Different Types of Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is a non-static and ever expanding arena. Which digital marketing channels should you be on?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of each of the different types of digital marketing channels? Where do you even start?

What are the different types of digital marketing for beginners? Digital marketing strategy is much more than just a website and a fun ‘viral’ video.

Here we will be looking at a few different types of digital marketing categories.

When it comes to choosing -the usual questions will apply:

Why do you want to use digital marketing channels
Who are you trying to reach with your digital marketing strategies?

This will help you select the right strategies and channels to achieve your objectives.

Digital marketing can take a number of different forms. For most business owners there are a few main types of digital marketing platforms you will want to consider.

Types of Digital Marketing Strategies

We are here! It is now time to dive in to the different types of digital marketing strategies.

They are in no particular order of importance since all of them are equally important. How you choose to use them will vary from industry to industry depending on your business goals and plans.

Table of Content

Following are the different types of digital marketing campaigns that are important for any business.

Click on any of them to get diectly to your prefered section or you can scroll down slowly and read from the start.

Further Reading: Create Engaging Content for Social Media

1. Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social media marketing is a crucial part of any digital marketing strategy. It allows you to connect with your consumers in a more intimate way.

Social media marketing gives you increase exposure, builds meaningful relationship with your customers.

Social media marketing includes any type of marketing you do on any of the main social media sites, both paid and free. This includes using your social media accounts to:

Improve customer service
Share valuable content and updates
Engage with customers or potential leads
Promote sales, deals and products
Interact with followers
Gain valuable feedbacks
Participate in groups or chats

Depending on your business type, there is a social network out there for you.

All businesses would do well to be on Facebook but if you specialise in B2B, LinkedIn is the one for you. If you are a visual business then Instagram and Pinterest would be ideal.

Using social media marketing you will gain more reach when you post relevant high quality content.

Everything you do to increase traffic or business on your social media channels is social media marketing using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat or LinkedIn or more.

Pay attention to what your target audience talks about on social media. Engage in the conversation.

Use social media marketing as a way to gauge what content you put out does well by monitoring shares and likes. Shares and likes equate to free advertising for you.

SMM can be either a short term or long term investment. Whilst maintaining social media is paramount – using targeted ads via the service does not have to continue forever – otherwise it would cost a lot.

Further Reading: Choosing the Right Domain Name

2. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) refers to the process of growing your online visibility in non-paid (organic) in Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

SERP appear to users after they search for a given set of keywords using a search engine like Google or Bing.

Each user receives an individualised results page based on certain keywords, the user’s location at the time of searching and their browsing history.

Google being one of the first places people turn when they are looking for anything:

the answer to a question
directions to a nearby business
a product they are looking to buy
check reviews of a product, service or business
compare prices, analyse findings and more

Showing up on the first page of Google can make a huge difference in how many people discover and visit your website.

The higher you rank on a SERP the more traffic is directed to your site and the more chances of making a passive visitor an active customer.

How do you get your company’s website to appear at the top of a user’s organic search results?

SEO consists of a few main types of work:

Keyword research – Various types of keywords in digital marketing research tools can help you understand the terms your target audience are using to find what they want.
On-page optimisation – Strategically use your target keywords in meta tags and the text on your webpages.

Off-page optimisation – refers to the relationships you make and actions you take outside of your website to assist SEO.

Quality Link building – This is the most important part of SEO – finding ways to get links pointing back to your website which signals to the search engines that your website is of high value.

SEO works hand in hand with content marketing in particular. It is competitive and requires a long term strategy.

SEO is a long on-going strategy. You would not see results right away but when you do -they can make a big difference.

If you stay on top of SEO you are that much closer to more visibility online and traffic to your site.

A cautious word of guidance for any digital marketing beginner – doing SEO incorrectly will get you no results and you can face serious penalties from Google that are quite difficult to recover.

Therefore only use digital marketing agency that you can trust like Best-Digital Marketing Services who are professional experts in this area.

Further Reading: How to Write a Good Meta Description for SEO

3. Content Marketing

Content marketing is a type of digital marketing that focuses on creating and distributing content for a target audience.

The content aims at being valuable, relevant, consistent and high quality. Its ultimate goal is to drive a profitable customer action.

Content marketing refers to the practice of delivering a quality piece of content to your users to generate sales and leads.

This content can be anywhere online like tweets, a YouTube video, text, pictures, multimedia and blogs on your website.

It works because you can combine together other types of digital marketing like SEO and Social Media Marketing.

Keep your audience in mind as you create valuable relevant content. Consider the language your audience uses when they search online for information. Use these keywords to boost your SEO.

Share your content across all of your social media platforms for maximum exposure and feedback.

Content marketing is an ongoing practice. It is more so about engaging, educating consumers, building brand recognition, creating trust, receiving feedbacks and generating leads.

Creating relevant, valuable and high quality content helps you stand out and boosts your SEO.

Content marketing works best when you have a clear strategy to help you reach your target audience with information they need or solving their problems in a format that is most helpful to them.

As with SEO, content marketing is a long term investment. It is something you should keep up consistently over time until you get the results.

It can help improve your search rankings, generate new leads, nurture customer relationships, create trust, build brand awareness over time and increase sales.

Together – content marketing, SEO and social media marketing constitute what is called inbound marketing. It is a digital marketing campaign that aims at attracting, engaging and generating new leads.

Some goals of inbound marketing include attracting users’ attention, driving relevant traffic and converting into happy customers.

Further Reading: Get Traffic to Your Website Fast

4. Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing or SEM refers to a form of digital marketing channel that aims at paid traffic and organic traffic from search engines like Google or Bing.

With SEM the ads you see will either be above or to the side of the organic search results in Google and other search engines. The most common paid ads are Google AdWords and Bing Ads.

The search engine charges the marketer a predetermined amount to display ads in a number of places on a SERP generated from specific keywords.

Example of SEM is pay-per-click marketing or PPC. PPC refers to a digital marketing method wherein search engines charge a company each time their ads is clicked.

Social media platforms are now adopting PPC ads. These ads show up in the news feeds of a business’s target audience.

This is how the different types of digital marketing channels compliments each other to form a complete digital marketing strategy – SEM with social media marketing.

As with SEO a large part of paid search marketing is performing keyword research so you know the best terms to target in your ads.

The search engines will display your ads in relevant searches and you only have to pay them if someone chooses to click.

PPC produces faster results than SEO and gives you a lot of power to target your ads in front of your audience at the right time and moment based on demographic and keyword research terms.

Further Reading: Different Types of Websites to Create

5. Pay-Per-Click Marketing (PPC)

Pay-per-click or PPC is a form of advertising where marketers pay a fee every time people click on their ads on search engines like Google and Bing.

It is a way of moving to the top of search engine results pages (SERP) by paid searches.

Basically it is a process of buying visits to your site as opposed to getting them organically via SEO or other types of digital marketing channels.

The cost of each ad or cost per click (CPC) depends on the quality score of your website and the selected keyword’s competition.

PPC campaigns can be a short term or long term solution. Many use it to shift products or seasonal deals to boost revenue.

There are around 4 spots for Ads on Google and getting your website in for a selected keyword can be challenging.

SEO work is about ranking earned but PPC is about ranking bought on the first page of search engine results pages (SERP).

You can make your way into the 4 ad spaces on offer by Google by bidding on a selected keyword or search term.

Using tools like Google AdWords, PPC professionals will work on finding keywords that your website will perform well and depending on the competition – a CPC is determined.

By bidding on keywords used by competitors, your ads appear in relevant search results and when a user clicks on your ad – you will be charged.

Further Reading: What is SEO Friendly URL Structure

6. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing involves partnering with people with an enormous online reach considered experts by your target market to drive traffic and sales.

They can vary from celebrities, experts, authority, local or national figure to individuals with huge amount of followers.

Influencer marketing is popular on social media channels like Instagram, Snapchat and You Tube.

Businesses hire these influencers with large followings to promote their products and services by posting one or more photos with the product.

Organisations now engage in Instagram, Snapchat, You Tube takeovers where the hired influencer controls the company’s social media platform for a given amount of time and day.

Most will require payment or a cut of the sales that come from their audience purchasing their products or services.

They will create posts, blogs or videos to show off your collaboration and hopefully bring in more sales for your business. It is about finding the right influencer for your business.

These social media takeovers drive the influencer’s following to your social media channels increasing your new followers and unique views.

Further Reading: How To Optimise Images for SEO

How to Choose Influencers

Always make sure to do your due diligence on an influencer before you decide to work with them.

Decide what you want to get out of your influencer marketing campaign
come up with a shortlist of possible influencers who have the right audience
it is not just about the size but about who their followers are
how engaged they are
feel if they are a good match for your product and services
get in touch with them and see what you can negotiate

You might want to verify their Google analytics and make sure their following proves legitimate and not full of fake accounts.

Further Reading: How to Write Good Title Tags for SEO

7. Email Marketing

Email marketing allows you to update your email subscribers on a regular basis about your products and service. It is still one of the most effective digital marketing tools.

E-commerce sites and retail brands are seeing a lot of success with pushing seasonal promotions, deals and discounts like Black Friday deals or Mother’s Day and more.

You can also use email updates to nurture your customers by giving them a lot of value beyond just pushing your products and services. As a result you are building brand trust and loyalty.

Email marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing channels available with an average ROI of $38 for every $1 you spend.

This can bring in traffic to your site and even help you sell some products with unique discount codes.

With the correct marketing tools you can monitor things like opening rate and even how many clicked through on a link.

Choose a reputable email software like Mailchimp, ConvertKit or GetResponse and then start to collect customer’s emails.

You need to give them a reason to opt in by offering them a step-by-step pdf guide or a set of free design templates and make sure you check the regulations.

It is important to practice permission marketing which means only emailing the people who opt-in to receiving your emails.

This makes building up an email list one of the hardest and most important parts of email marketing. People who opt-in to your email subscription prove more likely to become active buyers.

If you have European customers you will need to pay attention to the new GDPR rules.

Once you start collecting those emails you should stay in contact regularly by creating a weekly newsletter or blog.

Make sure it is packed with quality relevant value content not just sales messages and promotions.

Email marketing can be used as short term or long-term mechanism. If you are sending out unique discount codes for a brief time – it can be a short-term fix to boost sales.

If you choose to send blogs or newsletters to boost your website traffic – it can be used long term. Do not send email after email every day – people do not like that and they might leave for good.

Further Reading: Online Marketing Strategies for Small Business

8. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a type of digital marketing where individuals or companies partner up with other businesses in order to receive a commission for the traffic they generate.

This is done when one brand or blogger includes links to products sold by another website in their content.

When a user clicks one of the links and proceeds to buy the product, the person or business behind the content gets a percentage of the profit i.e. commission.

It is one of the popular ways people make money online these days. If your affiliate program is successful you might earn quite a decent passive income.

There is no upfront cost to affiliate marketing. Many bloggers or e-commerce websites use affiliate marketing.

When you choose to use affiliate marketing
Who offers the best affiliate programs?
What levels of commission do they offer?
Decide if you want to run your program in house or partner with an affiliate management agency
Get a clear picture on the payment details, terms and conditions.

Make sure you do a thorough due diligence so that you understand their guidelines, what is permitted and what is not.

Affiliate marketing will not make sense for every business. However if you use it correctly it can bring in new customers and help you make more money.

If you decide to create content with affiliate links then it is best practice to include a disclaimer on your website letting visitors know so you do not lose trust. And be prepared to create lots of high-quality content.

If you go down the route of creating an affiliate program, then you will need to develop clear terms for how the program will work and identify relevant bloggers and influencers to recruit to participate.

9. Viral Marketing

Viral marketing refers to a video or post of some sort that is trendy, funny or topical enough to warrant a massive amount of likes or shares online.

It can cause an enormous spike in website traffic over a short period of time.

Viral videos or images can indirectly promote a product or service that is simply featured. This is then shared around social media.

The basics of viral marketing are very simple. You create a piece of content that is so compelling that those who engage with it will want to share it with their friends and family instantly.

Viral marketing is one of the most difficult types of digital marketing strategies but it is not impossible to achieve. And the benefits alone make the effort worth your time.

B2C companies stand to gain the most from viral marketing. B2C companies can use social media, content creators and influencer marketing to reach an enormous audience across all of their active platforms.

If you create a piece of content that goes viral then you will see an increase in ROI and also generate an increase in brand awareness.

Further Reading: How To Create Quality Backlinks To Your Website

10. Radio Marketing

Yes – Radio Advertising is here and it is now all digital. What it means is – radio advertising now falls into the realm of digital marketing.

Radio ads are a great way to get your business, product, services or brand heard and it is easier to do with digital advertising.

You can use radio ads to target different locations – locally or nationally and be heard by the right people by the thousands or more.

There is also the option to advertise through Spotify for non-premium users. The ads can be targeted based on their age, location, gender and more – because of the account information they provide to Spotify.

Start looking into targeted location ads if you are a local business. If you are a national business – look into Spotify advertising to directly target a select demographic.

Setting up Spotify ads is easy and its user friendly self-service ad platform is amazing. Spotify Ad Studio includes a handy voice-over option where you type in what you want the ad to sound like and they use their own in-house voice actors to create your ad.

11. Instant Messaging Marketing

Instant Messaging Marketing (IMM) is the latest digital marketing channel in communications.

There are around 1.6 billion people and growing globally using WhatsApp on a monthly basis followed by Facebook Messenger and WeChat.

If you want to be where your audience is then get involved with instant messaging marketing. This type of digital marketing only emerged in the last few years.

People are more likely to trust the information sent via a messenger as if it comes from a good friend than an email or a SMS that are vulnerable to spam.

IMM can be used for customer support to updating your users about a new post on your blog. Always develop a strategy first before diving into any digital marketing channels.

Further Reading: How to do Keyword Research for SEO

12. Television Advertising

Television advertising has been here a long time and has become even more popular in this digital marketing world.

With the general population spending over 4.5 hours a day in from of the TV it is still one of the most popular medium types.

It reaches people faster than newspapers or radio. Due to the powerful effect video has on humans it might also be very effective.

There are loads of options for those that want to advertise on television without paying expensive ad slot costs on prime time TV. Some still consider the 30-second ad as being a vital advertising tool in the next few years.

Marketers are navigating this channel by combining personal data about consumers with addressable ads and cross-channel marketing campaigns. Therefore if a consumer sees an ad on TV they will also see it on their digital devices reinforcing the ad’s message.

More over television ads can now be targeted directly to geo locations or demographics like Virgin or Sky TV.

If you use on demand or catch up TV – adverts can also appear midway through your stream like on All 4. It allows you to target ads for selected audiences.

In overall marketing mix it is essential to adapt and direct your strategy based on your audience’s demographic and where they consume video content. This means that you can personalise your TV ads for audiences.

By taking advantage of this video intelligence- you are able to target your defined target audience with more TV ads that are specifically catered to their personal interests and make the most impact.

13. Mobile Advertising

Mobile advertising is broad and spans across all forms of digital marketing. Every form of digital marketing we have mentioned above can be transferred to mobile like mobile social ads, mobile search ads or even mobile TV and radio ads.

Businesses are shifting more of their advertising budget into mobile because consumers are spending more time on their mobile devices more than any other device.

You can target mobile ads:

by audience segments or
using geofencing.

Geofencing is a popular method since it is based on a consumer’s physical location. This is a laser focused strategy that enables you to target mobiles ads to a clearly defined and relevant audience.

You need to be aware on

how to adapt your broader advertising strategy and
optimise it for the mobile device environment.

Consideration is paramount with smaller screen size to work means that intrusive interruptions tend to be less appreciated on mobile than any other device.

Once you have prepared and ready to launch your ad to the mobile device spectrum – start testing conversions.

You can collect data by using key metrics when running your mobile ad campaign and then invest a bit more time in perfecting your strategy once you know that it is working.

Acknowledging the fine details will help you amend, change and generate a mobile ad campaign that has a higher conversion rate. You can collect and analyse this data through Google Analytics.

Further Reading: Why You Need a Mobile Friendly Website

14. Display Advertising

Display advertising also known as banners is like the traditional print ads you get in magazines except they are online. You can target specific publications that you know your audience reads.

It has now become more complicated and sophisticated with programmable advertising. This is where ads are booked, analysed and optimised automatically using algorithms and retargeting techniques.

Example would be like when you were looking for a handbag at your favourite department store website and then that handbag follows you onto every website you visit for months afterwards.

You can target and re-target your customers very effectively and display ads that are really easy to track. It also allows you to measure conversion in real time

You need to find a way to maximise impact so that users notice you but not too much that they get annoyed.

Customers can suffer from ad blindness or banner blindness – they ignore your ad and only focus on the content they are trying to read.

Working with display ads needs both the creative—making it clear, impactful and memorable and the placement—choosing a relevant, suitable message context that matches your audience.

For small businesses or individuals who are well aware and astute to their market place:

you can approach specific publishers about advertising on their site directly or
use a third-party solution like Google Display Network or Facebook Audience Network.

Using Different Types of Digital Marketing Strategy for Business

Now you know the different types of digital marketing strategy. You can use any, all or a mix of them to boost your visibility online and engage your consumers.

Providing valuable experiences for your target audience that boost your products, services and brand should be the forefront of your mind.

Quality marketing practices benefit both you and your target audience.

Your success is not strictly based on digital marketing strategies alone. Remember the key to visibility is boosting your SEO.

Creating relevant valuable quality content marketing is the best SEO practice and sharing through social media platforms can increase your reach by leaps and bounds.

Leverage social media to listen to the feedbacks and conversations your customers take part in. Measure the traction of your content using various tools and then tweak and adjust your future content to replicate your success.

5 Tips for digital marketing for small businesses and beginners - Bonus Extra

To help you make sure you use the different types of digital marketing strategies listed above there are a few general best practices that can help.

1. Do online digital marketing.

This is straightforward. If you want to reach people in places where they are doing their shopping or planning their purchases then you have to invest in online digital marketing.

By not doing so you

may ruin your business
are guaranteed to leave available money on the table and
will miss out on many potential leads and sales

The longer you wait to start the further behind you will be in this era of digital marketing.

2. Learn a little bit about everything.

As a business or website owner – you should not feel like you need to be an expert on every facet of digital marketing.

You should strive to get a 101 level knowledge of each of the various types of digital marketing.

That knowledge will guide you in the right direction to figure which types of digital marketing you should invest in and recognise the experts to help you pursue each one effectively.

Further Reading: Importance of Digital Marketing for Business

3. Create an overall digital marketing strategy.

You may have read above that most of these digital marketing channels work better if you use them in combination with others.

Content marketing can improve your SEO. Social media and email marketing can help promote your content.

Conversion marketing can take customers past the finish line once the other forms of marketing have brought them to your website.

Do not treat each channel and type of digital marketing as separate.

Creating an overall strategy will enable you to ensure every piece of marketing you are creating will better support and achieve the results you want.

4. Hire the right people.

Digital marketing is huge, tedious and can be overwhelming. Do not try to do everything yourself.

Seek out a reputable digital marketing agency like Best-Digital Marketing Services who are experts on these types of marketing.

Their expertise will lead to better results and you can relax and enjoy your life while we do the hard work.

5. Persistence and Consistency

Digital marketing is not something you can do once and then forget about. Your digital marketing strategy needs to be consistent, persistent and updated regularly.

Treat this as a continuous line of production. Use your marketing analytics and tools to check on your progress. Amend, change and determine how to improve upon what you have done to get your ultimate results.

The longer you dwell in digital marketing the better you will get and you will see greater results.

Wrapping Up

Now you know the different types of digital marketing startegies – you are able to implement any or a mix of them to achieve your business goals.

No matter how small or big your business is – you need digital marketing to expose your existence and relevance to the global market.

There is no good shortcut to getting better Google search results and ranking.

Reading over a list like this can be daunting and you may be feeling helpless but someone has to do the work and that someone does not have to be you.

Best-Digital Marketing Services

You can hire our skilled professionals at Best-Digital Marketing. We know how to implement all these necessary strategies and more to get your digital amerketing started.

It will save you lots of time and work and will also net better results. Contact us now to learn how Best- Digital Marketing specialist with creative knowledge and experience to help you improve your future on Google search results.

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