis stage of digital marketing, you measure how well you’re performing against established goals.
Set a cadence for how often you’ll monitor digital marketing performance data: daily (which is only advised in initial stages or when digital marketing spending is high), weekly or monthly. Very few digital efforts achieve stellar results out of the gate, so don’t be disheartened if you aren’t hitting stretch goals on the first iteration of your marketing efforts. Learn from your analyses to refine your digital marketing strategies accordingly going forward.