Digital Marketing
What Is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing encompasses all marketing efforts that use an electronic device or the internet. Businesses leverage digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and their websites to connect with current and prospective customers.
How Do You Define Digital Marketing?
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. From the website itself to a business’s online branding assets are digital advertising, email marketing, online brochures, and beyond there’s a spectrum of tactics that fall under the umbrella of digital marketing. The term digital marketing doesn’t differentiate between push and pull marketing tactics (or what we might now refer to as ‘inbound’ and ‘outbound’ methods). Both can still fall under the umbrella of digital marketing.
Digital outbound tactics aim to put a marketing message directly 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.
To give you a thorough understanding of what the term „Digital marketing“ includes, here are the 10 most important types of digital marketing.
1.Social Media Marketing
Nowadays everyone has a strong focus on social media marketing. Social Media certainly has a rightfully earned place in this list. Social Media Marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. That means all sharing of information and engagement with followers, fans, partners or competitors on social media platforms with the goal of promoting your products is part of digital marketing. In essence, social media marketing is the targeted use of social media conversations to increase the awareness for a brand or product.
But be careful, to be successful with social media marketing you have to fully understand the one social network you want to use for your marketing. Each social network has unique features, communication best practices, and content they like. Some social networks will work great for your situation, product, and content – others won’t.
2.Content Marketing
Content marketing is the art of using storytelling and valuable information to increase brand awareness with the goal of getting your target audience to take a profitable action. Content marketing aims at building relationships with potential customers and becoming a partner rather than an advertiser.
Content Marketing strongly relies on content distribution. Content marketing can rarely be seen totally separated from other types of digital marketing that can fill the content distribution part. There is an in-depth relationship between content marketing and SEO.
3.Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the process of optimizing content or websites so that they show up in search results in search engines like Google. Search engines decide which websites to show for a search term based on keywords mentioned on the website and links that refer to this website. That means SEO has a lot to do with using the right keywords or key phrases in the copy of a website or within the content you want to show in search and getting links to this website or content. The most obvious is that social media and SEO are perfect distribution channels for content.
There are multiple strategies for optimizing your website(s) for search engines – some of them are accepted by Google and others are regarded rather shady and may result in Google penalizing your website. There is a strong connection between content, social media marketing, and SEO. The most obvious is that social media and SEO are perfect distribution channels for content.
4.Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
While SEO describes the process of getting unpaid traffic from search engines – SEM refers to the paid traffic from search engines. The most common form of search engine marketing is probably Google Adwords for the simple reason that Google is by far the most used search engine.
In SEM the marketer usually pays the search engine a predefined amount of money for showing a marketing message at various places within the search results for specified keywords or phrases. SEM is a form of Pay-Per-Click advertising.
5. Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
Similar to SEM other forms of PPC advertising also describe marketing methods where the marketer pays for each click on a link to a website. Apart from search engines, almost all social networks offer the opportunity for Pay Per Click advertising. These ads then appear in the feed of the targeted social media users. Note that many of these activities cannot be clearly separated. The lines between the various types of digital (online) marketing are often blurred.
6. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based type of digital marketing. In contrast to PPC advertising with affiliate marketing, the advertiser does not pay for traffic but rather for conversions. The rates are usually higher but the risk on the side of the advertiser is limited since he only pays for conversions. Affiliate marketing is popular with bloggers and high-traffic website owners who make money from selling other people’s products to their audience.
7. Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the best converting marketing channels. By sending regular updates to your email subscribers you can build and nurture a relationship. By providing value with your email updates you can build trust – eventually, you will be able to turn a percentage of your audience into customers. Email marketing is far more than buying an email list and bombarding them with promotional messages or a one-time advertising spot in someone else’s email newsletter. The best results from email marketing will always be achieved with a list of subscribers you personally earned and nurtured. Then your email list can easily turn into your best digital marketing asset.
Many articles on digital marketing stop with the above 7 types of Online digital marketing. But then we could simply name it online marketing. For your digital marketing strategy you should also know about the most important offline digital marketing types.
8. Radio advertising
Just like advertisers pay for the commercials you see on television during your favorite show, some advertisers also choose to focus their marketing dollars on radio advertising. That is, buying commercials, frequently called spots in the radio industry, to promote their products or services. Advertisers pay commercial radio stations for airtime and, in exchange, the radio station broadcasts the advertiser’s commercial to its listening audience.
In radio advertising, there are numerous types of commercials that an advertiser might employ, similar to how brands might pursue different print advertising options (newspaper vs. magazine, for example) or electronic advertising options (email vs. social media).
9. Television advertising
Television advertising is largely used to influence viewers’ purchase decisions. Ads are divided between local and national time slots, and many of both of those types of ads are specific to selling products and services. Local television ads offer the region’s service-based businesses and retail outlets the opportunity to reach their area’s demographic with important announcements and offers. National time slots are purchased for specific times and shows in which the product or service is most likely to reach the target demographic. A company can raise brand awareness and drive consumers to the point of purchase through well-placed television ads. They are particularly useful if you need to demonstrate how your product or service works.
10. Mobile Phone Advertising
Of course, many of the above types of digital marketing can take place on your mobile phone. You are probably using Facebook, Instagram, and Google on your mobile phone after all. But there are some other types of marketing on your mobile phone that so far would not fit into any of the mentioned categories.
SMS advertising has been around for some time now. And with technology like Bluetooth still, on the rise, the marketing and advertising options for mobile especially in local marketing have by far not yet been fully leveraged.
Digital marketing methods are becoming more common in our advancing technology. In fact, digital marketing now extends to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, If you’re focusing on inbound techniques like SEO, social media, and content creation for a preexisting website, With inbound marketing, our main focus is on creating high-quality content. we help you build a digital marketing that’s truly effective, For more information regarding our services and solutions Contact Us or drop us a line at info@spgon.com