What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing encompasses all marketing methods that use an electronic device or the internet. Businesses leverage digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and other websites to connect with current and eventual customers.

How does a business define digital marketing?

Digital marketing is defined by the use of various digital tactics and channels to connect with customers where they spend most of their time: online. From the website itself to a business's online branding assets i.e. digital advertising, email marketing, online brochures, and beyond, there's a spectrum of approaches that fall under the umbrella of "digital marketing."




The best digital marketers have a clear picture of how each digital marketing campaign supports their underlying goals. And depending on the goals of their marketing strategy, marketers can support larger campaigns through the free and paid channels at their disposal.




The digital marketer usually targets on a different key performance indicator (KPI) for each channel so they can properly measure the company's performance across each one. A digital marketer who is in charge of SEO, for example, measures their site's organic traffic, of that traffic coming from website visitors who discovered a page of the business's website through Google search.




Digital marketing is implemented across many marketing roles today. In small companies, one generalist might own many of the digital marketing methods at the same time. In larger companies, these methods have multiple specialists that each focus on just one or two of the brand's digital channels.

Below are some examples of these specialists:

SEO Manager- SEO manager's work is to get the business to rank on Google. Using a variety of approaches to search engine optimization, this person may work directly with content creators to assure that the content they produce performs well on Google even if the company also post the contents on social media.




Content Marketing Specialist- They are the digital content creators. They periodically keep track of the company's blogging calendar, and come up with a content strategy that includes video also. These professionals work with people in the other departments to assure that the campaigns the business is launching are supported with promotional content on every online channel.




Social Media Manager- The role of a social media manager is to establish a posting schedule for the company's written and visual content. This employee might also work with the content marketing specialist to develop a strategy for which content to post and on which social network.

Does digital marketing work for all businesses?

Digital marketing works for any business and in any industry. Disregarding of what your company sells, digital marketing involves building out buyers to identify your audience's needs, and creating valuable online content. However, that's not to say all businesses need to implement a digital marketing strategy in the same way.

B2B Digital Marketing

If your company is business-to-business or B2B, your digital marketing efforts are to be gathered around online lead generation, with the actual goal being for someone to communicate with a salesperson. For that reason, the aspect of your marketing tactics is to attract and convert the highest quality leads for your salespeople via your website form and supporting digital channels.

B2C Digital Marketing

If your company is business-to-consumer, depending on the price point of your products, it's likely that the goal of your digital marketing efforts is to attract audiences to your website and have them as customers without ever needing to speak to a salesperson.

What are the roles of digital marketing to a company?

Unlike most offline marketing efforts, digital marketing allows marketers to see correct results in real time. If you've ever put an advertisement in newspaper, you'll know how difficult it is to evaluate how many people actually flipped to that page and paid attention to your ad. There's no way to know if that advertisement was responsible for any sales at all.




On the other hand, with digital marketing, you can measure the Return Of Investment (ROI) of pretty much any aspect of your marketing efforts.

Here are some examples:

Website Traffic

With digital marketing, you can see the exact number of people who have viewed your website in real time by using digital analytics software, available in marketing platforms.You can also see how many pages they visited, what device they have used, and where they came from, among other digital analytics data.




This strategy helps you to prioritize which marketing channels to spend more or less time and money on, based on the number of people those channels are driving to your website. For example, if only 15% of your traffic is coming from organic search, you know that you probably need to spend some time and money on SEO to increase that percentage.




With offline marketing, it is too difficult to tell how people are interacting with your brand before they have an interaction with a salesperson or making a purchase. With digital marketing, you can get to know the trends and patterns in people's behavior before they have reached the final stage in their buyer's journey, meaning you can make more informed decisions about how to attract audiences to your website right at the top of the marketing funnel

What type of digital contents should you create?

The kind of digital content you create depends on your audience's desire at different stages in the buyer's journey. You should start by creating buyer personas to identify what your viewer's goals and challenges are in relation to your business. On a basic level, your online content should aim to help them meet their goals, and conquer their challenges as well.




If you spend time building extensive buyer personas to identify the needs of your audience, and you focus on creating quality online content to attract and convert them, then you're likely to see strong outcomes within the first few months.




If paid advertisement is a part of your digital marketing strategy, then the results will come even quicker ,but it's recommended to focus on building your organic reach using content, SEO, and social media for long-term, viable success.

Do you need a big allocation for digital marketing?

As with anything, it basically depends on what elements of digital marketing you're looking to add to your strategy.




If you're focusing on inbound skills like SEO, social media, and content creation for a preexisting website, the good news is you don't need very much budget at all. With inbound marketing, the main target is to build high quality content that your audiences will love to consume, which unless you are planning to outsource the work, the only investment you will need is your time.




With outbound techniques like online advertising and purchasing email lists, there is undoubtedly little expense. What it costs comes down to what kind of visibility you want to receive as the outcome of the advertising.

How does mobile marketing fit into your digital marketing strategy?

Another key element of digital marketing is mobile marketing. In fact, smartphone usage as a whole accounts for 70% of time spent consuming digital media in the world, while desktop-based digital media consumption makes up less than half.




This means it's essential to optimize your digital advertisements, web pages, social media images, and other digital assets for mobile devices. If your company has a mobile app that allows users to engage with your brand or shop your products, your app falls under the digital marketing as well.




Those engaging with your company online via mobile devices have the same positive experience as on desktop. This means carrying out a mobile-friendly or responsive website design to make browsing user friendly for those on mobile devices. It also means reducing the length of your lead generation forms to create a hassle free experience for people downloading your content.




There are lots of ways you can optimize your digital marketing assets for mobile users, and when carrying out any digital marketing strategy, it's very important to consider how the experience will translate on mobile devices. By ensuring this is always front-of-mind, you'll be building digital experiences that work for your audience, and consequently achieve the results you're hoping for.

Are you ready to try digital marketing ?

If you're already doing digital marketing, it's likely that you're at least reaching some portion of your audience online. No doubt you can think of some more areas of your strategy that could use a little improvement, though.