Introduction to Digital Marketing

In this article, we will initially understand the meaning of digital marketing and its significance, but most importantly, the various digital marketing types will be explored to gain an understanding of the different approaches companies can take.

At present, doing digital marketing is not a fad but a necessary business requirement that requires careful short and long-term planning to execute successfully and achieve the set marketing objectives.

Digital marketing refers to the marketing of products and services through the use of a wide range of online/digital channels such as social media marketing, search engine marketing, and several others which will be looked at in detail in the upcoming sections of this blog.

In today’s business world when compared to traditional advertising, Facebook and Google tend to generate higher ad revenue, and because of the massive use of mobile phones and internet usage, the popularity of print advertising has decreased. This has led to the rise of digital marketing as customers have gone online.

The statistics below show the massive use of unique mobile subscribers, as well as internet and social media users as opposed to the total population. This reinforces the significance of digital marketing to both large and small-to-medium businesses.

Screenshot from Datareportal, January 2024

Major Types of Digital Marketing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

One type of digital marketing is search engine optimization, more commonly known as SEO. To remain competitive online, businesses should continuously adapt their SEO approach to align with search engine updates and user expectations.

SEO is all about enhancing website visibility in search engines such as Microsoft Bing, and Google so that your company comes on top of the audiences’ search results or essentially on the first page whenever people search for products, services, or even topics of expertise which your company offers.

There are many tasks to undertake to enhance a website’s search engine ranking. However, getting the basic practices right is the first step before looking into advanced SEO practices.

In 2024, the top SEO practices and strategies to implement involves the following:

• • Writing differentiated descriptions, titles, and content: Web page content should be very unique and businesses need to avoid duplicated content on their website

• • The primary keywords should appear in content from the start: Since Google puts more importance on keywords appearing at the start of webpage content, mentioning primary keywords from the top is essential. However, keep in mind to avoid keyword stuffing

• • Title tag optimization: Your primary keyword should appear at the start of your title tag, or in some place on your title tag where appropriate. Because Google places importance on phrases and words on the title tag

• • Website loading speed optimization: Your site needs to be able to load as fast as possible. Image compressing, and using WordPress themes which are lightweight are some of the ways to achieve this

• • Enhance the user experience of your site: Site owners should pay attention to any broken links, and any user difficulties experienced so that users do not bounce or leave from your site. Website content should also be user-friendly with valuable content

• • Undertake internal linking and build backlinks: These are two important concepts to consider if you want your business to rank highly on the search engine results page. Internal linking refers to linking a webpage on your site with another webpage. Using anchor texts which are keyword-rich would be one way to do this

• Higher Google rankings are also achieved through backlinks: Placing importance on specific content formats, and creating content with data points, or rather a hook will also get people to backlink to your website

The below content formats such as ‘what’ and ‘why’ posts received more links based on a 900+ million blog post analysis:

Screenshot from Backlinko, December 2023

So getting these basic SEO practices right is crucial to helping your business’s website rank highly compared to your competitors.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search engine marketing is another type of digital marketing that is different from SEO because SEM leverages on paid advertising so that a brand’s search engine results appear on a higher placement. This is done to attract potential audiences’ who are searching for the relevant keywords

Pay-per-click ads are the essence of search engine marketing and come in various formats from visual shopping ads showcasing relevant information such as product images, reviews, and prices to solely text-based search ads

As mentioned earlier, SEM is where a brand’s search results appear on a higher placement because the brand paid for the ads on Google. However, SEO is organic where a brand identifies specific keywords and publishes relevant content based on those keywords to get more clicks and website traffic without paying Google. Both a combination of SEO and SEM are essential for your overall digital marketing strategy creation

Social Media Marketing

Another important digital marketing type is social media marketing. This is where social media sites such as Instagram, and Facebook are used to promote your brand’s products and services.

The most popular social media networks for 2024 based on the monthly active users (in millions) are as follows:

Screenshot from Statista, January 2024

Businesses and brands wanting to reach more of their potential customers should make sure to get on these popular social media platforms for marketing if they have not already. However, businesses should keep in mind to be more active and create engaging content on platforms their specific target audiences are on, since each platform would serve a different purpose.

Once a social media strategy is in place, it should be continuously monitored and adapted where necessary. Rather than having to make huge adjustments to the social media marketing approach, when you keep an eye on the defined metrics continuously, incremental modifications can be made for your campaigns in real-time.

Email Marketing

Sending emails to your existing and potential customers to raise brand awareness, encourage engagement, nurture leads, or close a deal is known as email marketing.

Globally there are over 4 billion email users, so email marketing is not a type of digital marketing to ignore. Email marketing is a great way to drive a lot of website traffic and create awareness about your products and services by providing educational content, and other valuable resources.

For effective email marketing campaigns, segmenting your email subscribers into groups based on different criteria such as the customer’s stage in the funnel, and demographics, would help in email campaigns that are better targeted.

Coupling this with personalization, emails would feel more humane helping increase open rates, and clicks, to ultimately enhance your email list and customer base.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is another digital marketing type that is not talked about enough, where publishers use affiliate links to promote products and services offered by other retailers or advertisers. The publishers/affiliate partners would earn a commission for providing the retailers with specific results such as sales, leads, or even app downloads.

Basically how affiliate marketing works is as follows:

• • On the affiliate’s blog, website, or social network, they would post a link or an ad redirecting to a retail store

• • The unique affiliate link would be clicked upon by the customer

• • The customer would be redirected to the retail store and make a purchase

• • The transaction would be recorded by the affiliate network

• • The retail store confirms the purchase

• • A monetary commission is paid out to the affiliate partner

Affiliate marketing would help businesses get ad space for free, and they would only need to pay the affiliates for the conversions received. Brands would also be able to get increased recognition and awareness when affiliates promote the products to their audiences. However, brands should ensure that affiliates do not post any false advertising which may damage the brand’s reputation.

Decide the right digital marketing mix and types

In this blog, we discussed several primary digital marketing types from social media marketing to search engine marketing and affiliate marketing. However, businesses should keep in mind that these digital marketing types are not the only types to exist.

For businesses to create an effective digital marketing strategy, a key aspect to consider would be to select the right digital marketing mix and types to focus on. Integration of the different types of digital marketing would allow businesses to gain maximum impact in terms of brand reach and ultimately help meet their marketing and business objectives.