Modern marketing relies on technology.
Businesses or brands leverage modern marketing techniques to analyze the performance of a marketing campaign and decision-making.
And this is dubbed digital marketing.
You may not know what digital marketing is. But, I will save you the hassle.
This article will cover everything on digital marketing and the forms of digital marketing.
So, read along.
What’s Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is any marketing technique that utilizes online channels and the internet through devices such as laptops, desktops, and mobile phones.
Common digital marketing techniques convey brand messages through social media platforms, search engines, emails, and websites.
It focuses on reaching existing and potential customers with conversion-oriented messages across multiple channels as they move down the sales funnel.
Digital Marketing is on the Rise
Here is why;
Tech advancements such as AI and Machine learning equip marketers with the technology to reach customers on digital devices in real-time.
Again, consumers prefer to interact with brands on social media rather than visiting stores.
Nearly 69% of consumers interact with brands online, which leads to online purchases.
Still, this doesn’t mean offline channels should be ignored.
Word of mouth does work even in this digital era.
Digital marketing uses tools that provide technology capabilities to reach a wider audience.
These tools are platforms, which support multiple functions depending on brand needs.
Platforms provide a more extensive set of functions with integration and partnerships with other apps or data sources.
Now, What’s a Digital Marketing Platform?
It’s a solution that supports a variety of functions within the sphere of marketing over the Internet.
Platforms cover functionalities such as media buying, performance measurement and optimization, and brand tracking.
7 Important Types of Digital Marketing
There are multiple strategies to connect with consumers online.
Let’s have a look at ways you can engage consumers of your brand over the internet.
1. Social Media Marketing
Social media is a remarkable way to promote your brand organically to your followers and engage with your consumers.
Here is the reason;
People are reliant on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Statistics show that 420 billion people are active on social media. In addition, people spend around two hours a day on various social media accounts.
What does this tell us?
Social media marketing does work.
So, brands need to be active on all social media accounts.
To reach your existing and potential clients, you can do this;
First, you can use social media accounts to distribute paid ads.
Each social media account has a way for marketers to create paid advertising campaigns and segment users, so the ads appear on the target audience’s feeds.
The best part is, that ads can be placed based on location, age, title, interest, and job.
Social media offers a great way to connect with your customers.
You can do this simply by engaging existing and potential customers and answering customer-oriented questions
This is a great way to cultivate positive customer experiences and loyalty.
Lastly, you can use social media to build your brand and establish a unique voice that can make you popular to follow and share.
Your followers are likely to end up loving and even purchasing your products.
2. Influencer Marketing
I know you’ve seen celebrities advertising brands on their pages.
That’s how influencer marketing works.
Here, brands partner with celebrities to showcase products on their pages and other digital channels.
If you want to utilize this technique, you reach an influencer with many followers with branded content and offers.
This method has proved to be way more effective. According to the latest research, 67.9% of marketers from companies use influencer marketing, and the percentage is likely to increase in the coming years.
Moreover, most people like to follow the masses. Fans of the celebrity (especially women) are likely to base purchasing decisions on an influencer’s recommendation.
3. Email Marketing
Emails are a common form of communication for both professional and personal purposes.
Emails have proven to play a role in most consumer purchase decisions.
According to research, 4 billion people use email daily. Also, 64% of small businesses use emails to persuade their subscribers to make purchases. 76% of email subscribers have made purchases following a marketing message.
It’s the reason email marketing is gaining popularity among businesses and brands.
To reach your prospects and customers through email, ensure you have a clear and attractive newsletter signup form for your visitors on your website.
Also, you may consider offering a value exchange such as free e-books or downloadable guides in exchange for their email addresses.
The technique works to persuade your prospects to drop their email address.
After all, nothing is free.
Once your prospects drop their emails, you will have a direct medium to keep them informed about your products, services, and any special deals you might be offering.
The best part is that email has intuitive features to personalize messages as though they are addressing a particular person.
This makes prospects feel like the message is meant for them. The feature ensures communication is streamlined to meet consumer needs.
To utilize email marketing fully, provide value within your newsletters. Otherwise, you will be ignored by subscribers, or worse, they might even unsubscribe. Your content and imagery should be captivating to compel your subscribers into clicking.
4. Content Marketing
This type of digital marketing focuses on creating and distributing valuable and relevant content to its target audience.
The marketing team creates articles, videos, podcasts, and other content to provide answers or content to prospects throughout the three stages of purchasing.
Perhaps you’ve got no idea about the three stages of buying.
But, I’ll save you the hassle.
The first stage is the awareness stage when the prospect realizes they have a need.
In the second stage, the buyer determines a course of action to satisfy the need. This is known as the consideration stage.
And lastly, the buyer decides on a product or service to purchase to fulfill the need. This is called the decision stage.
So, the content should be relevant and consistent through the three stages.
Its final goal should be to drive profitable customer action.
Content marketing comes in diverse forms. They can be in the form of blog posts, videos, infographics, podcasts, white papers, case studies, product reviews, and any other I may not have mentioned. Whatever content works for you, ensure it’s valuable to your prospects and customers.
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Marketing
SEO marketing comes in handy with content marketing.
It’s the art of ensuring that your web content and articles feature as high as possible on related Google searches.
For this type of marketing, you don’t bid for positioning. Instead, you optimize your web content and articles using various techniques to ensure the website features as top results on Google when related keywords are searched.
Optimizing your content for search engines will help increase the stream of relevant traffic that will grow over time. Without SEO, people won’t be able to find your website on the internet.
Optimization techniques you can use include:
- Researching relevant keywords and incorporating them into your web copy.
- Optimizing your website titles, description, and loading speed.
- Building relevant backlinks.
Also, you can name the images you use on the web content so that they align with the keywords you want to rank on search engines.
5. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
This kind of digital marketing technique allows the marketer to pay for traffic to their website instead of obtaining them organically.
Here, the marketer places ads on their website or search engine.
And just as the name suggests, you pay for each click on the ads you place on your website.
It’s like you buy each visit to your site.
6. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing involves outsourcing promotional activities in exchange for a commission. In this case, you outsource to a company or an individual to advertise your products online.
It’s something like a referral program. The company or individual will promote the product through articles, videos, and images on behalf of your company.
An affiliate marketer creates and distributes relevant content linked to your product or website in their social media accounts or website.
If a person purchases a product using their link, they receive the agreed commission.
So, if you want to cut down the cost of advertising a product, you can use affiliate marketing. However, keep in mind that you are putting your company’s reputation in the hands of other people and companies.
Conclusion
Many forms of digital marketing techniques drive value to your company. But, the above can give you a strong starting point.
You don’t have to incorporate all of them while starting.
Choose a few marketing techniques that work for your business, experiment with them, and measure which is the best fit depending on your needs.
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