Digital marketing is a mode of advertising which uses online channels like SEO, PPC, Social Media, Emails, and Content Marketing to attract and convert prospects.
The number of internet users has more than doubled over the past decade. This shift has massively affected the way people purchase products and interact with businesses. Therefore, investing in digital marketing is absolutely necessary.
Let’s have an in-depth look at the definition of digital marketing, its benefits, and the different strategies used under digital marketing.
- Digital Marketing Definition
- Difference Between Digital Marketing and Traditional Marketing
- Benefits of Digital Marketing
- What Are the Different Digital Marketing Strategies?
- Digital Marketing Strategy #1 – Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Digital Marketing Strategy #2 – Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- Digital Marketing Strategy #3 – Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
- Digital Marketing Strategy #4 – Email Marketing
- Digital Marketing Strategy #5 – Social Media Marketing
- Digital Marketing Strategy #6 – Content Marketing
- Digital Marketing Strategy #7 – Affiliate Marketing
- Salary of a Digital Marketer
- Digital Marketing Examples
- What is the Future of Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing Definition
Digital marketing refers to advertising and selling products by leveraging online channels. It includes search engines, social media, mobile applications, emails, web applications, and websites.
Difference Between Digital Marketing and Traditional Marketing
The primary difference between digital marketing and traditional marketing is the channels used to advertise the products and services.
Digital marketing uses online channels (social media, emails, etc.), whereas traditional marketing uses offline channels (TV, newspapers, magazines, etc.).
Digital marketing is an inbound marketing strategy where customers are pulled towards a sale whereas traditional advertising is a push form of marketing where customers are pushed towards a sale.
Another difference between them is that traditional marketing doesn’t allow you to interact with your prospects directly. In contrast, digital marketing enables you to connect with your potential customers directly (via channels like email).
Benefits of Digital Marketing
The average internet users spend 6.5 hours online every day. This gives businesses an enormous amount of time to target, nurture, and convert them into a customer. Here are the key benefits of digital marketing.
- It is more cost-effective than traditional marketing.
- It is the most measurable form of marketing.
- You can better target your potential customers.
- It enables you to gather greater insight into customer preferences and influence their buying decisions.
- It allows you to reach your ideal customer right where they are spending most of their time.
- Local SEO helps you reach customers who are searching for your business in your neighborhood.
- You don’t need a big budget to get started with digital marketing.
- As your business grows, you can scale your digital marketing efforts.
What Are the Different Digital Marketing Strategies?
There are various digital marketing strategies and new strategies are being added each year.
Here are some of the digital marketing tactics that almost every business uses.
Digital Marketing Strategy #1 – Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the process of optimizing your website for search engines. It helps you get to the first page of the search engine results page (SERPs) and attract traffic through unpaid listings. However, it can take a few months before you see the results.
Since 93% of online experiences start with search engines, SEO is essential for every business. If you run an offline retail store and don’t have a website, you can still get your business to the top of SERPs by implementing local SEO strategies.
Digital Marketing Strategy #2 – Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM refers to the techniques of improving your visibility in the search engines using paid advertisements. It offers you an opportunity to put your ads in front of customers who are ready to buy right at the moment.
SEO requires a little time and patience to get results. However, with SEM, you can see an increase in traffic and sales from day one.
Digital Marketing Strategy #3 – Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
Pay-per-click advertising is similar to SEM. The only difference is that SEM is meant only for search engines, while PPC enables you to advertise on search engines, social media, other websites, and apps.
You will only be charged when someone clicks on your ad. PPC also allows you to retarget visitors who bounced back from your website across the web.
Digital Marketing Strategy #4 – Email Marketing
Email marketing is the most cost-effective form of digital marketing. The average expected ROI in email marketing is $42 for every $1 spent.
The best part about email marketing is that it allows you to segment your customers based on their preferences and send them targeted emails that increase conversions.
Digital Marketing Strategy #5 – Social Media Marketing
Around 3.08 billion people use social media (as of 2020) worldwide, and the number is expected to increase to 3.43 billion by 2023.
Social media marketing enables you to reach your potential customers through different social channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
You can use both organic and paid marketing on social media to reach your ideal customer.
Digital Marketing Strategy #6 – Content Marketing
Content marketing is one of the best ways to boost rankings in search engines. It involves creating blogs, articles, images, videos, and infographics and sharing them on various networks, including your website and social media channels.
Content marketing allows you to reach customers at different stages of the buyer journey and nurture them until they’re ready to convert.
Digital Marketing Strategy #7 – Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing refers to paying someone else (a person or a business) to promote your products and services on their website. You pay them a commission every time they bring a customer.
There are various networks that make it easier for advertisers to find affiliates, such as AWIN, ShareASale, and Tradedoubler.
Salary of a Digital Marketer
| S.No | Post | Average Salary Per Year |
| 1 | Digital Marketing Manager | $44,000 – $98,000 |
| 2 | Digital Marketing Supervisor | $77,316 – $111,454 |
| 3 | Digital Marketing Director | $137,196 – $188,587 |
| 4 | SEO Manager | $66,508 – $95,419 |
| 5 | SEO Specialist | $34,000 – $64,000 |
| 6 | Technical SEO Specialist | $44,000 – $94,000 |
| 7 | SEO Executive | $14,000 – $87,000 |
| 8 | SEO Analyst | $55,174 – $79,346 |
| 9 | Email Marketing Manager | $62,276 – $89,347 |
| 10 | Ecommerce Marketing Manager | $44,000 – $97,000 |
| 11 | Social Media Specialist | $29,100 – $65,000 |
| 12 | Social Media Manager | $35,000 – $75,000 |
| 13 | Social Media Designer | $36,000 – $70,000 |
| 14 | Social Media Strategist | $37,330 – $71,187 |
| 15 | Social Media Analyst | $62,119 – $108,396 |
| 16 | Content Marketing Manager | $65,661 – $78,723 |
| 17 | Content Writer | $29,000 – $71,100 |
| 18 | Copywriter | $34,125 – $106,110 |
| 19 | PPC Specialist | $38,670 – $78,000 |
| 20 | PPC Manager | $31,364 – $87,262 |
| 21 | Associate Paid Search Manager | $29,000 – $55,000 |
| 22 | SEM Manager | $27,980 – $123,250 |
Source: Payscale, Salary, Glassdoor, Indeed, and Neuvoo.
Digital Marketing Examples
Hubspot
When it comes to digital marketing, Hubspot is the first name that comes to my mind. They not only have a great SEO strategy, but they also leverage social media alike.
They have created a library of resources for different types of fields, including sales, marketing, customer experience, and website development.
This has helped them incorporate 231,886 keywords and attract around 862,772 visitors from search engines alone.
When it comes to social media, Hubspot again aces the game. They have more than 1.9 million followers on their Facebook page by regularly posting content that their target audience craves for.
What’s more, is that they even reply to almost every comment on their posts. This not only increases engagement, but it also helps build trust with the followers.
Domino’s
Domino’s has a great digital marketing team. Over the past few years, Domino’s have built a great digital experience across the devices. Recently, they launched a “Domino’s Anyware” campaign that allows their customers to order pizza from any device, including virtual assistant devices, smart TV, voice, smartwatch, and text.
Domino’s started by enabling customers to order via a tweet. They then added more ways to buy the pizza. This is important because the way people purchase things online is changing, and Domino’s surely knows how to adapt to it.
The Domino’s Anyware television campaign generated 10.5% YoY sales growth. Besides, they also earned tons of free PR when major publications, such as Forbes and Wired, started talking about their campaign.
Sephora
Recently, social media platforms, like Instagram and YouTube, introduced a shoppable feature. It allows the user to buy the product directly from within the platform itself.
Sephora leveraged it to their advantage by creating a robust library of shopping content across their Instagram account.
When it comes to YouTube, they don’t go overboard with advertising their products. Instead, they provide their customers with something they can apply in everyday routines. From beauty tips to make-up tutorials and how-to posts, Sephora’s YouTube channel consists of educational and informative content.
Take the below video, for example, where Jeffrey and David, the beauty directors of Sephora, talk about “how does stress affect your skin”.
Apart from talking about the effects of stress on your skin and how to deal with it, they also inform the viewers about various products that can assist them in achieving clearer skin. To make the shopping experience seamless, Sephora uses the bio part to add the link of the products featured in the video.
Tripoto
Tripoto is a social travel platform where people can share and discover travel experiences. They surely know how to leverage user-generated content for their digital marketing advantage.
Tripoto awards users with “Tripoto Credits” to people who share their travel experiences. The more the point, the more discount you’ll get when booking hotels or travel packages from them.
They even run contests regularly to encourage travelers to share unique content.
There are four key benefits of doing this.
- Retain existing customers.
- Attract new visitors.
- Boosts website’s rankings (as people spend more time in the site while writing the content in the platform and while browsing other’s content).
- Create a community of travelers (their target audience).
They even share user-generated content on their Instagram account.
This not only provides them with tons of content, but it also encourages their target audience to tag them in relevant photos.
Heineken
Heineken leverages digital marketing storytelling to make videos viral and trigger an emotional response among the viewers. Heineken brought people with complete opposite viewpoints to talk about political conflicts trending in the news.
The idea was to find something in common between polar opposite people with beer, of course. You can watch the full video here.
Heineken promoted the video on Facebook, and it received over 138,000 shares and 324,000 engagements.
The video has garnered over 40 million views across different social channels.
That’s what you call viral marketing!
Netflix
Netflix focuses more on creating digital marketing value and less on advertising. They don’t solely promote their videos or TV shows. They also give importance to something completely unrelated to their business, i.e., meme. This helps them keep their followers interested and engaged.
They’re even super active on Twitter and try to reply to almost every tweet (that tags them).
Netflix is also great at email marketing. All their emails are hyper-personalized based on your browsing behavior. They don’t bombard you with recommendations. Instead, they prefer promoting one or two TV shows along with a clear call-to-action button. This makes it easier for the subscriber to decide what to watch. Here’s a screenshot of the email I received recently.
A simple layout, free of clutter, and a big call-to-action button enabling the user to play the video without having to visit Netflix separately.
What is the Future of Digital Marketing?
From banners to artificial intelligence, digital marketing has continuously evolved to meet the demands of both brands and customers.
With the rise in the popularity of voice search, marketers have started optimizing their website and content, so it appears in the voice search results.
In the coming years, we will see more and more brands implementing omnichannel marketing to reach prospects across channels and devices.
Besides, with the availability of in-depth consumer information, combined with big data and artificial intelligence, marketers are able to personalize content for each individual. This trend (personalization) doesn’t seem to die any time soon.
Programmatic advertising will soon become the norm. It is a type of paid media that combines the power of AI and ML to buy the ad space and determine which audience the ads should target. Advertisers are expected to spend $147 billion in programmatic advertising by the end of 2021.
You might already have started looking for different ways to get started with digital marketing. After all, it is the most cost-effective way of promoting your products and services. Make sure to research on which channels your target audience spend most of their online time and leverage them to reach them.
