What are the different types of Digital Marketing?
A business’s Digital Marketing strategy can encompass a wide variety of techniques and technologies. For a company to find the right marketing mix, it’s crucial to understand the uses and benefits that come with different marketing types. The core forms of marketing that today’s industry relies on are:
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is the ongoing practice of optimising a website’s performance to enhance its natural appearance in relevant search engine results. When a person performs a search on Google or another search engine, the websites displayed are judged on their merits by a search engine algorithm. In effect, similar websites compete against each other to appear in the search results, and a website’s SEO performance is judged in comparison to the SEO of its competitors.
The fundamentals of SEO are on-page (changes made to a website) and off-page (links back to a site and digital activities done outside the site that relate to that site). Because of the rate of web technology improvements, a newer website will normally have an advantage in SEO over an older website that was built with older technologies.
Email marketing is built on the premise of permission given by the recipient. In marketer Seth Godin’s seminal book, Permission Marketing, Godin talks about the novelty of permission in marketing and how the email recipient has co-opted into the relationship, expecting and anticipating marketing messages.
Email marketing is one of the easiest methods to get started in digital marketing, requiring only an email marketing software tool to ensure compliances such as unsubscribe buttons are met. Email marketing can be turbocharged with advertising and email funnel automation, to lead consumers down a path towards purchase.
Social media marketing uses social media for the purpose of building a community of people around a business and compelling those people to make a purchase. Popular social sites for marketing include Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
Social media marketing is also a great way to grow an email database, improve a website’s SEO, and perform customer service functions.
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM is distinct from SEO in that it’s paid advertising. SEM is often referred to as ‘paid search’ and the way it’s performed is through PPC, or Pay-Per-Click. Ads are purchased on the main search engines and a business pays every time a click is performed on the ad.
Display advertising includes visuals such as images or videos that are placed on relevant websites within a network, such as the Google Display Network or Facebook’s network. Display advertising has three basic categories:
- Site placement advertising
The advertiser/marketer chooses the website they would like to run their display ads on.
- Contextual advertising
Networks place ads on relevant websites, such as when a food product ad is shown on a cooking website.
- Remarketing
This is when website users are ‘tagged’ with a pixel from a particular website, which then allows the business to show ads from that business on other websites, as the user browses the internet.
Video advertising is promotional content that plays before, during or after streaming video, such as within Facebook or YouTube. You could also call some display advertising that uses video video marketing too. YouTube was one of the first platforms to offer six-second ads. Thirty seconds is the most popular ad length, since late 2015.
According to video marketing research, 93% of marketers using video say it’s a vital part of their strategy and 87% claim it offers them a strong Return on Investment (ROI). .
The oft-quoted phrase “content is king” came from an essay by Bill Gates in 1996. Content marketing is creating, publishing, and distributing content that serves strategic purposes for a business or organisation. Content marketing is used to:
- Attract attention and generate leads
- Expand a customer base
- Make online sales
- Answer customer questions
- Address common barriers to purchase
- Increase the business’ perceived authority or credibility
- Engage an online community of users
To be effective, a business must create content that is useful, valuable and relevant to its target market, who are then willing to engage with the business online, typically through subscribing to their email database and/or participating on their social media channels.
Examples of content include blog articles, infographics, videos, e-books or case studies, among others.
Affiliate marketing is the process of selling someone else’s product and earning a commission on sales. To do this, the merchant, seller or brand, finds ‘affiliates’ who are willing to promote a particular product or service. Each affiliate is given a unique URL (web link) which measures clicks. The affiliate then promotes this link, typically through their email list, and any sales that result earn the affiliate a percentage of the sale.
Most of the time, a network acts as an intermediary between the merchant and the affiliate. Networks such as ClickBank or Commission Junction handle the payment and product delivery and provide a database of lots of products that the affiliate marketer can choose whether or not to promote. When a network is involved, the merchant only manages their affiliate program on that network and doesn’t deal with individual affiliates.
Whether the consumer knows that they are part of an affiliate marketing system or not is mostly up to the affiliate. For affiliate marketing to work effectively for both parties, the affiliate needs a large email list or online community of people who trust them.
A business’s Digital Marketing strategy can encompass a wide variety of techniques and technologies. For a company to find the right marketing mix, it’s crucial to understand the uses and benefits that come with different marketing types. The core forms of marketing that today’s industry relies on are:
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is the ongoing practice of optimising a website’s performance to enhance its natural appearance in relevant search engine results. When a person performs a search on Google or another search engine, the websites displayed are judged on their merits by a search engine algorithm. In effect, similar websites compete against each other to appear in the search results, and a website’s SEO performance is judged in comparison to the SEO of its competitors.
The fundamentals of SEO are on-page (changes made to a website) and off-page (links back to a site and digital activities done outside the site that relate to that site). Because of the rate of web technology improvements, a newer website will normally have an advantage in SEO over an older website that was built with older technologies.
Email marketing is built on the premise of permission given by the recipient. In marketer Seth Godin’s seminal book, Permission Marketing, Godin talks about the novelty of permission in marketing and how the email recipient has co-opted into the relationship, expecting and anticipating marketing messages.
Email marketing is one of the easiest methods to get started in digital marketing, requiring only an email marketing software tool to ensure compliances such as unsubscribe buttons are met. Email marketing can be turbocharged with advertising and email funnel automation, to lead consumers down a path towards purchase.
Social media marketing uses social media for the purpose of building a community of people around a business and compelling those people to make a purchase. Popular social sites for marketing include Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
Social media marketing is also a great way to grow an email database, improve a website’s SEO, and perform customer service functions.
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM is distinct from SEO in that it’s paid advertising. SEM is often referred to as ‘paid search’ and the way it’s performed is through PPC, or Pay-Per-Click. Ads are purchased on the main search engines and a business pays every time a click is performed on the ad.
Display advertising includes visuals such as images or videos that are placed on relevant websites within a network, such as the Google Display Network or Facebook’s network. Display advertising has three basic categories:
- Site placement advertising
The advertiser/marketer chooses the website they would like to run their display ads on.
- Contextual advertising
Networks place ads on relevant websites, such as when a food product ad is shown on a cooking website.
- Remarketing
This is when website users are ‘tagged’ with a pixel from a particular website, which then allows the business to show ads from that business on other websites, as the user browses the internet.
Video advertising is promotional content that plays before, during or after streaming video, such as within Facebook or YouTube. You could also call some display advertising that uses video video marketing too. YouTube was one of the first platforms to offer six-second ads. Thirty seconds is the most popular ad length, since late 2015.
According to video marketing research, 93% of marketers using video say it’s a vital part of their strategy and 87% claim it offers them a strong Return on Investment (ROI). .
The oft-quoted phrase “content is king” came from an essay by Bill Gates in 1996. Content marketing is creating, publishing, and distributing content that serves strategic purposes for a business or organisation. Content marketing is used to:
- Attract attention and generate leads
- Expand a customer base
- Make online sales
- Answer customer questions
- Address common barriers to purchase
- Increase the business’ perceived authority or credibility
- Engage an online community of users
To be effective, a business must create content that is useful, valuable and relevant to its target market, who are then willing to engage with the business online, typically through subscribing to their email database and/or participating on their social media channels.
Examples of content include blog articles, infographics, videos, e-books or case studies, among others.
Affiliate marketing is the process of selling someone else’s product and earning a commission on sales. To do this, the merchant, seller or brand, finds ‘affiliates’ who are willing to promote a particular product or service. Each affiliate is given a unique URL (web link) which measures clicks. The affiliate then promotes this link, typically through their email list, and any sales that result earn the affiliate a percentage of the sale.
Most of the time, a network acts as an intermediary between the merchant and the affiliate. Networks such as ClickBank or Commission Junction handle the payment and product delivery and provide a database of lots of products that the affiliate marketer can choose whether or not to promote. When a network is involved, the merchant only manages their affiliate program on that network and doesn’t deal with individual affiliates.
Whether the consumer knows that they are part of an affiliate marketing system or not is mostly up to the affiliate. For affiliate marketing to work effectively for both parties, the affiliate needs a large email list or online community of people who trust them.
How do businesses choose which Digital Marketing channels to invest in?
It’s vital for any marketer to understand how to use each of the major Digital Marketing channels, and at which stage of the customer purchase journey each works best. Depending on the business, audience and marketing objectives, a business can select the channels that are most suitable.
First, let’s define what the customer purchase journey is. Otherwise known as the buyer’s journey, it involves a three-stage process:
- Stage 1: Awareness – this is when the buyer realises that they have a problem
- Stage 2: Consideration – the buyer better understands their problem and possible solutions and researches options
- Stage 3: Purchase – the buyer chooses a solution and makes a purchase
How businesses use SEO
In the awareness stage, a person is fairly inarticulate about solutions and instead likely to be researching their problems. SEO content marketing, such as a blog, can boost a website’s ranking and help the person understand the solution your business offers.
In the consideration stage, a person is more familiar with solutions, but ranking on search engines will become harder as more businesses will be vying for related search terms.
In the decision stage, a person is motivated to purchase and will search for known businesses offering solutions. Ranking for these search phrases will be highly lucrative, but even more competitive.
How businesses use email marketing
Over the last decade consumers have become increasingly reluctant to give away their email addresses. This means businesses are striving to create valuable email assets, such as free tutorials or whitepapers, that require an email opt-in for the consumer to access.
Email marketing is more likely to work in the consideration stage, when a consumer is motivated to seek out information that helps them make a smart purchase. A well-timed email pop-up that offers an incentive, such as a discount code, is likely to offer a strong conversion rate.
How businesses use social media marketing
Social media marketing is used for brand reach and is particularly useful at the awareness stage, when the consumer is performing broad research.
For e-commerce brands that seamlessly link social posts to their online checkout, social media marketing can also positively influence conversion rates at the purchase stage.
How businesses use SEM
Search Engine Marketing is particularly useful for the consideration and decision stages, when the consumer is either searching for a solution or considering the pros and cons that come with each available solution. At this stage, they might also be actively performing research on specialist websites that could display relevant ads for your business.
How businesses use display advertising
Display ads use a push approach, whereby ads are served to people after they’ve watched a video, read emails, or browsed the web. This means display ads are most effective during the consideration stage, after the consumer has indicated their interest.
How businesses use video advertising
Video advertising can be used effectively during the awareness and consideration stages. During the awareness stage, a video ad can introduce the solution and demonstrate how a product works. During the consideration stage, the consumer has heightened awareness of the various options available and is more likely to take note of brand names for further research.
How businesses use content marketing
In the awareness stage, a business can use content marketing to talk with empathy about the problems the consumer is grappling with, which can help to create trust.
In the consideration stage, the business needs to shift to detailed, useful content that is relevant to the consumer. In the decision stage, the content marketing needs to focus on resolving common barriers to purchase. This might include highlighting case studies, successful client stories and the brand’s point-of-difference, all of which can help convert a lead.
How businesses use affiliate marketing
Because of pre-existing relationships between the affiliate and their audience, affiliates can introduce a product that the audience wasn’t looking for at the awareness stage and skillfully convince them that it’s needed.
Affiliate marketing is also useful in the consideration stage, when the customer is canvassing options. Affiliate marketing can be used by consumers to compare and contrast multiple companies and solutions, helping them make a purchase decision.