Digital marketing is an effective way to generate meaningful results for businesses. We are in the digital age and millions of people spend a large portion of their time browsing digital platforms. Marketers aware of this fact are therefore leveraging the popularity of these platforms to promote their goods and services.

No matter what type of business you have, you can still reap immense benefits from digital marketing. With the help of digital marketing, you can increase your traffic, attract more customers, increase your brand awareness and engage your audience.

Depending on the type of audience and the type of content, you need to choose different types of digital marketing. But in order to include digital marketing in your digital marketing strategy, you need to make sure you know all these different types so you can choose the ones that you think are best suited to your goals.

In this article, we’ll go over what digital marketing is, the most common types of digital marketing, their benefits and objectives, and how you can use it to achieve your business goals.

What is Digital Marketing?

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Digital marketing is a term defined to achieve your business objectives and goals using online channels. Digital marketing encompasses all forms of marketing activities conducted on digital channels, including computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices.

In traditional marketing, businesses used to reach out to their target customers and promote themselves using media like television, radio, and print (newspaper and magazine, banner, brochures, flyers, billboards) to get their message across.

But the advancement and evolution of technology, has given birth to digital marketing, in which marketers use social media, email newsletters, website articles, infographics, videos, webinars, podcasts, white papers and e-books, and other digital tools to push and pull the consumer. In other words, today it’s all about reaching your target market online.

This includes online marketing activities but, strictly speaking, it also includes some traditional marketing activities. Digital marketing is most often used to refer to online marketing efforts such as email marketing, content marketing, blog posts, search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing, mobile marketing as well as SMS, television, and even radio.

What Are the Advantages of Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing channels have several advantages over traditional marketing. Here are the reasons why:

Low cost:

Digital marketing is much more affordable and flexible. With the help of digital marketing, you can reach thousands of customers at a very low cost by sending e-mails or through social media.

Brand development:

Digital marketing allows businesses to build their brand and company reputation by creating a well-developed website, a blog with useful and quality articles, a highly interactive social media channel, and more.

Global:

Digital marketing allows businesses and advertising campaigns to be visible in any part of the world and go global with the immense exposure available.

Offers a wide range of opportunities:

Digital marketing allows you to make the most of different platforms and combine different types of digital marketing.  For example, you can combine your blog posts with social media marketing and email marketing through your website.

Easy to share:

Most digital marketing channels have features to share campaigns and articles with multiple followers to dramatically improve sales results.

Easy to measure:

Many digital tools allow you to measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.  These tools give you the ability to measure and track the performance of your emails, search engine ads, the number of people who saw your ads and their conversion rate, etc.

Precise targeting:

Armed with information about your users’ preferences through their impressions, comments, conversions, clicks, etc. digital marketing allows you to run targeted campaigns and send ads to customers based on their preferences or initial action.

It also allows you to choose to send your ad campaigns based on the gender, age range, and even region of your customers. This increases the likelihood of sales and further reduces marketing costs.

Increased engagement:

Digital marketing allows you to inform your customers through blog posts, newsletters, shows, promotions and regular useful special offers and be available to answer their questions which leads to increased customer engagement.

Better conversion

Digital marketing allows you to target customers at each stage of the tunnels, attract people who are already at the beginning of the customer journey, and follow them through their buying journey and thus improve conversion rates and attract more buyers.

Huge ROI:

Digital marketing offers a huge return on investment. 

What Are the Objectives of Digital Marketing?

Regardless of the size of your business, digital marketing is the most effective way to grow and achieve your goals.  You need to determine your online goals and then through a clear digital marketing strategy guide your online promotional activities. The content and ads you build must always match your marketing objectives.  

The main objectives of digital marketing are the following:

• Market your product or service
• Provide valuable information
• Increase productivity
• Increase website traffic
• build brand awareness
• Build trust
• Customer feedback
• engage potential users
• Identify loyal customers
• Develop an online community
• Increase revenue
• Reduce costs
• Improve efficiency
• High return on investment

12 Types of Digital Marketing

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing content or websites to appear in the search results of search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.  SEO helps marketers optimize their online presence to attract high-quality traffic to the website with high conversion potential.

Among the different types of digital marketing, SEO is the one that cannot be ignored. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a very popular practice because it is an effective form of inbound marketing.

This means that instead of reaching out to customers, marketers focus on bringing in customers who are already looking for purchasing decisions via search engines.

When you start producing content in your business, your audience should be able to find it. In this sense, SEO can be considered a perfect distribution channel for content. This way, your website will be found by people who are actively looking for what you offer.

But is the search engines that decide which websites to display for a search term based on the keywords listed on the website and the links to that site.

The challenge of effective search engine optimization (SEO) is therefore to understand how search engines work and to respect their rules.

Creating content with search engines in mind is of great importance. To apply SEO, you need to know what keywords the audience you want to reach is looking for. Then, you must develop your content around these terms.

This means that SEO has a lot to do with using the right keywords that you want to show up in organic search and get links to your website or content.

But in addition to keyword research, an effective SEO strategy consists of several other techniques, such as content creation, backlink building, technical website optimization, etc. There is even a specific subset called local SEO, which focuses on marketing small businesses to their local communities.

There are two distinct types of search engine optimization (SEO):

• On-page optimization

This is the technical optimization of the different elements of your website. It consists of making sure that search engines can easily read, understand, browse and navigate the pages of your site to index them properly.

• Off-page optimization

 These are the techniques used to influence the position of the website in organic search results that cannot be handled by the on-page optimization of your site. It is a long-term process to build website authority, determined by what other websites say about you.

The main drawback is that SEO can be quite complicated and time-consuming, especially since the algorithms used by a search engine are constantly changing.

Read more:

SEO for Beginners How to Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO

20 most important SEO KPIs to track for successful optimization

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4 Best Keyword Research Tips to Improve Your Ranking

2. Content Marketing

Content marketing is a type of digital marketing that involves creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to increase brand awareness in order to engage your target audience to take a profitable action. 

The whole point of content marketing is to provide information through useful and quality content to consumers who are hungry for information on how to solve their problems or satisfy their desires and gain their trust.

This means that content marketing is often used in inbound marketing strategies through a content strategy that focuses on providing value to the target audience with content. This way, your companies will take the position of authority in the market and be the customer’s choice when they have to make a decision.

Content marketing encompasses many forms of content and is realized on different channels.  Each channel may require a different format. Your objectives can also be achieved through different types of content. Blogs, videos, social media posts, e-books, brochures, infographics, case studies, and templates are all examples of popular content types on the web. There are even specific formats for mobile devices, such as apps and push notifications.

Content marketing can be used for a variety of purposes, but the most common is to convert visitors into leads. By considering the channel, format, and objective, you can choose the best content to get your buyer persona to do what you want them to do with your marketing campaign.

To convert visitors into leads through content marketing you need to guide them through a funnel, which also influences the type of content to use. At the top of the funnel, for example, your content should be more general, like comprehensive guides and at the bottom, more specific content is needed, like testimonials and demonstrations.

Another benefit of content marketing is that it integrates seamlessly with any digital marketing effort. Content marketing is mostly used with other types of digital marketing that can fill the content distribution part. For example, you can use your content in combination with other strategies, like email marketing.

Read more:

Content marketing and inbound marketing, two complementary Strategies

10 Steps to Planning a Strong Content Marketing Strategy

12 Best Tips for Creating SEO-friendly Content

B2B Content Marketing 8Great Ways to Grow Your Business

18 Main Content KPIs You Need to Track to Measure Success

75 Best Content Marketing Tools to Strengthen Your Online Business

3. Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social media marketing (SMM) as the name suggests, is using social media to promote a product or service. This means that any information sharing and engagement with followers, fans, partners on social media platforms for the purpose of promoting your products is part of digital marketing.

Today, almost every digital marketing strategy uses social marketing in some way. Social media marketing can also be used to increase brand or product awareness.

Social media marketing is one of the few channels that offer two-way communication between your brand and your customers. Users can like your posts, leave a comment and engage with your content. Some platforms even allow users to message your business directly for inquiries or purchases, making it a great way to generate more leads.

You can use your website to promote your content on social media platforms to market your business.  By adding social media sharing buttons on your website you can allow people to share your content with their friends and family.

The key to a successful social media marketing campaign is first and foremost creating shareable content. But to be successful with social media marketing, you also need to fully understand the social network you want to use for your marketing.

Each social network has its own characteristics, best communication practices, and content. Some social networks will be a perfect fit for your situation, your product, and your content, others will not.

Your social media strategy doesn’t need to use every social channel available. By focusing on one or two social networks and adding marketing automation to your business, you will make it much more effective.

4. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is generally a type of performance-based digital marketing because, unlike PPC advertising, with affiliate marketing, the advertiser does not pay for traffic but rather for conversions.

Affiliate marketing consists of three main players:

Affiliate Network

Affiliate Network is a technology center and affiliate campaign management company where merchant-generated affiliate programs are managed and executed. The most popular affiliate network is Amazon Associates, but there are also affiliate marketing programs with eBay, Shopify, and other e-commerce sites.

 You can also bypass the middleman and create your own affiliate program.

The merchant

The merchant is an e-commerce store that enters the affiliate networks to set up an affiliate program, increase its profits and develop its product among Internet users at a relatively low cost.

The best advantage of affiliate marketing is that the merchant does not need to have a large audience, as it will reach an audience built by content producers.

In addition, the risk on the advertiser’s side is limited since they only pay for conversions. If the audience of content producers clicks to buy, they pay them for each sale.

The two most common ways to do this are:

• Offer a one-time discount code.
• Create a link to the website from the affiliate’s content.

Each time a user enters the discount code or clicks on the link, the merchant pays their affiliate partner for the traffic or sale from the site.

 The affiliate

An affiliate is a person who can sign up for a particular affiliate program and promote the product in the online environment. Affiliate marketing is popular with bloggers, digital influencers, and high-traffic website owners who make money by creating content to sell other people’s products to their audience.

In affiliate marketing, content producers get paid for every conversion they get for a product or service. The role of affiliates is to create relevant content and to mention or recommend the merchant’s service/product with a link. Just like in social media marketing, you need to choose producers that match your services and products.

Read more:

How to Get Started in Affiliate Marketing Step by Step

How to Do Affiliate Marketing With Blogs

5. Email Marketing

Email marketing remains one of the most popular and effective types of digital marketing. It is also one of the most profitable marketing channels. If you use this type of digital marketing strategy, it can be very powerful and generate better returns on investment and higher levels of engagement.

Email marketing is a great way to promote your products and services, build relationships, retain customers, and get valuable feedback from your customers.  The trick is to build an email list, create engaging email marketing content targeted to your audience or consumers, write enticing subject lines, and determine the best time to do an email blast.

By sending regular, value-added updates to your subscribers, you can build and maintain a relationship, build trust and ultimately turn a percentage of your audience into customers. Promoting products and services is also an effective strategy, as long as you respect the audience’s privacy and do not send spam.

The best results from e-mail marketing will always be achieved with a list of subscribers that you have personally earned and maintained. So buying an e-mail list and bombarding it with promotional messages or a one-time advertisement in someone else’s newsletter is not a good way to practice this type of digital marketing.

Your email list can then easily become your best digital marketing asset for generating sales. The advantage of email marketing over some other digital marketing channels is that you own your list.

While your social media audience can disappear with the suspension or the closure of your account, your email subscriber list is yours. In addition, e-mail is also a direct channel to communicate with your customers. You can decide how you treat them, how often you send emails, and what you send them.

If you automate the process, you will be able to guide your customer through the marketing funnel.

Read more: Email Marketing Beginner’s Ultimate Guide

6. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search engine marketing (SEM) or paid search is a form of pay-per-click advertising and is part of digital advertising. While SEO is the process of getting unpaid traffic from search engines that help you rank organically for your target keywords, SEM is the process of increasing traffic to your website from search engines through paid ads. The two most commonly used SEM services are Bing Ads and Google AdWords.

In SEM, the marketer typically pays the search engine a predefined amount of money to display a marketing message in different places in the search results for specific keywords or phrases.

Paid ads made for search engines appear at the top of the SERP, before the organic results. They are always accompanied by an “Ad” favicon, to attract the user’s attention which gives great visibility and instant awareness.

7. Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)

Just like SEM, other forms of PPC advertising also describe marketing methods where the marketer pays for each click on a link to a website. In addition to search engines, almost all social networks offer pay-per-click advertising.

There are several ways to play media on the web.  You can advertise on social media and also in search engines, like Google and Bing. These ads then appear in the feed of targeted social media users.

This type of digital marketing can have different payment models. The most common are: 

• PPC pay-per-click:

Pay-per-click, also known as PPC, is one of the most common types of digital marketing and is used in almost all digital marketing strategies. It is a specific advertising model in which you only pay for the number of clicks on your ad.

If a customer clicks on your ad, you pay a minimal cost.  This approach is therefore interesting for small businesses with a limited budget. However, it is also difficult to predict how much you will have to pay at the end of the month.

PPC can also extend to affiliate marketing and ads on another site.

• CPM or cost per thousand:

 Impressions are another common model of PPC advertising. It is most beneficial when you are working with a short-tail keyword. In general, the PPC model allows you to pay only for what is used.

8. Instant Message Marketing (IMM)

Instant Message Marketing (IMM) is one of the types of digital marketing that is applied through instant messaging applications and requires a slightly different approach than other types of online marketing tactics due to the one-on-one nature of the chat.

This type of digital marketing allows you to personalize your messages and move your customers to action. The trick lies in being short as users are likely to skip long messages.

Instant Message Marketing allows you to be always available for your customers and your customers can get in touch with these channels to get a quick response when they need support, which is very positive for your brand and the relationship between it and your customers.

Besides WhatsApp, almost all social media platforms have their direct messages, and this is a fantastic opportunity for marketing strategies.

Instant Message Marketing offers many benefits for your business:

• Creating a profile or account easily.
• Messaging is instant. Customers can see and respond to your messages immediately.
• You can often create lists or groups to segment your target audience or consumers, allowing you to send the most relevant messages to the right people.

9. Video Marketing

Video Marketing is another type of digital marketing, which allows you to promote your business, increase traffic to your site, educate buyers, encourage engagement and even go viral.

Video Marketing is also a great opportunity to reach new customers as people are increasingly looking for videos for several reasons, for example, to see credible reviews on certain products or services, entertainment, news, how to do something, content to study, and others. Video marketing strategies are used to drive results throughout the marketing funnel, such as blog posts and emails.

There are many types of digital marketing videos you can create:

• Demo videos allow you to showcase your product.
• Educational videos are great for teaching customers a new concept or how to perform a particular task.
• Event videos allow you to highlight the most interesting parts of your event, whether it’s a conference, meeting, seminar, party, or fundraiser.
• Video interviews allow you to get the perspective of an expert in your field. This not only educates your customers but also builds your credibility.
• Testimonial allows you to demonstrate to users why your company is the best choice. Hearing from other satisfied consumers and seeing real results can go a long way in converting a customer.

10. Audio Marketing

Audio Marketing is a type of digital marketing that although does not have the same dynamics as videos, but these formats like podcasts are increasingly consumed. Podcasts are a real phenomenon and are taking over the radio audience, especially when people are in transit or doing something.

If you know your target audience’s habits, think of topics for your podcasts that relate to the activities your audience may do while listening. This way, you can insert your product or service in a contextual way and turn audio marketing into a major sales opportunity.

11. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is marketing products and services to those who have influence in the marketplace through their expertise, popularity, or reputation. Influencers are the people who are at the forefront of social trends.

They discover trends before anyone else and boost them with their own creativity, spreading them further through social media. They can be innovators, creating new ideas, concepts, or content, which regularly attracts social media attention.

Social media has played a crucial role in revitalizing this tool, creating more and better opportunities for its use. In general, influencers are classified into three categories according to their potential reach.

Celebrities:  These are TV and movie actors, sports and music stars, and social media masters with over a million followers.

Executives: These are journalists, bloggers, industry experts, and other content creators, with between 10,000 and 1 million followers.

The Daily:  This is the lowest level of social media influencers, but there are more of them than the other two levels combined. They have an average of 500 to 10,000 followers. They can be your employees or even your customers.

12. Television advertising

TV marketing is also part of digital marketing that is still successful. Some of the best TV commercials achieve marketing fame and even become famous on social media. But today television advertising can be very expensive for a small business to produce and air. Another drawback of TV advertising is that it offers very limited targeting options.

Conclusion

As you have seen there are many types of digital marketing that you can use to increase your lead base and therefore improve your sales. All of these types of digital marketing interact with each other and the lines between them are often blurred.

A successful digital marketing strategy integrates different types of digital marketing. So, if you want to get better results, you should implement several of these methods into your digital marketing plan as soon as possible.

You don’t have to incorporate all types of digital marketing into your strategy, but you shouldn’t focus on just one aspect either. Test a few, and find the ones that produce the best results for your business. It’s best to start with a mix of SEO, content marketing, SEM, and social media, before moving on to other types of marketing.