What is Digital Marketing?

Ever wondered just what is Digital Marketing? Well you’re not the only one! Digital marketing can be a maze.

Are you getting confused and somehow trapped because you feel you should be doing more, with over 4 billion internet users worldwide. You don’t know how to start, which channels you should be on and how to be successfully present. When it comes to choosing which marketing plan to implement, some questions will emerge: Why do you want to use digital marketing? Who are your target audience? What are the types of digital marketing? What are the advantages of each marketing type? What does SEO stand for?

To help you out, we’re looking at the top 10 types of digital marketing. This will certainly help you choose the right strategy to implement and the right channels to achieve your business goals. Just remember that the best marketing does not feel like marketing.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is the process of using social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and Twitter, to increase exposure, create brand awareness, arouse curiosity, generate leads and build meaningful relationships with your audience. Everything you do on social media to increase traffic, actually depends on producing high-quality content.

The time and effort you spend on creating social media strategy can be multiplied when your audience like, comment and share your content. Also, remember that social media is all about interacting and having real conversations with your audience. Even something as simple as asking them questions, can increase your engagement rate. Stories are valuable as well, for taking your followers behind-the scenes and making your social feed a bit personal. People love to feel that they are dealing with humans and not robots.

Simply put, brands that ignore social media will die. As a marketer, you should be careful with what you post on your social channels because you can lose credibility and fans if you post boring content. Take your time to establish your social media strategy by:

• Researching your audience & creating buyer persona

• Determining the compatible social platforms with your business

• Creating unique content

• Setting a schedule for your posts

• Analysing your & results and monitoring social media metrics

Social media metrics are data and analysis related to the success of your social media marketing. This data determine your impact on your customers. As well as testing the success of your marketing strategy.

Here are the most important 10 metrics that give you a 360 view of your social media performance:

• Engagement

  This includes likes, comments, shares and replies on your social media posts. There are also different types of engagements such as ‘saved posts’ on Instagram and ‘pinned posts’ in Pinterest

• Reach

  This is the number of people who viewed your content which is associated with your page

• Followers

  The number of followers that clicked ‘follow’ on your profile and actually views your content in their news feed regularly

• Impressions

  This is the number of your post’s views, whether or not your audience clicks on it

• Video views

  The number of views that a video gets on Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram

• Profile visits

  The number of people who have opened your social media page

• Mentions

  This is the number of times your profile is mentioned by your audience in their posts

• Tags

  This is when your audience adds the name of your company’s profile or your hashtag to another post

• Reposts

  This is when a member of your audience posts a piece of your content on their profile

• Shares

  These are the posts your followers and audience take from your profile and share on their personal profile

Any marketing strategy is accompanied with some disadvantages, despite how well structured and organized it is. Here are four downsides to social media:

• Receiving negative feedbacks

• Getting caught in awkward situations

• Spending much time on your campaigns

• Not seeing immediate results

Don’t worry, you can always adapt to these disadvantages which can negatively impact your business in the future. Never leave people’s complaints and bad experiences unaddressed. Whenever you receive negative feedback on your social media page, respond to it.

Always do your search before posting on social media to prevent your company from embarrassments. You can also hire a social media marketing company to handle your campaigns to save your time. Not to mention that you will partner with people with wide experience and know how to drive success. You must remind yourself that you can’t see true immediate results until your campaign is running for some time so the only adaptation is to be patient.

Content Marketing

Content Marketing is one of the best indirect types of digital marketing. Businesses started to shift their focus from the traditional concept of sales to promoting their products and services through useful and relevant content. As they say, ‘Traditional marketing talks at people but content marketing talks with them’.

Content is incredibly versatile, it encompasses many forms of content; blogs, images, social media posts, e-books, brochures, educational videos, case studies and infographics.

To be effective, you need to come up with a high quality content that meets the needs of your customers, increases trust and builds brand awareness while representing your brand and boosting your reputation among your customers.

Content marketing is foundation of your marketing strategy and also, the backbone of communication that enhances customer experience so leverage that to drive conversions.

Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Marketing, often known as SEO is a common and crucial type of digital marketing. SEO is all about getting your website to appear at the top of results in organic search results. SEO works to increase your visibility when someone searches for your brand, your products and services. It has been proved that more than 90% of online user experience begins with a simple online search through search engines like Google and Bing.

An effective SEO strategy depends on some optimisation techniques such as researching relevant keywords, content creation and technical website optimisation. Each user receives a different results page based on the keywords, location and their browsing history. That’s why you need to identify the keywords that are related to your business properly.

SEO is an on-going strategy that ensures a detailed targeting of customers who may be interested in your services and these customers are, more often than not, already looking to make a purchase. Moreover, when your website appears in the organic search, it comes across as being more authentic and credible in the eyes of your customers.

One drawback is that you’re at the mercy of Google’s changing algorithms and with all the content out there now, it’s difficult to rank highly in the organic results.

Always remember that the best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of Google search results.

Search Engine Marketing

The term SEM was used at first as an umbrella term for the processes of both the organic and paid search results. However, over time, the industry switched to using SEM for using paid activities only.

With SEM, you purchase your advertising space that appears on the user’s search engine results page. This advertisement appears at the top of the page before the organic results, enhancing your visibility and boosting your reach. The paid ad looks the same as the organic search results with one difference which is the “Ad” label. The two most commonly-used SEM services are Bing Ads and Google AdWords.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Pay-per-click advertising, also known as PPC, is a type of search engine marketing but can also extend to affiliate marketing. It is a paid search advertising, usually with no upfront cost. You only pay when someone clicks the link. This type of digital marketing attracts the small businesses that have low budget. On the other hand, it can be quite expensive when you are targeting popular and acknowledged keywords. This type of digital marketing is inconvenient to the customers who are skeptical of paid advertisements and more likely to trust organic search results.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the most profitable types of digital marketing. It is a partnership with other individuals or companies who promotes your products or services on their own websites in return of commissions. The affiliate automatically gets a commission if the customer clicks and buys.

It is a win- win case; your affiliates take on the hard task of marketing and sales with no upfront cost, and you only pay for the actual conversions. In return, your partners get to earn passive income.

he most popular affiliate network is Amazon Associates, but there are also affiliate marketing programs with eBay, Shopify, and other e-commerce sites.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is among the newer types of digital marketing. It involves partnerships with celebrities, influencers or industry experts who have a wide range of followers and audience. When they promote your products or services on social platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram or YouTube, they drive their loyal followers to your channels which lead to increasing your followers, views and website traffic.

You need to focus your research on the influencers and come up with a list of the shortlisted ones. The kind you target depends on their audience and your budget. It doesn’t matter how many followers they have, what matters is, who their followers are, how engaged they are and if they are the right match for your brand. Always make sure to do your research on an influencer before you decide to do business with them. You might want to verify their Google analytics and make sure their following proves legitimate and not full of fake accounts.

This cooperation may involve offering giveaways, unique discount codes, prizes and competitions for the influencer’s audience, to arouse curiosity and build some buzz around your business.

Video Marketing

Video is one of the biggest and most powerful forms of communication that needs to be integrated into every aspect of your marketing effort. Video marketing can be used for everything from building a rapport with your customers, boosting conversions, to promoting your brand and services.

It has been proven that social videos generate 1200% more shares than text and images combined. Video marketing delivers messages adequately and in a shorter amount of time while forming an emotional appeal to the centre of a person’s mind through music. The use of eye catching visual media will help a buyer more confident in their purchase. A recent study has found that 98% of users say they’ve watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service and 57% of online customers are more willing to buy a product, after watching an explainer video of that product.

Brands grow revenue 49% faster yearly by adding video to their marketing strategy. That’s why you need to develop your video marketing strategy to get closer to your audience and give them a real glimpse of your business. You will need to:

• Allocate resources

  You will need to determine your budget and provide decent equipments and good editing program. As well as, scheduling time to create the video. You actually don’t need a large budget to create high quality video content

• Tell your story

  You need to gather information and conduct brainstorming sessions with your colleagues. You have to know what story you will tell and how you will do this. Take care that 85% of videos are watched without sound; you need to add visuals and captions

• Engage

  Your content is not enough; you need to engage your audience and make your story interesting. Asking questions or teasing the content in a concise caption will encourage more views

• Keep it short

  Videos up to 2 minutes get the most engagement

• Record and publish

  Here is the fun part; recording. Thanks to the advanced technology, you can create engaging and high quality videos with few tools and tricks. Then, publish your video, embed it in your website and upload it on all your social media channels

• Analyse

  The last step is to analyse your results and estimate your efforts to determine which videos do the best

All the major channels such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn are pushing video now, so you can guarantee that your video will get major engagements on these platforms. Just study your audience, conduct a buyer persona and consider the different types of video content; Bio, Meet the team, Behind the scenes, Company vlogs, Interviews, Featured product videos, Explainer, Product demonstration, Announcements, Tips/How to, Customer’s journey, Testimonials, FAQs, Events and Live videos.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing may seem old school but it has proven its efficiency in building a rapport with the targeted audience. In addition, it increases trust and brand loyalty. Email marketing fosters a relationship unlike any of the other types of digital marketing. This tactic is often used by e-commerce sites and retail brands.

You need to offer them content that interests them; a step-by-step guide, an eBook, free design templates or exciting news, so they stick around and don’t unsubscribe.  You can also send out emails whenever you’re launching a new product, revamping your website, opening a new store, or hosting an event. Confirmation emails, thank-you notes, and notifications are also considered email marketing.

However, it can be tricky and not worth it because a lot of emails are left unopened, so you’ll need to come up with strong subject headings to grab their attention away from their scattered inboxes. If you don’t create an e-mail that is eye catching, then you risk losing your opportunity.

Mobile Phone Marketing

Did you know that mobile platforms, such as smart phones and tablets, host up to 60% of digital media time for the users in the U.S?

Mobile Marketing is one of the latest types of digital marketing, aimed at reaching the target audience on their mobile devices, smart phones and tablets, via SMS, emails, Multimedia messages, websites and mobile applications.

77% of internet searches are made on mobiles even if there is a desktop available. That is why you have to ensure that your website is user-friendly for mobile users as for those on laptops and computers. This means keeping the content short, concise and simple, using text, graphics and short videos and using captions. You also need to make sure that the content fits on the screen without zooming and that the content loads quickly. It has been proven that 64% of mobile users abandon websites and pages if they don’t load within 10 seconds. Keep in mind that mobile users display your content on a small screen; you don’t have the luxury of wide screens and long headings. Make your headline short, persuasive and catchy. As John Caples wrote ‘If the headline is poor, the copy will not be read and copy that is not read, does not sell goods’.

Mobile technology is used prolifically and is not fading anytime soon. Take advantage of this by creating mobile marketing campaigns, ensuring a remarkable user experience. If you don’t have a mobile marketing strategy yet, then it is time to get going.

Optimising your marketing strategy will give your business an edge over your competition. There is a variety of marketing strategies to try. Choose and combine between two or more according to your industry, budget and audience.

• App-based marketing

  This is mobile advertising including mobile applications. Services like this help marketers to create advertisements that appear within third party mobile apps such as Facebook which allow promoted post ads

• In-game mobile marketing

  In game mobile marketing, mobile ads appear within mobile games such as banner pop-ups, image ads or videos ads

• QR codes

  QR codes which are scanned by mobile users to take them to a certain webpage that the QR code is attached to

• Mobile search ads

  These are basic Google search ads built for mobile phones, often featuring extra add-ons like click-to-call, send message or maps

• Mobile image ads

  Image-based ads built for mobile phones

• SMS marketing

  SMS marketing includes collecting users’ mobile phones and sending offers, coupons or company’s news. SMS marketing is the oldest mobile marketing channel. However, it is far from outdated. Regardless of what other mobile marketing channels you are using, you can use SMS to notify your customers about the other channels by embedding links to your mobile application, website or social media pages in your texts. Just try not to intrude or text frequently, so your customers won’t see your texts as a burden

One defect is that many people don’t like to be interrupted by brands and marketing messages when they are in the middle of watching a video or a movie, while playing a game or when communicating with their friends and family.

Discover how we can help with your What is Digital Marketing? needs