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What Is Digital Marketing About

What Is Digital Marketing About

Digital Marketing AKA Online Marketing

If we are to define what is digital marketing about we must first understand clearly what it is. The act of promoting products, services, or a business by digital means. It is often confused with online marketing. Digital marketing covers more than just online via a website. It includes other forms of digital communication such as email, social media, and web-based advertising, but also text and multimedia messages. It does not cover by definition areas before the advent of the internet such as TV or Radio.

Development Of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is a field of marketing that uses digital media to reach customers. Digital marketing has been growing at a tremendous pace for over 20 years. This development results, firstly, from the constantly increasing number of Internet users, and secondly, from the steadily increasing potential for using the global network. The Internet is becoming more and more attractive to all users – it offers a whole spectrum of possibilities in the sphere of entertainment, information, business, and services.

People spend more and more time browsing social networks, and websites, and devote a lot of attention to the use of mobile devices such as tablets or smartphones. This evolution showed new, interesting solutions with which it is possible to identify the needs of consumers, adapt products and services to their needs, as well as more effectively distribute the offered goods and communicate with customers.

The constant development of technology, growing competition, and increasing consumer expectations force companies to adapt their activities to the changes taking place. It is the constantly growing number of Internet users, along with the more frequent and longer period of time they spend on the Internet – that requires constant changes in the way modern companies advertise themselves.

When developing advertising campaigns, companies adapt the message to different media. In the era of enormous competition, more and more perfect actions are taken to win the customer. Businesses are ahead of the idea of getting customer attention.

Digital marketing – what is it?

Digital marketing (digital marketing) – what is digital marketing about that uses digital devices and the Internet in its activities. It is currently one of the main areas of marketing activity. Particularly rapid growth and development in the area of ​​digital (digital marketing) can be observed in connection with the transfer of the functioning of many industries to the Internet, remote work, and global activities related to the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021.

Digital Marketing – Areas of Activity

The vast majority of what is digital marketing about includes activities that are e-marketing activities. This is the most dynamically and longest-developing area of ​​digital marketing. Along with technological development, there are new opportunities to reach the recipient. Examples of these changes include the e-sport market, the gaming industry, the use of VR technology, and the organization of online events. Internet marketing is a broad concept, which is why the industry uses a division into individual spheres of digital marketing impact.

Digital Marketing Strategies

Cross-channel marketing, multi-channel marketing, and omnichannel marketing (we use these terms interchangeably here) are essential strategies to engage with a customer or prospect on any digital channel and device. Today, customers take turns seamlessly switching between email, social networks, laptops, tablets, and smartphones and therefore expect the salesperson to accompany them with an excellent and integrated service.

To help you prepare an effective multi-channel marketing strategy, the following are detailed descriptions of the most commonly used digital marketing channels:

E-mail marketing – is a form of marketing based on e-mail activities. They consist of the regular sending of messages in the form of a newsletter or the occasional sending of messages regarding the services or products offered. Such marketing activities may be image-building, sales, or educational activities.

The recipient, before receiving the e-mail, voluntarily provides his e-mail address – he has the option to opt-out of receiving content from the sender at any time. A company that wants to use the mailing tool must have consent from the recipient to send marketing messages. Currently, there are many tools on the market that improve and automate the process of sending electronic messages. Often, such systems are an integral part of the automation of entire marketing campaigns.

Email marketing is one of the oldest and most widespread types of digital marketing, used in both B2B and B2C relationships. In this case, data about potential customers is collected at various points in the purchasing process and classified in order to learn about the preferences of such customers. Next, each prospect is asked for permission to be added to the mailing list.

The content in the e-mail messages may include information about products and services, information about the vendor and upcoming events, personalized offers, implementation examples, links to studies, and other technical and business information. In order for such messages to be opened and read, and not deleted immediately, they must contain the appropriate offer. Personalized content and the right offer are important factors that stimulate interest.

Email marketing is part of both art and science. Your e-mail messages and digital assets must be fun and attractive, but the number of messages you send must be optimally matched.

Display marketing – is a paid banner advertisement displayed on computers and mobile devices. After clicking on the marketing image, the user usually moves to the advertiser’s target website. Display advertising can be static or dynamic. There are different types and formats of marketing banners. The advantage of this type of advertising is that this type of advertising attracts the attention of the recipient – it works especially well in image campaigns.

Social media marketing – what is digital marketing about in social media – activities in social media portals aimed at increasing traffic and conversion. The key issue here is the content and quality of the messages conveyed. In advertising campaigns on social media, both content, graphics, video, and audio are used. Both organic reach and paid advertising campaigns are used in this area.

Social media is a great way to reach a specific audience and establish direct contacts with customers, potential customers, and partners. The choice of a social platform should depend on the characteristics of the customers to whom the message is directed. Facebook is still the largest social networking platform in the world. Twitter is still popular with B2B clients. While Instagram and TikTok are hugely popular with Millennials and Gen Z customers, LinkedIn is a great place to connect with B2B customers in the early stages of the buying cycle.

Each social media platform offers different types of content, but all of them are very photo and video-oriented. When preparing your content, always keep in mind how it will be distributed via social media and then adapt it accordingly.

New platforms will also enter the market over time, so marketers must constantly adapt their digital marketing tactics to get the most out of every available platform. For example, TikTok only came out in September 2016, and now has more active users than LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat.

Affiliate Marketing – Many bloggers and influencers are affiliate marketers as they use their blogs and social media accounts to promote a variety of products and services. It is a type of results-based marketing. Affiliate marketers receive a commission for promoting specific products. The more visitors and customers these marketers attract, the more money their affiliate partner will earn.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) – Most often, SEM advertising campaigns are designed based requirements of Google. SEM is all promotional activities aimed at improving the website’s visibility in search engines. The term SEM is a broad concept and covers two areas of activity: SEO (website optimization activities in order to improve its visibility in natural search results) and PPC (website visibility in paid search results, eg GoogleAds).

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – what is digital marketing about with website optimization. The process of proceedings is aimed at improving the position of a website in organic search engine results (usually Google). This field combines the programming and marketing aspects. SEO activities are long-lasting but require time and consistency, as well as continuous optimization of the website.

Website design and marketing – A website is often the first point of contact for potential customers with a particular company and brand. Well-designed websites can be a confirmation of a consistent brand offer across all digital resources. In addition, such websites will be better searched for in search engines, provide users with greater usability and improve conversion results (more clicks, registrations, etc.).

Content marketing – is a strategy based on the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant, and consistent content that will allow you to acquire and maintain a properly defined target audience. Ultimately, content marketing activities are expected to bring tangible benefits to the organization that uses them.

Content-based marketing is a marketing activity that reaches out to a variety of potential customers and customers by means of a personalized message. The more personalized the content is, the more likely it is to interest, intrigue, and capture the attention of individual audiences. However, the content must be relevant to the intentions and interests of the audience and contain a specific offer in order to be interesting enough and capable of initiating a conversion.

The types of content can include email content, landing pages, infographics, ebooks, solution descriptions, ad banners, videos, text messages, ads, newsletters, press releases, articles, blogs, and digital postcards. Content can and should be used across multiple channels, but should all be consistent in style and message.

Advertisement – Redefining what is TV. In the past TV was separate from the internet so it was not considered digital marketing, that has changed. Now TV has become a part of the internet in the form of online streaming. This is another media channel for digital marketing. Over the past few years, the traditional media of advertising has changed significantly. As technology advances, more and more advertising space and time is being bought on new TV platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, etc. However, TV and radio should not be excluded, as, despite the growing number of other entertainment options, these media still have a large audience.

E-commerce marketing – marketing activities focused on online stores and the services and products they offer. E-commerce is the conclusion of commercial transactions in accordance with the principles of business activity using the Internet and new technologies.

Video marketing – a marketing strategy based on the use of film content – both through special video marketing platforms as well as campaigns and advertising creations on social networks.

Marketing automation – these are activities involving the use of special tools to improve marketing processes and data processing. Thanks to numerous functionalities, automation specialists are able to adapt the tools to a strictly selected target group and design the entire communication process between the sender and the recipient of messages.

Mobile marketing – strategies and marketing activities dedicated to mobile users (laptops, tablets, mobile phones). Forms of advertising consist in adapting websites, content, and marketing creations to the user’s expectations and technical conditions of mobile devices. Due to the growing number of users, the so-called mobile-first is an obligatory element of marketing activities.

Technological development continues. Newer and newer devices for communication with the Internet appear: computers, laptops, tablets, TVs, watches with Internet access. All of this shows what opportunities for digital marketing are available to modern companies.

The importance of digital marketing

As part of a digital marketing strategy, marketers define goals, define an audience, and develop an action plan to best reach their audience. These strategies set the direction of a given campaign or program, and a framework for evaluating the results.

Now, when everything is digital, digital marketing capabilities have been integrated into almost every aspect of the business, fundamentally changing the way businesses communicate with and present their offerings to customers. Therefore, if a company cannot implement and implement a digital marketing strategy in an increasingly growing global online market, it simply will not be able to compete effectively.

Principles of conducting digital marketing campaigns

There are a number of ways to conduct a digital marketing campaign. Marketers have a wide range of tools, tactics, strategies, and channels to connect with their audience. Overall, these campaigns have several common stages:

Defining the goals of marketing activities
Digital marketing is a very vast field. Therefore, before starting the campaign, you should define the goals of your marketing activities. Brand awareness has to be built. Is it about getting new customers? Does it include increasing loyalty and retaining customers? Setting goals helps you adjust your strategy and budget to maximize the effectiveness of your campaign.

Identification of recipients
Whose interest should be attracted? The more you know about your audience (age, location, income, etc.), the easier it is to determine how to reach them.

Defining the right channels and marketing tactics
After defining the recipients, you need to choose a method and define the price of reaching them. Suppose a B2C digital marketer wants to reach younger customers with his message. In that case, he could, for example, spend more of his budget on advertising on specific social networking sites, rather than running a blog.

Preparation and optimization of content and messages for individual channels
In order to find out as much as possible about your recipients, it is worth analyzing the data you have. For example, if we know that customers prefer to browse the web more on their phones than on a laptop, the content offered to them must be optimized for viewing on mobile devices. However, such knowledge may not be sufficient. Customer interactions with brands take place in different channels in a non-linear fashion. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure the consistency of the style and message of each content. Maintaining consistency prevents misunderstandings as to the nature and benefits of the products or services offered.

Key Campaign Measures
Campaign progress should be properly measured so that the required adjustments can be made. If campaign performance is not measured against predefined key metrics, it will be difficult to tell if the campaign is performing as intended. By measuring results over time, you can be sure that contact with customers has been established and that you are able to build loyalty and support for a given brand.

Cross-channel digital marketing
Cross-channel digital marketing, sometimes called multi-channel marketing, involves the use of many different channels. Omnichannel marketing not only encompasses, but also goes beyond the framework in which traditional marketing operates. To keep up with audience expectations in the digital world, a marketer must use multiple channels. Depending on the addressees of the offer, you may need to use social media, email, websites, text messages, TV, or radio. The more you know about the preferences, positions, and interests of your customers and potential customers, the better your marketing strategy can be with the right content delivered through the right channels.

Customers like to change communication channels. From a social networking site, they can go to a website, digital assistant, or email in no time. Therefore, you need to follow them and take care of an efficient purchasing process in all channels. Of course, keep in mind that all channels must offer a consistent style and message. The inconsistent purchasing process in various channels may reject customers from the offer. Therefore, it is worth striving for the aforementioned consistency in all used communication channels within digital marketing.

In marketing, the narration is important. Doesn’t inconsistency in details cause chaos? Is the change of style and tone confusing? Audiences must keep up with the narrative. They need to understand the message if they are to follow it.

The purchasing process should be fun. Content must be easy to read, view, and assimilate, regardless of the communication channel used. Sites should be easy to navigate, ads easy to understand, and graphics pleasing to the eye.

In digital marketing, the most important thing is to have a digital conversation with your customers. For such a conversation to be conducted, you need to make the best possible impression.

KPIs for digital marketing
Key performance indicators (“KPIs”) for digital marketing are used to measure the performance of a marketing campaign. Marketers use many of these KPIs to track these performances. By identifying specific KPIs for digital marketing, it becomes easier to set goals and measure campaign performance, including the following metrics:

  • Visitors returning to the website. Indicates the level of interest of visitors as they return to the site to use more content or take action.
  • The first visit to the website. It helps to understand how visitors find a particular site and how interested they are afterward.
  • Internet traffic sources. Shows how visitors arrive at a given website/landing page.
  • A total number of visits. The number of individual browsing sessions on the website by individual visitors.
  • Total Unique Visits. The number of people who visited the given website/landing page.
  • Click Transition Rate (CTR). The percentage of people who clicked on the button or link.
  • Average page display time. Average time all users view a given page.
  • Return on investment in marketing. The number of revenues obtained as a result of the conducted marketing campaign in relation to the costs of its implementation.

There are hundreds of possible KPIs that you can use depending on the type of campaign you are running.

Which type of digital marketing is best?
Digital marketing works in every company and in all industries, but it is not universal. Different companies must employ different digital marketing tactics to achieve their goals. The best tactic depends on several factors, such as the size of your marketing team, available budget, audience, and business goals.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can develop organic SEO and social media strategies and run email marketing campaigns and blog calendars as these tactics require no significant investment (sometimes they don’t even require any investment).

Larger companies typically introduce paid programs to pursue broader business goals. These tactics may include bundling digital assets, creating webinars or webcasts, focusing on targeted marketing to specific customers, and investing in paid media or PPC-based marketing.

Digital marketing and digital media
Digital marketing is a set of activities or tactics. It is a set of forms, formats, and platforms which includes:

  • e-mail messages
  • SMS and MMS messages
  • push notifications
  • social platforms (Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest)
  • music streaming platforms (Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music)
  • digital ads (banner ads, pop-up ads)
  • movie streaming services (YouTube, Netflix, Hulu).
  • Marketers use digital media to reach customers through them. In other words, digital marketing is a strategy and digital media is a means to implement that strategy.

Digital Marketing and Internet Marketing
Digital marketing and internet marketing are concepts that, despite their similarities, are slightly different from each other. It is a set of activities or tactics that use a variety of digital media.

Internet marketing is included in digital marketing (requires the internet to connect with potential customers). All forms of internet marketing can be classified as digital marketing, but not all forms of digital marketing can be classified as internet marketing. For example, TV advertising, digital billboards, radio advertising, and text messaging (SMS) advertising fall within the scope of digital marketing but are not forms of internet marketing.

Digital Marketing and Inbound Marketing
Compared to digital marketing, inbound marketing is a more coherent strategy that employs some digital marketing tactics to attract potential customers to the digital content/assets on offer. Inbound marketing is heavily metrics-driven and focuses on guiding a prospect through the sales process to either get them interested in the offer (eligible prospect, MQL) or turn them into a real customer.

Advantages of digital marketing
Digital marketing tactics enable direct communication between the company and the customer throughout the entire purchasing process. In digital marketing, innovative marketers can present the right content and offers to the customer at the right time through the channels they use most. Marketers can use KPIs for digital marketing to find out what strategies have proven successful in order to improve their operations, increase customer interest and improve return on marketing efforts.

Well-run digital marketing benefits both customers and businesses. Thanks to the appropriate personalization of the content and offers, the recipient gains a feeling that a given supplier understands his needs and is able to offer him useful products or services. In this way, the customer trusts a particular brand more and becomes its loyal advocate. Digital marketing also has many advantages from a business perspective. These advantages include:

  • Greater range. For most buyers, the purchasing process begins online, through a wide variety of digital channels.
  • Precise targeting. Marketers can reach more determined potential buyers through strategies that use an SEO and social media approach. As a result, the number of conversions, the number of advocates for a given brand, and the value of revenues increase.
  • Flexibility. When your goals change, it is usually easier to align your digital marketing tactics with them.
  • Measurability. In digital marketing, there is a greater ability to attribute results to ongoing activities, so marketers know which tactics are effective in driving growth.

B2B versus B2C digital marketing
The most important goal of digital marketing is to get the customer to make a purchase. As part of digital marketing activities, it is possible to reach a wider group of potential B2B and B2C recipients than is possible with the use of traditional marketing tactics. The group of potential recipients may also be more qualified, which will translate into a better value of the return on investment in marketing activities.

B2B digital marketing
The most important goal of B2B digital marketing is to find qualified leads for B2B sellers to help improve conversion rate values. B2B purchase cycles are often long because B2B products and services are more complex, have a higher price, and require more people to engage.

For example, the same product may be sold in different industries or with a different level of specialization, and each customer will have different stakeholders using multiple communication channels. There is a lot of coordination between the various business lines.

Widely used for B2B digital marketing, the channels are entrepreneur-oriented and include e-mail, webcasts, videos, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

B2C digital marketing
The most important goal of B2C digital marketing is to get customers and prospects to discover and become interested in a brand by increasing traffic to the brand’s website and increasing the visibility of relevant content. In this case, communication channels should be selected focused on the B2C customer, through which these customers are more likely to discover a given brand and become interested in it.

The future of digital marketing
It all started with mobile devices, the use of which is making a huge impact on digital marketing. Customer behavior changes over time. Today, customers expect more from products and services, and micro-moments matter to them. What does the micro-moment include? The micro-moment includes real-time customer-brand interaction at the touch of a button. The challenge for marketers now is to connect a person in such a micro-moment with the appropriate marketing message that will benefit that person more than disrupt their life.

Today, customers expect a personalized, integrated, and seamless experience across all communication channels and a fast solution to their problems. Only the aforementioned micro-moment can be used to attract and maintain their attention with strong messages and relevant experiences. If it is not used, the client will choose a different offer. This new paradigm makes the existing marketing methods obsolete.

The modern marketer must adopt an approach based primarily on mobile devices in dealing with global recipients. In addition, it must remember that customers:

  • Customers want to be treated exceptionally.
  • It is important they are the masters of the situation. They decide for themselves when, where, and how they want to interact with a given brand.
  • Communication is important, customers want to initiate a conversation themselves in any channel of their choice, with the possibility of seamlessly transferring it to another channel.
  • Customers want to be served in the shortest possible time, but with the greatest convenience.

Walls are breaking down between the B2B and B2C sectors. Customers want to transfer good experiences within B2C contacts to B2B contacts, but in fact, marketing activities should not differentiate recipients. This could be termed as the collective term B2ME, or “enterprise to me.” It may be the future, but the future is now. The future is before our eyes. You can’t be left behind. It’s best to be in the lead.

So what should a clever and sensible marketer do?

Put data first. With better use and greater access to data, you can better understand, anticipate needs and not waste even a tiny bit of your customers’ time.

Take full advantage of the functions of automation and data analysis. Automating your marketing activities will be essential to capturing huge amounts of data and serving customers in real-time.

Each customer should be treated in a unique, personalized, and appropriate manner. To get a more complete picture of the customer, the information obtained from the micro-moments should be used and brought together. In this way, more integrated experiences can be created.

Master the omnichannel approach. You need to be able to interact with the customer in every channel and in real-time, and seamlessly move between channels with the customer.

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