In these days of social media dominance, many people will easily interchange the terms digital marketing with social media marketing. But digital marketing is much more than marketing efforts on social media, or email. Digital marketing is a term that has been around since the 2000s and is used to describe various marketing efforts. So what exactly is digital marketing?
In the simplest description, digital marketing is any form of marketing products/services which is done electronically. But it has come to be more associated with marketing efforts on the internet since the World Wide Web unleashed relied on digital technology.
Today, digital marketing can be considered as an umbrella term under which different marketing methods that are related to the internet are placed. These efforts utilize various assets including:
• Websites – For many businesses, this is the main contact point with customers online
• Social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest etc.
• Blog posts
• Infographics
• Newsletters
• Whitepapers
• Online brochures
• Earned online coverage, for example, social media mentions and reviews
Digital marketing relies on the following broad categories:
Social media marketing
With a collective base of over 4 billion users, social media platforms are most preferred by marketers these days. Apart from the huge audiences available on these platforms, there are other advantages,
• Low cost – A business gets wide exposure for no cost if there is no paid advertising involved. Major platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are free to use.
• Better targeting – Social media channels carry lots of data on their users which businesses can use to target by demographics, age, sex, occupation, interests and so on.
• Higher engagement – Unlike TV ads, for example, it is possible for the audience to interact with the business instantly using comments and reactions
Paid advertising
This is where a business for its ads to be displayed, and incurs a cost whenever a prospect clicks on the advert. This can be a simple text ads, picture and video ads. Search engines like Google and other publishing networks also offer detailed targeting options for PPC.
Content marketing
In this type of digital marketing, the business creates compelling content that is informative, engaging and able to pull traffic, create brand awareness and generate leads. This can be done using the business’ blog, guest blogs, reviews and industry forums.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is where a business makes efforts to have its website and web pages more visible to search engines. Good SEO is very effective because many people looking for a product online will start with a search. SEO involves different tactics that make a website more ‘attractive’ to website crawlers. Different search engines rank use different metrics to rank websites but common ranking metrics include:
• Keywords/phrases – These are words or phrases relevant to what the search engine users input in the search bar, for example, ‘most nutritious dog food’ will attract a person searching for dog food.
• Mobile friendly user interface – Mobile internet traffic has overtaken desktop traffic, so search engines are preferring to show mobile sites
• Informative content – search engines will rank longer more informative content that includes text, video, and infographics
• Social media mentions – A business that is mentioned more on social media ranks higher
• Backlinks – Sites that refer back to a website give it authority. This is especially if the links are from highly ranked sites
• Navigation – Good linking within the pages of a site makes it easier for search engines to crawl content
Google has over 100 ranking metrics. While a business cannot work through them all, working on the main ones will land the site on Google’s first search results page and pull more traffic.
Email marketing
This is probably the oldest online digital marketing tactic since email has been around since the 1990s. Email marketing involves sending content that is designed to prompt an action from the recipient. Email marketing uses newsletters, whitepapers, and brochures, and so on to reach the recipient. This is one of the most popular marketing tactics for its low cost and ability to reach a large number of people.
Affiliate marketing
In this arrangement, a business outsources the marketing of its products/services to another business/person for a commission. This is a popular tactic with health, beauty and wellness products.
Darryl Holland -www.digitalmarketingbiz.net