The Internet is revolutionizing lives every day, even while you are reading this blog. With continual advancements in technology, the ways of doing business are also changing. The transition of traditional marketing strategies like brochures, billboards, and print ads to digital marketing modes like marketing through social media, and email marketing, are obvious.
In 2022, if marketers and sellers do not bring their business to the web they are losing out a major portion of their target audience. The ideal digital marketing strategy will be one that includes different practices across different channels to get optimal results.
Digital marketing for your business will include all aspects of your website, but also social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. We have described the different types of digital marketing channels and the benefits each channel has in our blog.
7 Types of Digital Marketing
Types of Digital Marketing
The power of different types of digital marketing channels along with the right digital marketing strategy is immense. Digital marketing is suited for both big and small businesses. Small businesses can use the power of social media marketing, email marketing, and any other channels to boost their sales, organic sales, and increase brand awareness. Whereas a big business can increase their niche or specific target audience exposure by boosting sales through the correct digital marketing strategy.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Pay per click (PPC)
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- Content Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Mobile Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
Let us learn the different types of digital marketing in 2022.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Google gets around 40,000 search queries every second! The fact might come as a surprise to you but it underlines how important it is for you to adopt the most effective digital marketing strategy. The result of adopting that? To see your website ranking at the top.
It goes without saying that SEO is the most important element of every digital marketing strategy and thus one of the most crucial types of digital marketing. SEO increases brand awareness and visibility, bringing more organic traffic to the site. Choosing the correct SEO strategy brings two important benefits to your business:
- It helps to understand the competitor and the target audience and includes investigating what is trending and what people are searching online for.
- The other is to have a website and to get the search engines to evaluate and understand it.
To perform Search Engine Optimization, digital marketers use keyword research to find the best terms that relate to your business to help it grow. The online market has evolved to a stage where business-relevant keywords help increase your authority and visibility. SEO helps you achieve this in a most ethical manner. Search engine marketing is also a high-yield marketing method.
While there are many strategies involved in SEO, the basic idea is to focus on your target audience and create your content around the niche that you are working with. Link building is an important part of SEO. Organic and white-hat link-building techniques help your website to be recognized by search engines. Backlinks from high DR (Domain Rating) websites are counted as votes for Google to recognize the website. While working with SEO, you need to make sure that your linking strategy, content indexing, and keyword research are perfect. When you optimize your page for search engines, the relevancy of your page to the user increases proportionally. This helps you achieve conversions.
Related read: The Importance of Link Building in SEO
Pay Per Click (PPC)
PPC also offers you the flexibility to target the audience you want. You can set up a local business and reach out to your local community or you can do it globally.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social Media Marketing refers to all social media posts and works that a company projects from its end. Every growing company should have social channels where it promotes its business products and services. As a digital marketer, your approach towards it should be systematic and disciplined.
Some companies prefer to automate social media marketing by using bots for creating and posting stories and posts on their social media handles. But with the huge leap in social media usage, you need to understand that the users will find out if you use such strategies. A real person should be behind the posts in order to better reach out to the audience.
Social media marketing can be performed on various social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and such. These posts can be shared on various other platforms as well.
In many cases, social media marketing has turned the tide for many companies who had failed in other marketing methods. Customer loyalty and brand recognition are some of the perks of socal media marketing.
As a social media marketer, you need to analyze the performance of your posts and track your success. This is crucial since the online world can be a volatile place. Your competition might gain an advantage if you do not keep track of your gains. Also, do not expect social media marketing to be as simple as posting an image and expecting results. Like all forms of digital marketing, you need a definite strategy for implementation and tracking.
Related read: How Social Media Link Building Can Boost & Manage Business Reputation
Content Marketing
Content Marketing is a very old form of digital marketing. It involves creating content around your business goals and strategies. The content can be anything from white papers, blog posts, e-books, videos, and such. These, when utilized in the right manner, help your business in a very significant way. Similar to SEO, keyword research plays a huge role in content marketing.
You can create content such as guest posts or blogs that help you reach your audience. The links that you add in such posts serve as conversion roots through which your audience reaches your products or services.
The basic idea of content marketing is to provide value to the user. This establishes the trust factor that would later lead to conversions. Content marketing works on the principles of a marketing funnel in which audiences are chosen and targeted based on the side of the funnel they are in. This helps you differentiate your content as per your target audience and lead them into conversion at different levels. High-quality content will definitely draw the attention of your users. In order to create such content, an extensive content marketing strategy has to be created.
Also, in content marketing, EAT (Expertise, Authority, Trust) plays a huge role in content creation. Your audience will trust you only if your content expresses the authority and expertise that you have in the field. This concept helps you create and curate content.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing is a growing and ever-expanding field of digital marketing. It involves running email campaigns to boost your business and procure new customers. The mails that are sent to such customers need to be curated and made effective. Your marketing team should be able to create differently styled emails for specific customers in order to get their attention.
Successful email marketing depends on two factors. One is the click-through rate at which your recipients click the link inside your mail and reach your page or product. Another is the response rate or open rate. The number of respondents to your mail determines the success of your email campaigns. The more your respondents open your mail, the better the email score you get. This helps you reach out to newer audiences without being treated as spam. Clean and well-written emails are received well by all users and this should be the base of your strategy.
While performing an email campaign, the below points are to be noted.
- Create emails that deliver a sense of urgency. Customers tend to act faster if they sense that your email is important.
- Create engaging content and establish what you stand for. Do not make false claims.
- Ask for your customer’s email preferences and send them emails according to that.
- Make sure to personalize your email for each customer. Bulk emailing works only if you are targeting the same kind of audience.
Email marketing campaigns are only as successful as the marketer who runs them. You need to develop skills such as persuasion, attention to detail, and people skills to attain success in this field.
Related read: Top 7 Ways to Improve Email Deliverability
Mobile Marketing
Among the different types of digital marketing, this form of marketing uses the medium of your customer’s mobile phone. Marketing is done using text messages, emails, and notifications on mobile applications and such. These can be curated as per your customer’s behavior depending on their geographic location. For example, you can send a promotional message to a customer when they enter a store or similar location. This helps you direct them into a purchase or a sale.
People often use a mobile phone when it comes to comparing prices or looking for alternatives. This is where you win by promoting your business. The usage of mobile phones has increased by leaps and bounds in this era and digital marketing makes the most of it.
You need to understand that every person with a phone is a customer. So your marketing strategy should be created based on these criteria. Your conversions will go through the roof if you figure out the right audience at the right time. When it comes to mobile marketing, your ad strategy matters a lot.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing or Influencer Marketing is a form of marketing that reduces the gap between the customer and your organization. This involves ground-level work in which you work with popular influencers on the market and promote your products through them.
With the growth of social media, we have seen the rise of influencers who create content and entertain the public. These content creators can be used for promoting your brand and product. Influencer marketing involves a lot of branding, too. While the costs can be substantial, the results can be higher than your expectations. Influencers based on their page strength can draw in millions of users to their sites by promoting your brand. This helps in getting conversions and increased visibility in the market.
Affiliate marketing or influencer marketing has become a very popular form of digital marketing in recent years and is expected to keep growing in coming years. Every company or organization can use this form of marketing to keep up with modern trends. This helps you gain visibility in the eyes of your customers.
FAQs
What are the 4 C’s in marketing?
The four C’s in marketing are created by David Jobber and John Fahy in 2009. The four C’s in marketing are:
- Clarity
- Consistency
- Competitiveness
- Credibility.
What is SEM vs SEO?
SEO is Search Engine Optimization, which refers to the optimization we do in our website to make it more search engine friendly and to help it rank better in SERPs. Whereas, SEM is Search Engine Marketing often involves paid marketing tactics like PPC and paid Ads to bring more traffic to a website.
Related read: SEM vs SEO: What’s the difference?
Wrapping Up
With different types of digital marketing methods available, the best ones are the ones that suit your business goals and strategies. Your marketing methods may fail if you do not place your customer in front while devising your strategy. While ROI and conversion rates need to be analyzed, the biggest challenge would be finding which type of digital marketing is best suited for you. While social media marketing and influence marketing are usual methods, the other forms of marketing need extensive market research and analysis of competitors.
You need to remember that the amount of research you put into such marketing methods costs you money, too. In order to optimize your time and money, it is better to start off your marketing journey with a trusted organization that can help you achieve success in a steady manner. In case you wish to start this off right, we at LinkDoctor are always here to help.
