What Is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is the use of websites, apps, mobile devices, social media, search engines, and other digital means to promote and sell products and services.
Digital marketing harnesses digital platforms such as websites, mobile apps, social media, and search engines to efficiently promote and sell products and services. It supplements traditional marketing methods by offering an innovative approach for companies to engage with consumers and analyze their behaviors. Digital marketing started to become popular with the widespread adoption of the internet in the 1990s. Today, companies integrate digital and traditional marketing strategies to effectively reach their audiences, although unique challenges arise, including the fast evolution of digital channels and data utilization.
Key Takeaways
- Digital marketing involves using websites, mobile devices, social media, and search engines to promote products and services, offering an additional approach compared to traditional marketing methods.
- Since the 1990s, digital marketing channels have evolved, including key platforms like email, social media, and pay-per-click advertising. Each requires strategic planning to effectively reach target audiences.
- Key digital marketing strategies include website marketing, content creation, email campaigns, social media, affiliate marketing, and the emerging trend of video and text message marketing.
- Marketers face challenges such as the rapid proliferation of digital channels, the need for effective data analysis, and capturing consumer attention amid digital distractions.
- Successful digital marketers need strong communication skills, proficiency in data analytics, and a solid understanding of social media dynamics to effectively craft compelling marketing narratives.
Investopedia / Mira Norian
Understanding the Mechanics of Digital Marketing
Marketing includes various techniques and media to promote products and increase market share. To be successful, it requires a combination of advertising and sales savvy. Professional marketers take on these tasks either internally at individual companies or externally at marketing firms that may serve many different clients.
Companies once focused on marketing through print, television, and radio because that was all they had. Although those options still exist, the internet gave companies another way to reach consumers and gave rise to digital marketing.
New technologies and trends compelled companies to adjust their marketing strategies and budgets. Email became a popular marketing tool in the early days of digital marketing. Then the focus shifted to search engines like Netscape, which allowed businesses to tag and keyword items to get themselves noticed. The development of social platforms like Facebook made it possible for companies to track user data and deliver their messages to very specific audiences.
Smartphones and portable devices enable companies to market products to consumers anywhere. A 2022 Pew Research Center study found that 76% of American adults had made online purchases using their phones.
Important
Digital marketing can be interactive, unlike traditional print or television advertising.
Exploring Various Digital Marketing Channels
Digital marketing channels have evolved since the 1990s and continue to do so. Here are eight of the most common channels in use today.
Website Marketing
Companies often use their own website as the centerpiece of their digital marketing activities. The most effective websites represent the brand and its products and services in a clear and memorable way. A website today must be fast-loading, mobile-friendly, and easy to navigate.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising enables marketers to reach audiences on news and other websites and digital platforms through paid ads. Marketers can set up PPC campaigns on Google, Bing, LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), Pinterest, and Facebook and show their ads to people searching terms related to their products or services.
These campaigns can segment users based on their demographic characteristics (such as age or gender), or their particular interests or location. The most widely used services for PPC are Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
Content Marketing
The goal of content marketing is to reach potential customers through the use of written, visual, or video content that interests them. That content is usually published on a website and then promoted through social media, email marketing, search engine optimization, or even pay-per-click campaigns. Content marketing attempts to be more subtle than advertising, and the product or service the sponsor is attempting to market may or may not be conspicuously highlighted.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is still one of the most effective digital marketing channels, though many people associate it with spam and treat such messages accordingly. Many digital marketers use their other digital marketing channels to collect names for their email lists. Then, through email marketing, they try to turn those leads into customers.
Social Media Marketing
The primary goals of a social media marketing campaign are to build brand awareness and establish trust. As you go deeper into social media marketing, you can use it to obtain leads and as a direct marketing or sales channel. Promoted posts and tweets are two examples of social media marketing.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing, and the digital world has given it new life. In affiliate marketing, companies and individual “influencers” promote another company’s products and get a commission every time a sale is made or a fresh lead is added to their list. Many well-known companies, including Amazon, have affiliate programs that pay out millions of dollars to affiliates that help sell their products.
Video Marketing
A lot of internet users turn to sites like YouTube before making a buying decision, to learn how to do something, to read a review, or just to relax. Marketers can use any of several video marketing platforms, including Facebook Videos, Instagram, and TikTok, to run a video marketing campaign. Companies find the most success with video by integrating it with SEO, content marketing, and broader social media marketing campaigns.
Text Messaging
Companies use text messages (SMS) to share news about products and promotions. Nonprofit organizations and political candidates also use texting to promote themselves and solicit donations. Today many marketing campaigns make it possible for consumers to make a payment or donation via a simple text message.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Digital Marketing
Digital marketers use key performance indicators (KPIs) just like traditional marketers. KPIs let them measure the long-term performance of their marketing initiatives and compare those to their competitors’ efforts.
The following are some of the most common KPIs that marketers can use to gauge how well they’re doing:
- Click-through rate: This KPI is commonly used to measure the effectiveness of online advertising, by counting the number of people who clicked on a particular ad as a percentage of all the people who might have seen it.
- Conversion rate: The conversion rate goes even further than the click-through rate to compare the percentage of people who took some desired action, such as making a purchase, to the total audience that a particular ad or promotion reached.
- Social media traffic: This tracks how many people interact with a company’s social media profiles. It includes likes, follows, views, shares, and/or other measurable actions.
- Website traffic: This metric tracks how many people visit a company’s website during a given time period. Among other uses, it can help companies judge how effective their marketing efforts are at driving consumers to their site.
Digital Marketing Challenges
The digital world poses special challenges for marketers. For example, digital channels proliferate rapidly, and marketers have to keep up on them and figure out how to use them effectively. Marketers can also find it challenging to analyze and make productive use of the huge amount of data they can capture through these platforms.
Perhaps most important, consumers are increasingly inundated with digital ads and other distractions, making it more and more difficult to capture their attention.
What Is a Digital Marketing Agency?
A digital marketing agency is a company that deals exclusively in marketing to consumers or businesses through digital channels. This includes creating and launching campaigns for clients through social media, pay-per-click advertising, videos, and custom websites, among other means.
What Is SEO in Digital Marketing?
Search engine optimization (SEO) describes a variety of techniques that companies use in an effort to increase traffic to their website and raise its position in search results. The higher a site appears on the search results page, the more likely consumers are to see it and potentially click to visit it.
What Is Internet Marketing?
Technically, internet marketing is marketing that takes place solely on the internet. As such, it is a subset of digital marketing, which can use many different kinds of digital platforms, including the internet, to reach its desired audience.
How Can You Become a Digital Marketer?
Digital marketers need strong writing and social media skills, along with a good understanding of data analytics. A bachelor’s degree is required for most digital marketing positions. You might also want to take digital marketing courses or participate in a digital “boot camp.” In addition, completing an internship while in school can be useful. A master’s degree in digital marketing may be useful but is not considered essential.
What Skills Are Needed in Digital Marketing?
Strong communication skills are essential for successfully conveying a company’s story. Data analytics skills are also important for understanding how well a marketing campaign is performing and where it might be improved. Finally, social media skills are another must.
What Is Implicit Bias in Digital Marketing?
Implicit bias, or unconscious bias, involves messages that unwittingly convey negative stereotypes about certain groups. In recent years it has come in for particular notice in the fields of advertising and marketing. In digital marketing it may manifest itself in something as simple as the choice of stock photos for a marketing campaign. For instance, without even thinking about it, companies may use images of only heterosexual White individuals while excluding Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, along with those of different body types and abilities. While digital marketers often use supposedly unbiased algorithms to help craft their campaigns, those algorithms are created by human beings who may bring their own unconscious biases to them.
The Bottom Line
The ways in which people consume media in the 21st century have caused marketers to put increased, and sometimes exclusive, emphasis on digital platforms for their campaigns. While digital marketing uses many of the same techniques as traditional marketing through print, television, and radio, it also has its own set of tools that marketers need to master in order to succeed.