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What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is any marketing initiative that leverages online media and the internet through connected devices such as mobile phones, home computers, or the Internet of Things (IoT). Common digital marketing initiatives center around distributing a brand message through search engines, social media, applications, email, and websites. 

Today, digital marketing often focuses on reaching a customer with increasingly conversion-oriented messages across multiple channels as they move down the sales funnel. Ideally, marketing teams will be able to track the role each of these messages and/or channels plays in reaching their ultimate goal. 

Examples of Digital Marketing Assets

In short, a digital marketing asset is any tool that you use online. Here are a few of the more common examples:

• Social Media Profiles
• Website
• Images and Video Content
• Blog Posts and eBooks
• Reviews and Customer Testimonials
• Branded Logos, Images, or Icons

What is a Digital Marketing Platform?

Gartner notes that in the context of modern business, platforms are tools that provide multiple business or technology capabilities. While there are tools to address specific functions within one business need, such as a single tool to schedule social media updates alone, platforms support multiple functions across these needs. Platforms typically enable a more extensive set of functions with APIs, integrations, and partnerships with other applications or data sources. 

Now, let’s revisit the initial question. What is a digital marketing platform? A digital marketing platform is a solution that supports a variety of functions within the realm of marketing over the internet. According to Gartner, it is important to note that to classify as a platform, the solution cannot claim to support every component of digital marketing – but will rather cover functionality like media buying, performance measurement and optimization, and brand tracking. However, it may not cover other marketing efforts like SEO, social media.

Why is Digital Marketing Important?

Digital marketing is on the rise – surpassing spend on traditional marketing for the first time ever in 2019. This is because consumers are increasingly present on online channels. With this increased use of technology, digital marketing platforms have become essential to the digital marketing world. Tech advancements such as AI and machine learning, make marketers better equipped with the marketing technology they need to reach consumers on digital devices at just the right moment.This is opposed to traditional marketing methods – which have to be planned and placed well in advance. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, and blogs have now taken over the digital marketing space. Consider the following: 

• The world has 7.7 billion people and 4.4 billion people use the internet
• Nearly 30 percent of consumers would rather interact with brands via social channels versus going to a store.

To be competitive, organizations need to be present across digital channels and devices. However, this doesn’t mean offline channels should be ignored altogether. The best way to meet consumer demands is with an omnichannel presence – which combines offline and digital elements.

Here are a few more reasons why digital platforms can be an asset your business: 

• You can build an online community to represent your organization across all platforms. 
• Personalized exchanges between consumers and producers. 
• Increases appeal for consumers and establishes trust between buyers and sellers.
• The use of API’s  allows a 3rd party to facilitate the exchange for users.

  By employing digital marketing initiatives, your organization can create a more cohesive, customer oriented program that maximizes benefits for your clients. Digital marketing platforms can also be beneficial for easy measurement and adjustment of company goals and bring you a better return on investment. These platforms and initiatives open up the door to ongoing engagement even after a purchase, which can help marketing teams more effectively foster brand loyalty and improve customer retention.

8 Types of Digital Marketing Strategies with Examples

    8 common platforms for digital marketing include social media, influencer marketing, content marketing, email, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), affiliate, and mobile. Let’s take a deeper look at each:

1. Social Media Marketing Platforms 

Todays’ consumers are highly reliant on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. This is why it is essential that brands are active across accounts. Consider these stats: 

• On average users have about 8 social media accounts.
• An average of 2 hours and 22 minutes are spent on social media per person per day.
• Out of the 5.11 billion people who have a phone, 3.26 billion access social media using it.
• People spend about 1/7th of their waking time on social platforms.

Social media platforms allow marketers to reach their prospects in a myriad of ways. First, marketing teams can use these channels to distribute paid ads and sponsored content. Each platform has a way for marketing teams to create paid ad campaigns and segment users so these ads appear on the feeds of target audience members. While each platform is different, most have capabilities that allow marketing teams to place ads based on location, job title, interests, age, etc.

Social media is also a great way to promote products or resources organically to your followers, and engage with consumers. Chances are, people that follow your brand on social media have likely purchased from you in the past. Interacting with them on social media or answering customer service-oriented questions is a great way to ensure continued engagement with the brand and cultivate positive experiences and customer loyalty.

Domino’s Pizza customer service on Twitter

Finally, marketing teams can use social media to build their brand and establish a voice that can make them popular to follow and share. For example, Wendy’s flippant and funny tone has made them exceptionally popular on Twitter, commonly earning likes, retweets, and responses.  

2. Influencer Marketing

Another effective way to harness digital channels to reach target audiences is with influencer marketing. Brands can partner with celebrities, sites, or others that are considered experts in their field, that share similar values. Brands can then reach these influencers’ followers with branded content and offers. Many marketers have found success with influencer marketing, with 9 out 10 noting that it was the same or better than other channels they use. Additionally, 1 out of 2 women based a purchase decision on a recommendation from an influencer.

Here is an example of influencer marketing: GoPro partnered up with this Colorado-based influencer, Loki, whose followers include many outdoor enthusiasts. This put their product in front of their target audience, with a recommendation from a like-minded, trustworthy source.

3. Email Marketing

Email marketing campaigns allow organizations to stay connected with prospects and customers, sending them customized newsletters or offers based on past shopping history or brand engagements. If an individual has interacted with a few of your branded touchpoints – like an email offer for 10 percent off the items they have been considering, or free shipping - that may be what ultimately brings about a conversion.  Nearly 60% of consumers say that email plays a role in their purchase decisions. Furthermore, transactional emails are more likely to be opened by subscribers.

4. Content Marketing

Content marketing allows marketing teams to be proactive in answering their users’ questions. Marketing teams create content, videos, and other assets to answer questions or provide context to consumers throughout the three stages of the buyer’s journey:

• The awareness stage: Buyer realizes they have a need 
• The consideration stage: Buyer determines a course of action to meet this need 
• The decision stage: Buyer decides on a product / service to purchase to meet the need

For example, a consumer might realize they need new shoes to wear to the gym. The marketing team for an activewear company may produce a piece about what features you need from a running shoe, as opposed to what you need if you focus on strength training. Looking at this content, the buyer determines they need a pair of running shoes that meets that criteria. Another piece of content might show the most popular running shoes and their price points. Once they are educated on these factors, they decide. The guidance offered by your brand throughout will likely result in them purchasing from you. Content marketing is often less expensive than other forms of marketing, while producing nearly 3 times as many leads.

5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Marketing

Search engine optimization often goes hand in hand with content marketing. When the customer from the above example is conducting research for which gym shoes to buy, they will probably click on one of the first three results that appear on Google. With this in mind, the athletic shoes’ marketing team wants to ensure their article appears in those top results. This is done by optimizing content for user experience and ensuring the technical elements are in place to enable search engine crawlers to easily find and index this content.

6. Pay-per-click (PPC)

Pay-per-click is a form of paid advertising that allows marketing teams to essentially purchase traffic to their website. Marketers place ads on websites or search engines such as Google and Microsoft Bing, and pay a fee each time the ad is clicked on. These ads often appear at the top of the search results page, andare typically determined by bids on specific keywords, while banner ads on websites usually have set prices.  

7. Affiliate Marketing 

Affiliate marketing is similar to referral programs, it involves working with outside individuals or companies under the agreement that they promote your product in exchange for a commission from each sale that can be attributed to their efforts. This is a way to cut down on costs and outsource some of the heavy lifting of promotion, however, you’re putting your brand's reputation in someone else’s hands, so this type of marketing often requires more extensive monitoring and tracking.

8. Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing initiatives can include many of the digital marketing strategies mentioned above, and typically will leverage a combination of text messages, social media, email, push notifications, and mobile applications. The importance of mobile marketing is rising, as it is expected that by 2024, the number of mobile shoppers will rise to approximately 187.5 million users. With the clear move to mobile, marketers need to think about how they can optimize their current marketing efforts for mobile to be able to deliver a seamless and user-friendly experience.