What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing is any marketing efforts that rely on electronic devices, and the internet.
It’s the group of activities that a company or individual performs online. These activities attract new business opportunities, create relationships, and develop a brand identity.
From this Digital marketing definition you can understand that Digital Marketing is very diverse and versatile.
The sheer amount of tools, data, and channels available on the internet creates opportunities for marketers to deliver effective content to specific people, through personalization.
Are you looking for a more direct advertising strategy for a very particular audience, that will help your brand to grow?
Well, Digital Marketing strategies
like using emails or ads in specific social media groups can attract a very niche audience. They deliver a tailored message based on their specific interests.
Are you looking forward to advertising your company to a mass market, garnering massive appeal and brand awareness?
Video ads and regular ads on social media applications and search engines should put your brand in front of millions of people.
Regardless of your audience type or how niche your product may be, there’s a way to reach them.
The Importance of Digital Marketing
By now, it might seem impossible that the number of global internet users is still steadily climbing, but that’s exactly what’s happening. According to recent research, there were approximately 5.4 billion web users worldwide in 2024.
That represents 66% of the global population. And, of course, those numbers have only continued to rise since and will do so into the future as more and more people get online.
Those statistics combined with the way the internet has already changed how people shop make digital marketing more essential than ever.
Successful marketing today involves reaching your target audience where they live and at the right times. Your customers are spending increasing amounts of time on social media, searching for information on search engines, and just being online in general.
That said, online digital marketing isn’t just a good idea anymore. It’s an essential part of any comprehensive marketing strategy. Because without it, it’s just about guaranteed that you’re missing out on valuable business.
Why Your Company Needs Digital Marketing
Digital marketing has been hailed as a game-changer for good reason.
It offers a singular platform where businesses can tap into an endless stream of information, leads, and potential customers.
Ignoring digital marketing means missing out on one of the most lucrative digital marketing avenues available today.
In essence, the internet is the primary driving force behind this necessity.
With billions of users online daily, digital marketing provides unparalleled reach and engagement opportunities that traditional methods simply cannot match.
The current digital marketing landscape
The online world allows brands to communicate with all of their clients and possible clients. You don’t even need to be in the same country to find and engage your public.
Technology has transformed simple phones, originally designed to make calls, into true computers. These provide all the access users need to connect with others. Apps, emails, and websites are literally in the palm of their hands.
Smartphones are incredibly popular, especially among Millennials and Generation Z. Applications like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok occupy hours of their day. Companies have thus found a direct link to their lives.
Facebook, a very famous social media site, has over 2 billion users. It is a popular choice among companies to market their products. Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and all social media can be beneficial to your business depending on your goal and audience.
With such a massive reach, advertising for companies is often like shooting fish in a barrel.
Benefits of Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools for any company to use. And to prove our point, here are some of the benefits of using Digital Marketing.
1. The most measurable form of marketing
Let’s start with what is possibly the most obvious benefit of using Digital Marketing: you can track it.
We all know that to ensure a marketing strategy works, we must track its success over time. The internet’s reliance on numbers and algorithms makes it easy to monitor how effective a strategy truly is.
Although that may be a little difficult with more traditional mediums, it is very simple to measure the effectiveness of a strategy with Digital Marketing.
Digital Marketing analytics takes away the guessing games related to traditional forms of marketing.
Through these analytics, you can measure in real-time how many people are looking at your posts or ads, as well as how many users have opened your posts, along with all the people who have replied, liked, or shared your post.
2. The most cost-effective marketing technique
Other than being able to track all of your posts, along with all the likes, comments, and shares that it receives, it is also the most cost-effective marketing technique.
Now, it is important to note that Digital Marketing is comparatively cheaper than most traditional forms of marketing.
While there was once a paywall between major companies and smaller ones in terms of advertising and exposure, that is no longer the case. Nowadays, smaller companies can get the attention of people that they otherwise could not.
Competing with bigger companies for the ad space in most forms of traditional marketing can be almost impossible for smaller businesses.
This is something that they can cover with the help of Digital Marketing, as they can reach an audience of their choice with minimal effort.
3. Allows you to choose any audience
Speaking of choosing your audience, another great benefit of Digital Marketing is that it can be as specific or broad as you want.
You can find specific groups or forums on social media websites like Instagram or Reddit to market to a very niche audience.
You can also market to a very broad audience through internet ads or sponsored posts on Facebook and Instagram. No matter who your target demographic is, you are sure to find them through Digital Marketing.
Other than directly marketing to your audience, you can also make use of influencer marketing, which allows you to directly tap into a specific market through mediators and familiar faces.
Sometimes influencers need the support of sponsors, and to help them, users will often follow the links they provide.
Moreover, getting a respected figure in the community you are tapping into can grow trust for your brand.
4. Everyone is already there
A common problem that people face with traditional forms of marketing is the question “Will anyone see it?”.
Most crowded places in the city are very expensive to rent. With Digital Marketing, you don’t have to worry about such a thing.
With billions of people using the internet and social media daily, the question is no longer will anyone see it, but rather when.
Print ads and other forms of traditional advertising also have a limit on just how many people they can reach.
No matter how big the network might be, there is a cap on just how many people a traditional marketing strategy can connect to.
On the other hand, Digital Marketing strategies have no peak of exposure and can grow along with the company itself.
5. Customers start their buying journey on the internet
Customers depend on the internet for everything, including their buying options and choices.
For more and more customers, the buying journey starts with research and insight into the product or service. What better place to find out more about something than the internet?
Since the term “Google it” has become such a common part of our language, the first instinct of most people is to search for something on the internet.
A study published by Orbelo in 2019 registered that 85% of shoppers consult the internet on purchases they are about to make.
That is the goal of designing a great Digital Marketing strategy: you can be the answer that these people are looking for.
6. The message can be customized
Another big advantage of Digital Marketing is that this strategy allows you to customize your message to the public.
Advertising today is different from the old days. Back then, when you wanted to talk to you public, you needed a generic message, that could be used in mass media such as billboards, TV broadcasts, flyers, etc.
The conversation with the public was not so effective, once you were talking to people of different genders, ages, and interests.
Now, you can target groups by their similarities, customizing the message and making it more real and directed to them.
Email marketing, online advertising, niche marketing: all of these strategies can be customized to reach the audience that you want.
The Difference Between Direct and Digital Marketing
Both direct marketing and digital marketing are forms of targeted advertising. However, while they can work together nicely, they are very different from one another.
Direct marketing is a form of traditional offline marketing that involves advertising a business, product, or service via physical materials like mailers, brochures, coupons, and pamphlets. Direct marketing materials can be helpful if your representatives ever need to present something physical to customers they interact with.
Meanwhile, digital marketing aims to reach people via social media, search engine optimization, content marketing, and similar tactics.
Online Marketing vs. Digital Marketing
Although people tend to use the terms “online marketing” and “digital marketing” interchangeably, the two are not the same. They are, however, connected, and digital-age marketers and brand reps need to be familiar with both.
Any type of marketing content that involves electronic devices counts as digital marketing. Online marketing, on the other hand, is actually a subcategory that covers marketing content delivered or published specifically through the internet.
In other words, all online marketing is also digital marketing and includes content marketing, SEO, email marketing, and more. However, digital marketing is a larger umbrella term that also covers marketing options like digital billboards, radio or television ads, and SMS advertising.
Inbound Marketing vs. Digital Marketing
Although you may occasionally see the terms “digital marketing” and “inbound marketing” used interchangeably, it’s essential to understand they’re not the same thing.
Digital marketing is a much more general term that applies to any marketing tactics involving digital media, platforms, or communication methods.
That said, inbound marketing is a type of digital marketing, especially as compared to outbound marketing.
Outbound marketing is probably what you think of when you picture a more traditional marketing approach. Think of marketing tactics that attempt to reach as many people as possible, regardless of whether they’ve shown interest in the advertised product.
Examples include offline approaches like trade shows and cold calls, as well as online tactics like old-school banner ads and untargeted email blasts.
On the other hand, inbound marketing is about focused strategies designed to reach an ideal audience of potential customers.
These are people who have either shown active interest in the type of solution being sold or are struggling with pain points the solution could address.
Inbound marketing content is designed to be helpful, entertaining, or otherwise valuable to this audience.
Popular examples of effective inbound marketing techniques include subject-specific blogs, ebooks, videos, social media posts, and web-based seminars.
How to Do Digital Marketing?
Creating an effective digital marketing strategy isn’t just a must in today’s increasingly web-based world. It’s easier to do than you might think, even if you’re brand new to the game.
Here’s a look at how to get started.
Set clear goals and objectives
Without a clearly defined goal, a digital marketing strategy is nothing more than a shot in the dark that may or may not hit the target.
So start your journey by figuring out what your goals are because they will be the focus of all your future efforts.
Keep in mind that solid goals are never vague. They’re not only reachable and specific but measurable.
Otherwise, you can never be sure you’ve even made progress toward your goal, let alone reach it.
Build your customer personas
In the past, all a digital marketer needed to create a solid campaign was enough information and collected data about their target demographic. (Think of details like age, gender, location, interests, or profession.)
But these days, your strategy really isn’t complete until you also have a set of buyer personas in your corner.
Buyer personas are semi-fictional identities representing one or more of your desired customers.
If you don’t know where to start, the AI Persona Builder by Rock Content can aid you with that.
Conduct ongoing keyword research
Thorough ongoing keyword research is at the heart of any good digital marketing campaign.
It’s how you know what your target audience is out there searching for, so it’s naturally also the key to obtaining top ranking on Google, Bing, and the rest of the search engines.
Keyword research is an essential part of optimizing your social media marketing campaign, as well.
Start the process by choosing a keyword research tool that appeals to you and building a running list of options. Include both high-performing keywords and clever long tail alternatives to expand your potential reach.