Marketing experts can employ any electronic marketing to spread promotional messaging and assess its effectiveness across your customer journey. Digital marketing in real life refers to advertising campaigns that show up on a computer, phone, tablet, or other electronic devices. Online video, display ads, search engine marketing, paid social ads, and social media posts are just a few examples of the various formats it can take. Digital marketing is frequently contrasted with “conventional marketing” methods like direct mail, billboards, and magazine advertisements. Oddly, traditional marketing is frequently grouped with television.
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Did you know that more than 34 percent of Americans use the internet every day? Additionally, 26% of users are online “nearly constantly” and 43% log on more than once every day.
When it comes to mobile internet users, these numbers are considerably greater. 89% of Americans use the internet at least once every day, and 31% use it frequently. It’s crucial for marketers to capitalize on the digital world by creating a brand, having an online advertising presence, and offering excellent customer service that attracts additional potential clients.
With the use of a digital marketing strategy, you may engage with current clients and potential customers by using digital channels like social media, pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization, and email marketing. As a consequence, you may create a strong brand, offer excellent customer service, attract new clients, and more.
What is digital marketing?
The promotion of brands via the internet and other digital communication channels is known as digital marketing, sometimes known as online marketing. This comprises text and multimedia messages as well as email, social media, and web-based advertising as a marketing channel.
In essence, a marketing effort is considered to be digital marketing if it uses digital communication.
Inbound marketing versus digital marketing
Inbound marketing and digital marketing frequently get mixed up, and for good reason. Email and web content are only a couple of the many methods that are used in both digital marketing and inbound marketing. Both exist to draw potential consumers’ attention along the buyer’s journey and convert them into customers. The relationship between the instrument and the aim, however, is viewed differently in the 2 approaches.
Digital marketing takes into account the ability of specific technologies or digital platforms to convert prospects. The digital marketing strategy of a company may utilize several platforms or concentrate all of its efforts on a single platform. For instance, a business can ignore other digital marketing channels in favor of producing content primarily for social networking platforms and email marketing campaigns.
In contrast, inbound marketing is a comprehensive idea. The aim is taken into account first, and then the tools that are available are examined to see which will best reach target clients and at what stage of the sales funnel that should occur. Consider the scenario when you want to increase website traffic to produce more leads and prospects. When creating your content marketing strategy, you can concentrate on search engine optimization, which will provide more optimized material, including blogs, landing sites, and more.
The most crucial thing to keep in mind about inbound and digital marketing is that, as a marketing expert, you don’t have to pick one over the other. They actually function best together. Inbound marketing gives digital marketing initiatives structure and direction, ensuring that each digital marketing channel serves a specific purpose.
Why is digital marketing important?
Any form of marketing can make your company successful. But because digital platforms are so widely available, digital marketing has grown in significance. In reality, just in April 2022, there were 5 billion internet users worldwide.
There are various ways to employ digital marketing strategies to reach your target audience, from social media to SMS messages. Digital marketing is also a low-cost marketing strategy for small enterprises because of its low upfront costs.
B2B versus B2C digital marketing
Both B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) businesses can benefit from digital marketing techniques, but the best practices for each are very different. Here’s a closer look at how B2B and B2C marketing strategies employ digital marketing.
Sales funnels for B2B clients typically have lengthier decision-making cycles. These customers respond better to relationship-building methods than B2C clients, who are more likely to favor immediate offers and messaging.
Expert B2B digital marketers provide the logic and evidence that B2B transactions are typically built on. B2C content is more likely to be emotionally driven and centered on enhancing the customer’s shopping experience.
B2B decisions frequently require the input of multiple people. The marketing resources that influence these choices the most are typically digital and shareable. Contrarily, B2C clients value personal interactions with brands.
Of course, every rule has exceptions. A B2C company selling an expensive item, like a car or computer, might include more serious and educational information. As a result, whether you’re in the B2B or B2C space, your digital marketing approach must always be focused on your own clientele.
For informed and focused online marketing strategies, consider your current audience. By doing this, you can make sure that your marketing efforts are successful and that you can draw in potential clients.
Types of digital marketing
As there are different ways to communicate with digital media, there are also different specializations within digital marketing. Here are a few crucial illustrations of various digital marketing strategies.
optimization for search engines
Technically speaking, search engine optimization, or SEO, is a technique for marketing rather than a type of marketing in and of itself. It is “the art and science of making online pages attractive to search engines,” according to The Balance.
What matters most in SEO is the “art and science” component. Because you must conduct research and weigh several contributing criteria in order to attain the maximum rating on a search engine results page, SEO is a science (SERP).
The following are the key factors to take into account today when optimizing a web page for search engines:
level of the text
User engagement level
Mobile-friendliness
Inbound links’ quantity and quality
You also need to optimize technical SEO, which refers to all of your site’s back-end components, in addition to the factors mentioned above. This covers things like loading times, broken links, and URL structure. Search engines can better crawl and navigate your website by making technical SEO improvements.
Search engine optimization is an art, but it is also a science when these aspects are used strategically.
Ranking on the first page of a search engine’s result page is the ultimate objective. This makes it such that those looking for a particular inquiry associated with your brand can quickly find your goods or services. Although there are various search engines, due to their position as the industry leader globally, digital marketers frequently concentrate on Google.
There is no quantitative formula or established standard in SEO to follow in order to rank well. It’s impossible to make precise predictions because the algorithms of Google and other search engines change virtually continuously. What you can do is keep a careful eye on the performance of your page and modify your strategy as necessary.
Content marketing
As mentioned, the quality of your content is a key component of an optimized page. As a result, SEO is a major factor in content marketing, a strategy based on the distribution of relevant and valuable content to a target audience.
As in any marketing strategy, the goal of content marketing is to attract leads that ultimately convert into customers. But it does so differently than traditional advertising. Instead of enticing prospects with the potential value from a product or service, it offers value for free in the form of written material, such as:
Blog posts
E-books
Newsletters
Video or audio transcripts
Whitepapers
Infographics
Content marketing matters and there are plenty of stats to prove it:
84% of consumers expect companies to produce entertaining and helpful content experiences
62% of companies that have at least 5,000 employees produce content daily
92% of marketers believe that their company values content as an important asset
As effective as content marketing is, it can be tricky. Content marketing writers need to be able to rank highly in search engine results while also engaging people who will read the material, share it, and interact further with the brand. When the content is relevant, it can establish strong relationships throughout the pipeline.
To create effective content that’s highly relevant and engaging, it’s important to identify your audience. Who are you ultimately trying to reach with your content marketing efforts? Once you have a better grasp of your audience, you can determine the type of content you’ll create. You can use many formats of content in your content marketing, including videos, blog posts, printable worksheets, and more.
Regardless of which content you create, it’s a good idea to follow content marketing best practices. This means making content that’s grammatically correct, free of errors, easy to understand, relevant, and interesting. Your content should also funnel readers to the next stage in the pipeline, whether that’s a free consultation with a sales representative or a signup page.
Social media marketing
Social media marketing is the practice of increasing website traffic and brand recognition through online interaction. You may promote your business, goods, services, culture, and more via social media marketing. Concentrating on social media marketing can be beneficial because billions of people use social media platforms to interact.
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the most widely used digital channels for social media marketing, followed closely by LinkedIn and YouTube. The social media channels you use for your business ultimately depend on your objectives and target market. For instance, targeting your audience on LinkedIn is a fantastic idea if you want to get new leads for your FinTech firm because professionals in the field are active there. On the other hand, if your brand runs B2C with a younger consumer focus, Instagram social media ads can be preferable for your business.
Social media marketing has gained popularity because it encourages engaged audience participation. At 96%, it is the most common container format for B2C digital marketers, and it is also becoming more popular in the B2B sector. The Content Marketing Institute reports that 61% of B2B content marketers used social media more this year.
Built-in engagement metrics in social media marketing are quite helpful for letting you know how well you’re connecting with your audience. You get to choose which interactions—like the number of shares, remarks, or overall clicks to your website—mean the most to you.
Your social media marketing plan may not even have direct purchases as one of its objectives. Many firms utilize social media marketing to engage people in conversation rather than pressuring them to make an immediate purchase. Brands that cater to older audiences or provide goods and services unsuitable for impulse purchases are particularly prone to this. Everything depends on the social media marketing objectives of your business.
It’s essential to adhere to best practices in order to develop a social media marketing plan that is successful. Some of the most significant social media marketing best practices are listed below:
Create compelling, high-quality material
Respond to queries and comments in a professional manner.
Make a schedule for posting on social media.
Post when it’s appropriate
Employ social media managers to aid your marketing campaigns.
Understand your audience and the social media platforms where they are most active.
Check out the comparison of our free social media management tools to others to find out more about how Mailchimp can support your social media strategy.
Pay-per-click marketing
PPC, also known as pay-per-click marketing, is a type of online advertising in which you are charged each time a user clicks on one of your digital ads. Therefore, you only pay for the advertising people actually interact with rather than paying a fixed sum to continuously show targeted ads on online channels. It’s a little trickier to control who and when see your advertisement.
Search engine advertising is one of the most popular PPC strategies, and as Google is the most widely used search engine, many companies employ Google Ads for this purpose. A SERP, commonly known as a search engine results page, fills a slot when one becomes available by conducting what is basically an instant auction. Each available advertisement is given a ranking by an algorithm based on various criteria, such as:
Ad Excellence
keyword significance
Landing page excellence
Offer Amount
When someone searches for a certain term, PPC adverts are then positioned at the top of search engine result pages depending on the aforementioned parameters.
After clicking an ad, viewers are expected to carry out 1 or more target actions that are part of any PPC campaign. These processes, which go by the name of conversions, might be transactional or non-transactional. A conversion can be anything from signing up for a newsletter to making a call to your home office.
You may monitor your campaign’s performance by tracking your target conversions through the digital marketing channels you’ve selected.
Affiliate marketing
Through the use of the digital marketing strategy known as affiliate marketing, one can profit from the promotion of another person’s company. The procedure is the same whether you are the promoter or the company that collaborates with the promoter.
An income-sharing approach is used to make it function. If you are the affiliate, you will receive a commission for each sale of the product you have promoted. If you are the merchant, you must pay the affiliate for each sale you make thanks to their efforts.
Some affiliate marketers opt to review just one company’s items, possibly on a blog or another external website. Others have connections with numerous retailers.
The first stage is to establish contact with the other party, whether you wish to be an affiliate or discover one. You can launch or join a single-retailer programme, or you can use digital channels made to link affiliates with shops.
There are numerous things you can do as a store to make your programme appealing to potential promoters if you decide to work directly with affiliates. You must give those affiliates the resources they require in order for them to be successful. Along with marketing resources and ready-made content, this also offers rewards for outstanding performance.
Native advertising
Digital marketing is actually native advertising. Its objective is to blend in with the surrounding content to make its presence as advertising less obnoxious.
The scepticism of today’s consumers toward marketing led to the creation of native advertising. Many customers will assume that an advertisement is prejudiced if they know who paid to run it, leading them to ignore it.
By providing content that is informative or entertaining before it begins to promote anything, a native advertisement avoids this bias and minimises the “ad” element.
Always carefully mark your local advertisements. Make use of phrases like “sponsored” or “promoted.” Readers may wind up spending a lot of time engaging with the content before they realise it is advertising if such clues are hidden.
Consumers will feel better about your content and brand when they are clear about what they are getting. Native advertisements are not meant to be misleading, but they are meant to be less intrusive than standard advertisements.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing, like affiliate marketing, involves collaborating with an influencer—someone with a sizable following, like a celebrity, subject-matter authority, or content creator—in exchange for visibility. These influencers frequently recommend your goods or services to their followers across a variety of social media platforms.
Businesses seeking to reach new audiences, both B2B and B2C, might find success with influencer marketing. However, since they are effectively representing your brand, it’s crucial to work with trustworthy influencers. The trust that customers have in your company might be damaged by the incorrect influencer.
Marketing automation
Marketing automation boosts the effectiveness and relevance of advertising by using software to run digital marketing initiatives. As a result, rather than spending time and effort on laborious operations, you may concentrate on developing the plan for your digital marketing initiatives.
Marketing automation may greatly increase the level of connection between you and your audience, even while it can seem like a luxury item that your firm can do without.
As evidenced by statistics:
Personalization appeals to 90% of US customers, either “very” or “somewhat.”
Consumers want brands they interact with to better understand them, according to 81% of them.
Real-time customisation is valued by 77% of businesses, yet 60% have trouble implementing it.
Companies can stay up with the demand for personalisation through marketing automation. It enables companies to:
gather and evaluate consumer data
Create marketing strategies with a focus
Send and publish digital marketing communications to the appropriate audiences at the appropriate times.
The response to a particular communication from a prospect is often used by marketing automation technologies to determine when and how to follow up. With this level of real-time customisation, you can efficiently develop a customised marketing strategy for each client without devoting any more time.
The marketing automation solutions from Mailchimp make sure you can communicate with your audience through transactional emails, behaviour-based automation, and more.
Email marketing
The idea behind email marketing is straightforward: you send a promotional message and wait for your potential customer to click on it. The execution is considerably more difficult. You must first confirm that the recipients of your emails are interested. Having an opt-in list that does the following signifies:
individualises the text in the subject line and the body
Clearly explains the type of emails the subscriber will receive.
an email signature with a prominent unsubscribe link
combines promotional and transactional emails
You want your campaign to be seen by your potential customers as more than just a means of advertising.
Email marketing is a tried-and-true method by itself: 89% of the professionals polled said it was their best source of leads.
Other digital marketing strategies, like marketing automation, which enables you to segment and schedule your emails so that they better serve the needs of your customers, can make it even better.
Here are some pointers to assist you to create effective email marketing campaigns if you’re thinking about using email marketing:
Segment your audience so that you can deliver the correct people and relevant campaigns.
Make sure emails are mobile-friendly.
Make a campaign calendar.
Conduct AB tests
Mobile Marketing
With the help of mobile marketing, you may interact with your target market via their mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. This can be done through SMS and MMS messages, notifications from social media, mobile app alerts, and other means.
It is essential to make sure that all material is mobile-friendly. Since 85% of Americans own a smartphone, your marketing efforts can be greatly enhanced by producing material for both computer and mobile devices.
The benefits of digital marketing
Due in great part to its ability to reach such a big number of people, digital marketing has gained popularity. It does, however, provide a number of additional benefits that can help your marketing efforts. A few of the advantages of digital marketing are listed above.
A broad geographic reach
If you place an advertisement online, anyone can see it (assuming you haven’t geographically restricted your advertisement). This enables expanding your company’s market reach and connecting with more people through various digital channels simple.
Cost efficiency
In addition to reaching a larger audience than traditional marketing, digital marketing is also less expensive. The overhead expenses for television commercials, print ads, and other conventional marketing options can be considerable. Additionally, they provide you with less control over whether or not your target viewers will ever see those messages.
As long as your blog is active, you can use digital marketing to draw people with just 1 content item. It is simple to alter the timing or the substance of an email marketing campaign that is set up to send messages to certain client lists on a regular basis.
When it comes down to it, investing in digital marketing gives you a lot more flexibility and opportunities to interact with customers.
Quantifiable results
You need to determine how many customers and how much revenue your marketing approach finally brings in to determine if it is effective. But how would one go about doing that with a conventional marketing plan?
There is always the conventional choice of inquiring “How did you find us?” to every customer.
Unfortunately, not all industries can benefit from that. One-on-one interactions with clients are rare for many businesses, and surveys frequently yield incomplete information.
Monitoring results when using digital marketing is easy. Whether it’s email open rates, home page views, or direct transactions, digital marketing platforms and tools automatically track the quantity of desired conversions that you obtain.
Easier personalization
You can collect client data with digital marketing in a way that is not possible with traditional marketing. Digital data is frequently far more precise and detailed.
Imagine you provide financial services and want to reach out to internet users who have looked at your products with unique offers. You choose to plan two campaigns since you know you’ll achieve greater results if you tailor the offer to the person’s interests. The first is aimed at young families who have looked at your life insurance options, while the second is aimed at millennial business owners who have thought about your retirement plans.
How are all of those statistics collected without automated tracking? How many call records would you need to examine? How many client profiles exist? And how do you know if the brochure you distributed has been read or not?
You already have access to all of this knowledge thanks to digital marketing.
More connection with customers
Real-time communication with your customers is possible thanks to digital marketing. More significantly, it enables them to interact with you.
Consider your social media plan. Although it’s wonderful when your intended audience views your most recent content, it’s much better when they leave comments or share it. Every time a new person joins the conversation, your product or service will become more well-known and generate more buzz.
Customers gain from the interaction as well. As they actively engage in the narrative of your brand, their degree of engagement rises. A strong sense of brand loyalty may result from that sense of ownership.
Easy and convenient conversions
With digital marketing, your target audience can respond to your content or advertisement right away. The fastest you can hope for with traditional advertising is a phone call quickly after someone sees it. But when someone is busy cleaning the dishes, driving down the road, or updating records at work, how frequently do they have time to contact a company?
With digital marketing, they can quickly advance through the sales funnel by clicking a link or saving a blog post. Even if they don’t buy right away, they’ll keep in touch with you and give you the chance to speak with them further.
How to create a digital marketing strategy
Getting started with digital marketing can be challenging for many small businesses and novice marketers. However, by using the methods below as a starting point, you may develop a successful digital marketing strategy to raise brand visibility, engagement, and sales.
Set SMART goals
Any marketing plan must have clear, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely (SMART) goals. While you may have many objectives, try to concentrate on those that will advance your plan rather than cause it to stall.
Identify your audience
Any marketing plan must have clear, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely (SMART) goals. While you may have many objectives, try to concentrate on those that will advance your plan rather than cause it to stall.
Create a budget
A budget makes sure that your money is being used wisely toward your objectives rather than being wasted on digital marketing avenues that could not yield the intended outcomes. When making a budget, take into account your SMART goals and the digital channel you intend to use.
Select your digital marketing channels
You can benefit from a variety of digital marketing platforms, including content marketing, PPC ads, and more. Your goals, target market, and budget will frequently determine the digital marketing platforms you choose.
Refine your marketing efforts
Once the campaign is over, make sure to review the data to determine what worked effectively and where improvements should be made. As a result, you may develop subsequent campaigns that are even better. You can get this data on an accessible dashboard with the use of digital technologies and software. You can manage all of your marketing campaigns in one place by using Mailchimp’s digital marketing analytics reports.
Digital marketing creates growth
One of the main areas of practically any company’s overall marketing plan should include digital marketing. Nothing else delivers the amount of personalisation that digital data can, and there has never been a method to stay in such constant contact with your customers. Your company’s potential for growth will become more apparent the more you embrace the promise of digital marketing.
