Of the different marketing mediums, digital marketing is one of the most prominent in 2022. With digital marketing in a business’s toolbelt, they can reach their target audience regardless of their geographic location. In this article, we will be looking at some of the concepts and functions of Digital Marketing and answer the question: “What is digital marketing?”
Digital Marketing Explained
Digital Marketing is a marketing technique that uses the internet and electronic devices to reach potential consumers. It is an umbrella term for all the marketing techniques that use digital technologies to target, engage, and measure consumers.
Digital marketing uses the internet, social media, mobile devices, display advertising, and other new technologies to create a customer-centric environment. Marketers design plans to use these tools and reach their target audience with their products, content, and information. Your business should utilize digital marketing to maximize your return on investment, whether your goal is conversions (sales, subscriptions, registrations, etc.) or brand awareness.
Digital Marketing History
The first use of the term “digital marketing” is believed to have been in 1983 by Neil Borden, a professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. One of the first documented cases of digital marketing was in 1994 when Hotmail created an email service that allowed users to send messages without having to know someone’s email address or phone number. This was a huge innovation at the time.
Digital marketing became more prevalent in the 2000s and 2010s due to cheaper internet access, increased bandwidth speeds, and better computer technology. The internet has changed how we communicate with each other and how we do business. Now, with the use of search engines and social media, businesses can reach billions of consumers with the right marketing plan and sufficient investment.
In the last decade, digital marketing has become a core component of many businesses’ marketing strategies. This includes email campaigns, online display advertising, content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media marketing (SMM). All of these tools can be used to increase visibility, build brand loyalty, and generate leads.
Types of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing leverages many technologies to promote or sell products, services, and ideas. Businesses can use them to attract customers to their websites, build their brand, generate leads and make sales. Let’s take a look at the major types of digital marketing.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing uses social media platforms to create social media posts, run paid ads, and engage with target audiences and existing customers. Social media marketing is a great way to promote your business, but it can be hard to get started. On most platforms, new business accounts have very little opportunity to reach large audiences – this is especially true for Facebook.
It’s important to remember that social media marketing is not just about creating content and advertising it on the appropriate platform. Successful social media marketing requires an understanding of the company’s goals; what its audiences are interested in, what messages they’re trying to convey, and how those messages can be most effectively communicated on each individual platform. For example, LinkedIn is great for sharing blog posts, YouTube is great for sharing knowledge, and Facebook is a good place to build an interactive community.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a great way to reach out to your target audience. It is cost-effective and can be used for a variety of purposes including following up with customers, sending newsletters, and promoting offers.
The goal of email marketing is to deliver a message about a product or service to an audience who has expressed interest in that type of product or service. The message might include a link that allows the recipient to purchase the product or service online, a video that provides more information, or a form that allows users to register. The delivery and receipt of email messages can be tracked with the help of ESPs (email service providers). Gmail and Outlook are two of the most prominent ESPs, and digital marketers can use other tools that track web analytics and recipient behaviors.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engine results pages (SERPs). There are three major search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
In order to rank high on these search engines, one must have good content on their website, their websites must function properly, and other websites usually have to link back to them. Websites need to have an optimized site architecture as well as meta tags so that they can be easily indexed by Google’s crawlers Google uses over 200 different signals to rank webpages in SERPs. Some factors include how often a webpage is updated, how many hyperlinks point to it from other sites, and how many people share it on social media networks.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a way of digital marketing that relies on creating and sharing relevant and valuable content with your audience. Content can be in any form such as text, images, audio, or video. It is one of the most powerful ways to market your business because it builds trust and credibility with your audience. Blogging is arguably the most effective form of content marketing because it provides your audience value, increases brand awareness, and helps your SEO effort.
The main goal of content marketing is to create an impact on your target audience. To do this, it’s important to have a clear understanding of your target audience and their needs. You need to know what they want and what they don’t want to see in order to give them exactly what they are looking for. Once you accomplish that, you can be confident they will move further down your sales funnel – a step closer to becoming a conversion.
Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC)
PPC is a form of internet advertising that displays ads on search engines and social media platforms. It can be used to target a specific audience and is often more cost-effective than other forms of digital marketing because platforms push your content much further than its organic reach.
The first step in PPC is to identify the target audience. This helps to determine which keywords are most effective for the campaign. The next step is to create an ad that will be shown when people search for those keywords on Google or Facebook. The final step is determining how much money should be spent on the campaign each day, week, or month.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a type of digital marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. This, of course, means that the affiliate needs to have a certain level of reach and influence. And it is not always easy to measure this type of reach. One way to do so is by looking at the number of followers and subscribers that an influencer has on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, and others.
Many affiliate marketers compose comprehensive blogs or several YouTube videos that have affiliate links to businesses’ products or services. For example, a travel blog may write a post titled “best backpacks for hiking” and include several affiliate links to backpacks with positive descriptions of each. Businesses can really benefit from affiliate marketing because it uses the credibility of the affiliates to promote their products.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a type of digital marketing that is based on influential people. These people can be celebrities, bloggers, or social media personalities. This type of marketing has become more popular because it helps brands to reach their target audience more efficiently and effectively.
Influencers are often used to market products and services to their followers and fans by creating sponsored content. They have the power to influence what people buy, what they believe in, and how they feel about brands. The main difference between influencer marketing and affiliate marketing is that businesses usually pay influencers to simply endorse their products, while affiliate marketers are only compensated when a member of their audience makes a purchase using their link.
Conclusion
Digital Marketing is can scale a small business into a large company, given the right time and investment. With an unbiased eye, it’s hard not to see the future of marketing continuing to trend toward digital marketing. If you’re looking for a strong digital marketing plan, or need yours executed perfectly, feel free to reach out to Hemingway Marketing & Entertainment LLC. We can’t wait to discuss the future of your business.
