What Is Digital Marketing?
Most people do a poor job of nailing down the definition of digital marketing. The term is less vague than you might imagine from the outset.
What is digital marketing? Any type of marketing for products or services that use electronic devices.
If you can believe it, digital marketing is nothing new. Digital marketing came on to the scene as electronic devices entered our lives. People often assume that digital marketing is all about content marketing and social media. While these exist as types of digital marketing, they are not all encompassing. Digital marketing happens online and offline.
Why Digital Marketing Matters
The amount of time we spend connected to our electronic devices increases every day. In fact, Americans spend over 11 hours each day using electronic devices. I know what you’re thinking: “but there are only 24 hours in a day.”
This might scare you, but we’re so close to spending every waking hour on electronic devices, digital marketing is more important and impactful than ever before. Without digital marketing efforts, you stand to reach almost no one. As a result, your business will get left in the dust. Don’t get left behind. Consider the following types of digital marketing and think about which ones work best for your industry, your company, and your audience.
Types of Digital Marketing
We’ve arrived! It’s time to dive head first into 9 types of digital marketing. Types of online digital marketing include:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Search Engine Marketing and Pay-Per-Click Advertising
- Social Media Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- Influencer Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Viral Marketing
- Mobile Phone Advertising
Benefits of digital marketing
Digital marketing benefits businesses of all sizes by giving access to the mass market at an affordable price. Unlike TV or print advertising, it allows truly personalised marketing.
The main advantage of digital marketing is that a targeted audience can be reached in a cost-effective and measurable way. Other digital marketing advantages include increasingbrand loyalty and driving online sales.
The benefits of digital marketing include:
- Global reach – a website allows you to find new markets and trade globally for only a small investment.
- Lower cost – a properly planned and effectively targeted digital marketing campaign can reach the right customers at a much lower cost than traditional marketing methods.
- Trackable, measurable results – measuring your online marketing with web analytics and other online metric tools makes it easier to establish how effective your campaign has been. You can obtain detailed information about how customers use your website or respond to your advertising. Web analytics can be set up to show you exactly how much money you make from each digital tactic.
- Personalisation – if your customer database is linked to your website, then whenever someone visits the site, you can greet them with targeted offers. The more they buy from you, the more you can refine your customer profile and market effectively to them.
- Openness – by getting involved with social media and managing it carefully, you can build customer loyalty and create a reputation for being easy to engage with.
- Social currency – digital marketing lets you create engaging campaigns using different types of rich media content. On the internet these campaigns can gain social currency – being passed from user to user and becoming viral.
- Improved conversion rates – if you have a website, then your customers are only ever a few clicks away from completing a purchase. Unlike other media which require people to get up and make a phone call, or go to a shop, digital marketing can be seamless and immediate.
Together, all of these aspects of digital marketing have the potential to add up to more sales.