What is Digital Marketing?

What is digital marketing, and why does it matter? That’s precisely what I plan to discuss today. I’ll cover everything you need to know to get started with digital marketing, but first, let’s discuss why it’s so essential to your business.

Today’s fast-paced digital marketing landscape is growing and evolving rapidly. This sector is projected to reach a whopping $786 billion by 2026. As such, traditional marketing strategies no longer hold the same weight they once did. More people than ever are using the internet, providing businesses with immense opportunities to connect with their audience.

Digital marketing has become more than just a trend; it’s now a requirement for businesses of all sizes to thrive in the competitive online market.

Imagine reaching a global audience with a single campaign, engaging with potential customers in real time, and driving conversions like never before. With a robust digital marketing strategy, you can! 

Digital Marketing: Key Points

• Digital marketing uses digital channels to promote a product or service.
• Using digital marketing techniques and strategies helps businesses reach their target audience, engage with them, and ultimately convert them into customers.
• Examples of digital marketing include SEO, PPC, social media marketing, content marketing, and leveraging traditional offline media for advertising.
• Offline digital marketing includes out-of-home advertising, TV marketing, and radio marketing.
• Combining online and offline digital marketing is vital to any well-rounded strategy.
• Global digital advertising spending is on course to reach $835 billion by 2026.

What Is Digital Marketing?

You hear the phrase often these days, but what is digital marketing?

Simply put, it’s a method for promoting your business online using digital channels. It might be SEO, social media, email marketing, setting up a landing page or website, using mobile apps, or creating online ads to reach customers. This umbrella term also includes marketing using digital devices such as TV or radio.

Effective digital marketing gets your brand in front of an online audience and enhances visibility to increase engagement, click-throughs, and conversions.

Examples of online digital marketing include:

• Search engine optimization (SEO): optimizing a website to improve its visibility and ranking on search engines like Google.
• Pay-per-click advertising (PPC): paying for advertisements to appear on search engine results pages or social media platforms.
• Social media marketing: creating and sharing content on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to increase brand awareness and engagement.
• Content marketing: creating and sharing valuable content, such as blog posts, e-books, or videos, thus attracting and retaining a specific audience.
• Leveraging traditional offline media for advertising: using radio and TV marketing, billboard advertising, print, and in-person events.

Analysts predict global digital advertising spending will reach $835 billion by 2026, with clicks and display ads among the most dominant forms.

Then there’s offline digital marketing like:

• Out-of-home advertising: This involves using billboards, transit ads, or other types of visual media to promote your brand or product. This can be a great way to reach a broad audience and create a strong visual impression.
• TV marketing: where you promote your products through adverts, infomercials, or even demonstrations.
• Radio marketing: Trailers and commercials promoting your product to listeners.

Another report by Expert Market Research shows the US digital marketing sector reached $363 billion in 2023.

You can do digital marketing online and offline, and using a combination is vital to any well-rounded strategy. These techniques and strategies help companies to effectively reach their desired audience, actively engage with them, and successfully convert them into loyal customers.

Why Digital Marketing Matters

My clients spent hundreds of millions of dollars on billboard advertising not long ago, but times have changed.

Today, most companies have moved to online (digital) marketing. That’s because Google and Facebook generate more revenue than traditional media companies. Then, there’s the use of mobile devices.

You can go just about anywhere these days. Whether you are at the grocery store, a restaurant, or even a movie theater, they have one thing in common: you’ll see plenty of people with their eyes practically glued to their phones.

Phone advertisements are like mini billboards, broadcasting adverts whenever we look something up.

Mobile usage is massive, and the figures are only heading upward.

There are 5.44 billion mobile phone users worldwide, 5.16 billion internet users, and 4.76 billion social media users.

Moreover, internet-connected devices continue to rise while print advertising declines.

The stats say it all.

Digital marketing is essential to get your product or services in front of customers; your customers are online, and you must be there, too.

And don’t go thinking digital marketing is just for the big corps.

Even the smallest local stores can benefit from some form of online advertising. According to a survey by Digital.com, 43 percent of people conduct a local search on their smartphone before visiting a physical store.

All of this, and I haven’t even gotten to some of the best things about digital marketing. It:

• Provides access to more data: You get access to vital analytics about your customers, how they navigate the buying cycle, and what they want. You can use this data to analyze what works and doesn’t and tailor your strategy accordingly.
• Helps you reach a wider audience: Digital marketing allows you to reach a wider audience than traditional marketing methods. For example, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have billions of active users, and advertising can help you target demographics. By 2027, social network users will reach almost six billion. So, it’s a platform you can’t ignore.
• Is cost-effective: Digital marketing is more affordable than traditional marketing methods like TV or print advertising. With digital marketing, you can create highly targeted campaigns with a better return on investment (ROI) for your business and reach your goals.
• Provides greater engagement: You can use email, social media, and content marketing tactics to keep your audience engaged and interested in your products and services. For instance, creating a blog with valuable content on your website can attract visitors and make them more likely to buy. According to HubSpot, 56 percent of people who read a blog post go on to purchase.
• Offers measurable results: You can use tools like Ubersuggest and Google Analytics to analyze web traffic, conversion rates, and other metrics to see your campaigns’ performance.
• Helps your business stay competitive: Your competitors are likely using digital marketing to reach their target audience, so you don’t want to fall behind. For instance, email marketing offers the highest ROI compared with other digital marketing strategies.

Using digital marketing tactics, you can improve your visibility, engage with your target audience, and drive revenue for your business.

Online Digital Marketing Overview

The two main pillars of digital marketing are online and offline. I’ll discuss both, with the main focus being online marketing. Let’s start with the main categories of online marketing before breaking each section down:

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
2. Search engine marketing (SEM)
3. Content marketing
4. Social Media Marketing (SMM)
5. Affiliate marketing
6. Email marketing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization means optimizing your website and content to perform better in the search engines. A well-structured SEO strategy involves:

• Keyword research
• Creating content quality
• Enhancing user experience through increasing page speed
• Monitoring analytics to see what’s working

It boosts your visibility and page rank, getting more visitors to your pages, which (hopefully) translates into more conversions. 

SEO is an organic approach that attracts visitors actively looking for your product/service, but it takes time to work. It’s likely to be a few months before you see results, but patience and consistency can yield fantastic results.

Here’s a handful of examples of what some solid SEO strategy can achieve:

• CNN grew its search audience by 91 percent.
• DesktopReady increased users by 409 percent.
• Verint increased clicks from organic searches by 32 percent year-on-year.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

The digital advertising industry is expected to reach almost 272 billion by the end of 2023, just in the U.S. Search engine marketing refers to promoting a website through paid advertising. The most popular form of SEM is pay-per-click advertising, like the types of ads you see on Google, Facebook, and other social media sites.

With SEM, marketers select their target keywords and then place a bid on them. The PPC ads of the highest bidder appear in the search results when a searcher enters a matching keyword. Advertisers only pay when someone clicks.

The main advantage of search engine marketing is that you’ll get faster results from your advertising than SEO. However, it can be costly, especially if you don’t have a well-thought-out strategy behind it.

Skyscanner is one brand using PPC effectively. Its ads take people directly to its landing page, which they’ve designed to match search intent.

Skyscanner also works with its media agency partner and internal data science team to monitor the success of campaigns and ensure they’re on track.

Another brand utilizing PPC well is ProteinWorks, which ranks top in paid search results on Google:

Content Marketing

Seth Godin once said, “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but the stories you tell.” 

That’s content marketing in a nutshell.

By regularly creating high-quality, valuable content, you can build trust, establish authority, and increase engagement. Your content can come in many forms, like:

• blog posts
• long-form articles
• video and email marketing
• infographics

Rather than taking the direct sales approach, content marketing educates, entertains, or addresses consumers’ pain points. Over time, this develops a connection between a brand and its audience, making them more likely to become buyers.

Content marketing builds trust, increases engagement, and helps SEO, thanks to the regular flow of fresh content. In a recent survey by the Content Marketing Institute, 75 percent of respondents said content marketing was pivotal to building brand trust and awareness. 

On the downside, content marketing is time-consuming and a long-term strategy.

HubSpot is an excellent example of content marketing. It uses a blend of blogs, newsletters, videos, and podcasts to connect with its audience. It also provides free templates, e-books, workbooks, and free courses designed to get people coming back for more.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

This digital marketing strategy uses social media platforms to reach your target audience, create brand awareness, and promote products or services. Regularly publishing content can drive website traffic, build customer relationships, and enhance sales.

Social media marketing starts with selecting the right platform for your audience, creating content that resonates with them, and engaging with prospects by responding to comments and sharing helpful content.

You can also use paid advertising on social media to better target users depending on their demographics, interests, and behaviors.

The main advantage of social media marketing is the vast audience base, which helps to put your brand in front of a global audience. Also, you can use the data you collect for more precise, personalized targeting.

However, you may find it hard to stand out on the platform because of the sheer amount of content on there, and you’re dependent on a third-party platform and any changes in its algorithms or policies.

Wendy’s is one brand that stands out on social media. The fast food chain isn’t scared to poke fun at its competitors, leading to some memorable posts on X (formerly Twitter). 

Affiliate Marketing

If you want to reach a wider audience, consider affiliate marketing. 

When you use this digital marketing tactic, you allow others to promote your products via a unique tracking link in return for a commission when they make a sale.

Affiliate marketers promote their links via mailing lists, website content, YouTube, and any other online marketing platforms they have. When a buyer clicks on an affiliate link and completes a purchase, the marketer earns some money.

Affiliate marketing gives your products/services a much wider reach and is cost-effective. On the negative side, affiliate schemes are challenging to manage, especially if you have large numbers of affiliates and there’s a fraud risk.

One of the best examples of affiliate marketing is Shopify. It’s managed to attract many affiliates, and with commissions paying up to $2,000 a time, it’s easy to see why.

Email Marketing

This is one of the most popular and effective forms of digital marketing.

It works by encouraging users to sign up for mailing lists through lead magnets, websites, or opt-in forms. Buyers might also sign up for a newsletter when buying a product or service.

When a business has built up a large list of email addresses, it can start sending targeted emails and segmenting (sending specific emails to smaller groups) for better results.

Email marketing allows better targeting and personalization and gives you measurable metrics to work with.

The biggest downside of email marketing is legal compliance and ensuring that your use of email complies with the CAN-SPAM Act and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Starbucks is just one company embracing email marketing. It uses animation for additional engagement and exclusivity to make its membership program more appealing.

Offline Digital Marketing Overview

As the name suggests, offline digital marketing is performed away from the internet. It still uses digital devices like cell phones, radio, and TV.

Modern marketers can leverage offline digital marketing in tandem with their online channels. Some of the most common strategies include SMS marketing and QR codes.

SMS Marketing

Just about everyone has a cell phone these days, which explains why SMS marketing is so popular.

Did you know 90 percent of people prefer to receive texts from businesses instead of phone calls? Why? Because it’s convenient and respectful of your customers’ time. It also means you can leverage many opportunities for marketing and promotion offers.

With a 98 percent open rate, a text message is almost a guaranteed read. Consumers are keen to read them, too, with 90 percent opening texts within three minutes.

While you should get permission first, for example, by having your customers text a specific word to a phone number, several providers offer text marketing at scale.

There are several ways to leverage text message marketing:

• Special deals, coupons, and discounts are great for restaurants to get additional customers and turn walk-ins into regulars. For example, clothing brand Monsoon embraced the power of SMS marketing and boosted all online sales by 10 percent by offering discounts: