You may know the basics of digital marketing or have even set up a social media campaign. But there are many elements to digital marketing and all of them move at a rapid pace, which makes it hard to know everything you need to carve out a digital marketing career.
So what is digital marketing? Digital marketing encompasses all of your marketing activities that take place online. Its influence to engage customers grows every year as more people use the internet to browse, connect and buy.
According to Digital 2022: Global Overview Report, the number of people using the internet is 4.95 billion. That’s nearly 63 percent of the world’s population! The increase in mobile use also continues, as 5.31 billion people now use their phones to access the internet.
That’s a lot of potential customers to reach online and it’s the job of digital marketers to devise and execute digital campaigns that do just that.
To make it easy for you, we’ve divided this blog into sections so you can easily find what you need, and if you aren’t sure of a term have a look at our comprehensive glossary of digital marketing terms.
- What are the digital marketing channels?
- What are the benefits of digital marketing?
- What is a digital marketing strategy?
- What are good examples of digital marketing?
- How do you do digital marketing?
- How do you get into digital marketing?
What are the digital marketing channels?
The place to start when talking about digital marketing is the variety of digital channels available. There are seven main digital marketing channels you can use to drive traffic, engage prospects and convert.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC)
- Social Media Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Mobile Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
Be aware, while these are the most common digital marketing channels, the evolving digital landscape means that there could be more than these. Let’s dive in and find out more about each one.
SEO marketing or website marketing
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a huge role in digital marketing. After all, it determines how and where your content, product or service gets found online.
But what is SEO in digital marketing? SEO consists of many elements, and knowing what they are and how they work is key to understanding SEO’s importance. The elements to include in your marketing are:
- Keywords – Non-branded and branded keywords with high search rates and low competition
- Local SEO – Locally focused content (directories) and keywords
- Off-page SEO – External and third-party backlinks
- Content – Keywords and internal links peppered through content
- Search engine marketing – Paid marketing campaigns e.g. Google Ads, PPC, etc.
It’s crucial to include these SEO elements in your digital marketing strategy to increase visibility for your site and drive traffic.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is all about optimizing your paid search advertising – unlike SEO which focuses on organic traffic.
SEM and SEO are a match made in heaven as they complement each other by ensuring your brand has a presence on search engines and spreading your budget across organic and paid channels.
While the marketing techniques for SEO and SEM are different, they both need to work together. Remember that both rely on keywords to drive traffic and will become more important as a good UX is ranked positively by Google, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) has more of a role in content and search activities.
PPC Advertising
You may have heard the term PPC many times, but do you know what it means? It stands for Pay-Per-Click and is a targeted way of advertising online in which you pay for each click from an ad to your website or landing page.
As your PPC campaign directs prospects to your website or landing page, ensure those pages are optimized in advance. You also need to select a bidding strategy, research keywords, and set a budget.
This comprehensive PPC guide explains everything you need to know if you’re just getting started. You can also use our handy PPC for eCommerce tracker to keep an eye on the budget and targets for your paid campaigns.
Content Marketing
The term content marketing makes this part of digital marketing self-explanatory, but it’s an area that can be difficult to get right. It’s easy to create tons of content to distribute online, but the key is creating great digital content that performs.
Content marketing encompasses a wide range of formats such as video, blogs, emails, webinars, social media posts, and eBooks which can be used at all stages of the sales funnel. The benefits of content marketing done well are increased web traffic, a spike in subscribers, boosted sales, and loyal customers.
