What Is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing encompasses a broad range of marketing tactics that leverage electronic devices. It's a method marketing professionals use to deliver and track promotional messages across the customer journey. Digital marketing manifests in various forms across digital devices like computers, smartphones, and tablets. This form of marketing includes diverse strategies like online videos, display advertising, search engine optimization, sponsored social media content, and more. Unlike traditional marketing channels - which include print media, outdoor billboards, and direct mail - digital marketing offers a more dynamic platform. Interestingly, despite its broad reach, television advertising is often categorized under traditional rather than digital marketing methods.

Did you know that over 75% of Americans use the internet daily? And that's not all – about 43% of them log on multiple times a day, while 26% are online almost all the time.

The numbers are even more impressive for people using the internet on their mobile phones. 89% of Americans access the internet at least once a day on their mobile devices, and 31% are practically always online. For anyone in marketing, it's crucial to tap into this digital world. A solid online presence through advertising helps build your brand, creates a better customer experience, and attracts even more potential customers – all part of an innovative digital strategy.

With a digital marketing strategy, you can use various online platforms – like social media, pay-per-click ads, search engine optimization, and email marketing – to reach current customers and people who might want what you're selling. This way, you grow your brand, improve how customers interact with you, and attract new customers.

Comparing Inbound Marketing and Digital Marketing

It's easy to mix up digital and inbound marketing since they share similar tools, like emails and web content. Both aim to grab the attention of potential customers and guide them through the buying process. However, they have different perspectives on using these tools to achieve their goals.

Digital marketing focuses on how specific tools or channels can turn potential customers into actual ones. A brand's digital marketing strategy might use several platforms or concentrate all its efforts on just one. For instance, a business might mainly produce content for social media and email marketing, choosing not to use other types of digital marketing.

In contrast, inbound marketing takes a comprehensive approach. It starts with the end goal and then selects the best tools to reach the target audience, considering where in the sales process this interaction should occur. For example, if your goal is to increase website traffic to attract more potential customers and leads, you might concentrate on search engine optimization in your content strategy. This leads to creating more optimized content, such as blogs and landing pages, to draw in more visitors.

As a marketer, remember that you don't have to choose between digital and inbound marketing. They complement each other well. When you integrate inbound marketing strategies, you provide a structured and goal-oriented approach to your digital marketing efforts. This ensures that every digital marketing channel is aligned and working towards achieving the same objectives.

Why Digital Marketing is Crucial

All forms of marketing can boost your business, but digital marketing is particularly vital due to the widespread accessibility of digital channels. Remarkably, as of April 2022, there were around 5 billion internet users worldwide, underscoring the immense reach of digital marketing.

Digital marketing offers a variety of ways to connect with your audience, ranging from social media platforms to text messaging. Moreover, it often comes with low initial costs, making it an exceedingly budget-friendly option for small businesses looking to expand their reach.

B2B vs B2C Digital Marketing: Understanding the Differences

Digital marketing strategies are widely used by businesses selling to other companies (B2B) and businesses selling directly to consumers (B2C), but the approaches differ significantly. Here's a closer look at how these strategies vary in B2B and B2C contexts.

• In the B2B sector, decisions often involve a longer process and an extended sales cycle. Strategies that foster relationship-building are more effective here. In contrast, B2C marketing often benefits from shorter-term messaging and direct offers.
• B2B transactions typically rely on logic and factual information, which skilled B2B digital marketers are adept at presenting. On the other hand, B2C marketing often appeals to emotions, aiming to make consumers feel good about their purchases.
• Furthermore, B2B decision-making usually involves multiple stakeholders, so the most effective marketing tools can be easily shared and downloaded for collaborative review. B2C consumers, however, often prefer direct, personal interactions with brands.

It's important to remember that the typical rules for B2B and B2C digital marketing don't always apply across the board. For example, a B2C business that sells high-value items like cars or computers might find that more severe and informative content, typically seen in B2B marketing, resonates better with its customers. This highlights the need for any business, whether B2B or B2C, to tailor its digital marketing strategy specifically to the needs and preferences of its unique customer base.

Examine your existing audience closely to craft online marketing campaigns that are both insightful and focused. This approach ensures that your marketing initiatives are efficient and successful in attracting the interest of prospective customers.

Key Components of Digital Marketing

Understanding the essential elements of digital marketing is crucial for any business looking to flourish online. Each aspect, from SEO to content marketing, represents a fundamental building block, offering a range of strategies designed to propel a business to the heights of online success.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization, isn't a marketing strategy by itself but rather a vital tool for marketing. As described by The Balance, SEO involves the 'art and science of making web pages more appealing to search engines. The key to SEO lies in its blend of 'art and science.' Achieving a top position on a search engine results page (SERP) requires a deep understanding and consideration of numerous factors. This analytical and strategic aspect is what makes SEO a science. When optimizing a website for search engines today, several key factors are paramount:

• Quality Content: The substance and value of the content presented.
• User Engagement: The degree to which users interact and engage with the site.
• Mobile Responsiveness: How well the site performs and appears on mobile devices.
• Quality and Quantity of Backlinks: The number of external links pointing to your site and their relevance and authority.

Besides the elements above, optimizing your website's technical SEO is crucial. This involves enhancing back-end aspects such as the structure of your URLs, the loading speed of your pages, and fixing any broken links. Improving these technical aspects makes it easier for search engines to navigate and index your site effectively.

The strategic application of these factors in search engine optimization lends it the characteristics of a science. However, the element of unpredictability in how these factors interact and influence search rankings also infuses SEO with the qualities of an art.

Ultimately, the goal is to have your website appear on the first page of search engine results. This way, people searching for something specific related to your brand can easily find what you offer. Being visible on Google in digital marketing is especially important because it's the largest and most popular search engine globally.

Getting to the top of search engine results with SEO doesn't come with a guaranteed, step-by-step formula. Search engines like Google frequently update their algorithms, making outcomes somewhat uncertain. The best strategy is to closely monitor your page's performance and adjust your methods accordingly.

Content Marketing

As mentioned earlier, the quality of content is a crucial element of an optimized webpage. This intertwines SEO closely with content marketing, a strategy focused on delivering valuable and relevant content to a targeted audience.

Content marketing, similar to other marketing strategies, aims to attract leads that ultimately convert into customers. However, its approach is distinct from traditional advertising. Rather than enticing potential customers with promises of a product or service's value, content marketing offers valuable information for free through various formats such as:

• Blog posts
• E-books
• Newsletters
• Transcripts of videos or audio content
• Instructional guides
• Infographics and data visualizations

Numerous statistics underscore the significance of content marketing:

• 84% of consumers anticipate that companies will produce entertaining and informative content.
• 62% of larger companies, those with over 5,000 employees, create content daily.
• 92% of marketers consider content a valuable asset for their business.

Content marketing is effective, though it can be challenging. Content creators must strive to rank high in search engine results and engage the audience compellingly enough to read, share, and further interact with the brand. When content is genuinely helpful, it has the power to forge robust connections throughout the customer journey.

Understanding your target audience is crucial for creating content that is both engaging and useful. Identifying who you want to reach with your content marketing helps determine the type of content you should produce. Once you have a clear picture of your audience, you can choose from various content formats like videos, blog posts, printable worksheets, and more to suit their preferences and needs.

It's essential to adhere to best practices in content marketing, regardless of the type of material you're creating. This involves producing grammatically correct, error-free, easy-to-understand, helpful, and engaging content. Additionally, your content should effectively guide the audience toward the next stage in the sales funnel, whether directing them to a signup page or encouraging them to schedule a free consultation.

Social media marketing

Social media marketing uses social media platforms to drive traffic to your website and increase brand awareness. It's an opportunity to showcase your business, products, services, and company culture. Investing in social media marketing can be highly beneficial, as it taps into the vast audience of billions who use these platforms for daily interaction.

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the leading platforms for social media marketing, closely followed by LinkedIn and YouTube. The choice of social media sites ultimately depends on your business objectives and target audience. For example, LinkedIn is ideal for a FinTech company seeking new leads, thanks to its professional user base. Conversely, if your target market is younger, Instagram could be a more effective platform for your brand's social media advertising.

Social media marketing's popularity stems from its ability to engage people directly with your brand. It's a preferred method for 96% of B2C digital marketers to disseminate information and is rapidly gaining traction in the B2B sector. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 61% of B2B content marketers have increased their use of social media compared to last year.

Social media marketing includes built-in engagement metrics that are extremely useful in assessing how effectively you connect with your audience. You can choose which types of interactions matter most to your strategy, such as the number of shares, comments, or clicks leading to your website.

Your social media marketing strategy may not necessarily focus on immediate sales. Many brands use social media primarily as a platform for engaging and conversing with their audience rather than directly pushing for purchases. This approach is prevalent among brands targeting older demographics or selling products that require thoughtful consideration before buying. The specific goals you set for your social media marketing will guide this strategy.

Adhering to best practices is crucial for success when creating a social media marketing strategy. Here are key strategies for effective social media marketing:

• Create engaging and high-quality content that captures your audience's interest.
• Professionally and promptly respond to queries and comments.
• Schedule your posts for optimal times when your audience is most active on social media.
• Determine the best times to post for maximum engagement.
• Consider hiring social media managers to enhance and streamline your marketing efforts.
• Understand your audience's preferences and the social media platforms where they are most active.

Hiring social media managers can significantly aid your marketing efforts. These professionals can help you identify your target audience and the social media platforms they frequent most. For insights on optimizing your social media strategy and information on how Techcelerant can assist you, consider our evaluation of various free social media management tools available.

PPC Marketing

Pay-per-click, or PPC, is a model where you pay a fee each time someone clicks on your digital advertisement. Unlike traditional ad models, where you pay a fixed amount to display ads, PPC only costs you when someone actively clicks on your ad. This approach goes beyond just showing your ad to people; it focuses on engagement.

A common form of PPC advertising is search engine advertising, with Google being the most popular platform, used mainly through Google Ads. Whenever a spot on a search engine results page (SERP) is available, it's filled through what amounts to an instant auction. Ads are prioritized and selected based on several criteria, including:

• The overall quality of the ad itself.
• The relevance of the keywords used in the ad.
• The quality and relevance of the landing page the ad links to.
• The amount bid for the ad placement.

Considering the factors mentioned, PPC ads are strategically placed at the top of search engine results pages whenever someone searches for a specific query. This placement ensures maximum visibility for these ads based on the relevant search terms entered.

In every PPC campaign, there's an intended action for users to take after they click on an ad, known as a conversion. These conversions can be commercial, like making a purchase, or non-transactional, such as signing up for an email newsletter or making a phone call to your office. The goal of PPC is to prompt these specific actions from potential customers.

You can monitor the specific conversions you're aiming for, which helps evaluate the effectiveness of your PPC campaign. This tracking is facilitated through the digital marketing platforms you utilize for your advertising efforts.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a strategy in online business where individuals earn money by promoting another business's products or services. Whether you are the promoter (affiliate) or the company partnering with the champion, the process remains consistent for both roles.

This strategy operates on a revenue-sharing model. As an affiliate, when you successfully sell an item, you earn a commission from the business whose product you're promoting. Conversely, if you're the business owner, you compensate your affiliate partner with a commission for each sale they generate for you.

Affiliate marketers often vary in their approach to product reviews. Some may focus exclusively on products from a single company, sharing their thoughts on a blog or another external site. Meanwhile, others might collaborate with multiple sellers, reviewing and promoting various products across different companies.

To begin affiliate marketing, the first step is establishing contact, whether you're looking to become an affiliate or seeking affiliates for your business. There are digital platforms specifically designed to connect affiliates with retailers, making it easier to find suitable partnerships. Alternatively, you can initiate your affiliate program or join an existing one that aligns with your products or services.

As a store owner, there are several strategies you can employ to make your affiliate program more attractive to potential partners. It's crucial to equip your affiliates with the necessary tools for success. This includes offering incentives for outstanding performance and providing them with ready-made marketing tools and materials to facilitate the effective promotion of your business.

Native advertising

Native advertising is a form of internet marketing designed to seamlessly integrate with the surrounding content, making it less evident that it's an advertisement.

This strategy emerged as a response to the growing skepticism towards ads among modern consumers. People tend to be wary of traditional ads, often perceiving them as biased when they know a company has paid for their placement.

Native advertising circumvents this challenge by initially offering information or entertainment. This approach subtly introduces promotional content, making the advertising aspect less prominent and more acceptable to the audience.

It's essential to always clearly label your native ads. Use 'sponsored' or 'promoted' indicators to maintain transparency. Concealing these markers can lead readers to engage deeply with the content before realizing it's an advertisement, which can be misleading.

Clear labeling ensures that your audience knows exactly what they are viewing. This honesty can foster a better perception of your content and business overall. While native ads are designed to be less intrusive than traditional ads, their purpose is not to deceive but to blend harmoniously with the user's experience.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing, akin to affiliate marketing, involves collaborating with individuals with a substantial following, such as celebrities, industry experts, or content creators, to gain exposure for your brand. Typically, these influencers promote your products or services to their followers across various social media platforms.

This type of marketing is highly effective for businesses looking to attract new customers. However, the credibility of your business hinges on the trustworthiness of the influencers you partner with. If the influencer doesn't align well with your brand's values and image, it could impact the public's trust in your business.

Marketing automation

Software is used to run digital marketing efforts through marketing automation. This makes advertising more effective and relevant. You can then focus on making the plan for your digital marketing instead of doing tedious tasks that take a lot of time.

Marketing automation might seem like a tool that your business doesn't need, but it can strengthen the interaction between you and your audience.

Based on the numbers:

• 90% of people in the US like personalization "somewhat" or "very" much.
• 81% of people would like the brands they buy from to know them better.
• Real-time personalization is essential to 77% of businesses, but 60% have trouble with it.

Companies that use marketing automation can keep up with the demand for custom. Brands can use it to:

• Gather and look over information about customers.
• Send and post-digital marketing messages to the right people at the correct times.
• Design targeted marketing campaigns.

Many marketing automation tools determine when and how to contact a prospect next based on how engaged they are (or aren't) with a specific message. With this level of real-time tailoring, you can make a marketing plan specifically tailored to each customer without spending any extra time on it.

Techcelerant's marketing automation tools let you connect with your customers through transactional emails, behavior-based automation, date-based automation, and more.

Email marketing

Email marketing is a simple idea: you send a message with an offer and hope that the person who receives it hits on it. It's much harder to carry out, though. First, make sure that people want to receive your texts. This means you need an opt-in list that does these things:

• Personalizes the text in both the body and the subject line. This makes it clear what kind of emails the user will get.
• An email signature with a straightforward way to stop combines business and marketing emails into one.
• Prospects should see your campaign as a helpful service, not just a way to get more business.

Email marketing has been shown to work and can be used on its own: 89% of workers polled said it was their best way to get new leads.

Other digital marketing methods, like marketing automation, can improve it. This is because it lets you segment and plan your emails better to meet your customers' needs.

If email marketing is something you want to do, here are some tips that will help you make great campaigns:

Divide your audience into groups to send more valuable campaigns to each group.

• Make sure that emails look good on phones.
• Set up a campaign plan.
• Do A/B tests.

Mobile Marketing

A digital marketing approach called "mobile marketing" lets you connect with your audience on their phones, like smartphones and tablets. This can be done through SMS and MMS texts, alerts on social media sites, mobile apps, and other ways.

Making sure that all of your information is mobile-friendly is very important. The Pew Research Center says that 85% of Americans have a smartphone. If you create content for both computers and phones, it can help your marketing.

Advantages of Digital Marketing

A big reason why digital marketing has become popular is that it can reach so many people. However, it has several other benefits that can help your business. These are a few good things about Internet marketing.

A large area of influence

Anyone in the world can see your ad online if you don't restrict where it can be seen. This helps you contact more people and connect with them across more digital channels, which helps your business grow.

Cost efficiency

Digital marketing costs less and touches more people than traditional marketing. Newspaper ads, TV spots, and other standard forms of marketing can have high overhead costs. You also have less control over whether the people you want to see your texts will even see them.

With digital marketing, you only need to write one piece of content to keep people coming to your blog. You can set up an email marketing plan to send messages to targeted customer lists at set times. If you need to, you can easily change the messages' times or content.

Digital marketing gives you more freedom and touch with customers for the money you spend on ads.

Results you can measure

You can tell if your marketing plan works by how many people it brings in and how much money it makes you. But how do you do that with a marketing plan that isn't digital?

"How did you find us?" is a classic question that can always be asked of each customer.

Sadly, that doesn't always work in some fields. Customers and businesses don't always get to talk to each other face-to-face, and polls don't always give complete answers.

It's easy to keep track of results with digital marketing. The digital marketing tools and platforms you use will keep track of how many desired conversions you get, such as email opens, home page views, and direct purchases.

Personalization is easier

That's impossible with local marketing, but you can with digital marketing. It is more likely that data gathered digitally is accurate and precise.

You might be in the financial services business and want to send special deals to people on the internet who have looked at your goods. You know you'll get better results if you make the agreement relevant to the person, so you decide to make two campaigns. The first is for young families looking at your life insurance options, and the second is for younger business owners looking at your retirement plans.

How do you get all that information without using something to track it for you? How many phone records do you need to look through? How many names of customers? Also, how do you know if the paper you sent was read?

You can get all of this information right away with digital marketing.

Get to know your business better.

With digital marketing, you can talk to your customers right now. It lets them talk to you, which is more important.

Plan out how you will use social media. People who want to see your latest post are great, but it's even better when they share or comment on it. Your product or service will get more attention and be discussed when someone joins the conversation.

Your customers will also gain from the interaction. As they become more involved in your brand's story, they become more interested in it. Feeling like you own something can make people very attached to a brand.

Simple and easy changes

With digital marketing, your customers can act immediately after seeing your ad or content. The quickest thing that can happen with standard ads is that someone calls you soon after seeing your ad. But how often does someone have time to call a business while doing the dishes, driving on the highway, or changing records at work?

If they use digital marketing, all they have to do is click on a link or save a blog post to speed up the sales process. The person may not buy immediately, but they will stay in touch with you and give you a chance to talk to them more.

How to make a plan for Digital Marketing

Getting started with digital marketing can be challenging for many small businesses and new digital marketers. But if you use the steps below as a starting point, you can make an excellent digital marketing plan that will raise brand knowledge, get people to interact with your content, and boost sales.

Make SMART goals.

It is essential for any marketing plan to set SMART goals, which stand for specific, measured, achievable, relevant, and timely. You may want to reach many different purposes, but try to concentrate on the ones that will move your plan forward instead of stopping it.

Find your audience.

Figure out who you want to reach before you start any marketing effort. That's the group of people you want your campaign to go to because they have things in common with you, like age, gender, income, or buying habits. Understanding your target group can help you choose which digital marketing channels to use and what content to put in your campaigns.

Make a budget.

A budget keeps you on track so you don't waste money on digital marketing outlets that might not give you the desired results. Consider your SMART goals and the digital outlet you want to use when making a budget.

Pick out your internet channels for marketing.

There are a lot of different digital marketing platforms you can use to your advantage. Some of them are PPC campaigns, content marketing, and more. Most of the time, your goals, audience, and budget will determine which digital marketing platforms you use.

Improve your advertising.

Once the campaign is over, look at the data to see what went well and what could have been done better. This lets you make ads that are even better in the future. You can get this information in an easy-to-read dashboard with the help of computers and apps. The digital marketing analytics reports from Techcelerant will help you keep track of all your efforts from one place.

Digital marketing makes things grow.

One of the main goals of almost any business's general marketing plan should be digital marketing. Digital data allows you to stay in touch with your customers more often than ever, and nothing else gives you the amount of personalization that digital data does. When growing your business, the more you use digital marketing, the more opportunities it offers you.

One of the main goals of almost any business's general marketing plan should be digital marketing. Digital data allows you to stay in touch with your customers more often than ever, and nothing else gives you the amount of personalization that digital data does. When growing your business, the more you use digital marketing, the more opportunities it offers you.