7 Types of Digital Marketing That Can Help You Grow Your Business
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When it comes to growing your business, the importance of digital marketing cannot be overstated. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a company that isn’t investing in some form of digital marketing. Whether it’s social media, SEO, or Video Marketing some level of digital marketing is necessary to grow, scale, and compete in today’s markets.
“Digital marketing” is a catch-all term, so you might be wondering “What is digital marketing, exactly?” If so, this article is for you. Read on to get a better understanding of what digital marketing is, the 8 major types of digital marketing, and most importantly why digital marketing is essential for your business.
Understanding Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is a process of promoting and selling products or services through digital channels. Known as “online marketing,” the use of digital technologies for promotion allows marketers to reach their target audience at all stages of the buying journey through various channels such as search engines, social media, email, and websites. In contrast, traditional marketing focuses on reaching customers “offline” through channels such as print, radio and television.
The goal of digital marketing is to bring an audience to your business or website, convert them into customers, and retain them by providing value. It’s a complex and ever-evolving process that can have a significant impact on the growth and success of your business.
7 Types of Digital Marketing
There are many different types of digital marketing. Below are 7 common forms of digital marketing. We’ll explore each type in detail below:
Email Marketing: Email
Content Marketing: Blogs, Articles
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Mobile Marketing
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
Influencer/Affiliate Marketing
Email Marketing
Email Marketing is the process of using email to promote your brand, products, services, or content to your audience. This can be done by sending newsletters, promotional offers, or educational content.
Email marketing allows businesses to segment their audiences, create personalized messages, and track their effectiveness. With email marketing, businesses can keep their audience engaged and informed while driving sales.
To start email marketing, you will need to choose an email service provider or ESP. An ESP allows marketers to send email campaigns to lists of subscribers. Some common ESPs include MailerLite (great for small businesses), MailChimp (includes a marketing suite; consider hiring an expert!), Drip (ideal for simple e-commerce), and Klaviyo (superior for segmentation and funnels).
Content Marketing
Content Marketing is a strategic approach to creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. The goal of content marketing is to drive profitable customer action by providing an audience with the information they need to make informed decisions.
Many businesses think this is simply a blog strategy. But content marketing is more than just a blog! It can take many forms other than blogs, including video, infographics, and social media content. Creating valuable and informative content in any format will help your business establish itself as a thought leader in your industry. This is the groundwork for building trust in your audience.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is the process of using social media platforms to promote your brand, increase engagement, drive traffic to your website, and generate leads and sales.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkedIn offer businesses an opportunity to engage with their audience in a more personalized and meaningful way. Using targeted ads and content creation, businesses can build awareness and loyalty with their customer base as well as test and reach new audiences.
While many companies employ a paid strategy, there are many benefits to showing up on your social media accounts authentically first to see what kind of traction you can get before spending your marketing dollars on social ads.
Mobile Marketing
Mobile Marketing is the process of reaching customers through their mobile phones. There are two primary methods for mobile marketing: SMS (text messages), and through an app (via ads or push notifications). The benefits of ads or push notifications within an app are that you’re reaching an already engaged audience – and you’re keeping them engaged with additional content, actions or notifications. SMS can be used to send customers targeted coupons and offers that they can click to right from their text messages.
Think about it – how much more engaged are you with your text messages than with your email marketing? Most people subscribe to email before they subscribe to texts so an SMS campaign can be much more effective than traditional email marketing.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher in relevant search engine results pages (SERPs). In simple terms, this means tailoring the content of your web pages so that Google recognizes the content as relevant and displays a link to that page of your website when someone searches for what you offer or are writing about. The goal of SEO is to drive targeted traffic to your website and increase visibility.
There are several factors that contribute to SEO, including content optimization, keyword research, backlinks, and website structure. To use an analogy, SEO is more like farming than fishing. SEO takes planning, time, and effort and the payoff to planting the seeds of SEO gives you a significant advantage.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is a form of online advertising where you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. To keep with our fishing analogy from the SEO explanation, when you’re hungry it’s a lot easier to head down to the stream with your fishing pole than plant some seeds. This is where Pay Per Click, or PPC, comes in. PPC ads are typically displayed at the top or bottom of search engine results pages, and they can be highly targeted to specific audiences.
PPC campaigns can be costly, but they can also provide an excellent ROI if implemented correctly. With proper keyword research, ad creation, and targeting, PPC can help you drive high-quality traffic to your website and convert more customers.
Influencer/Affiliate Marketing
Influencer marketing and affiliate marketing both involve working with an individual who has high visibility to a certain demographic or a generally large audience and allowing them to use and promote your products or services to their audience. Both practices can help increase your audience reach by engaging with their existing audience. An effective affiliate or influencer strategy should focus on working with an individual who is well-known and respected within your industry. Good candidates will create their own content to promote your products or services and share links to your website. Every time a sale is completed, or a link is clicked, you will pay the influencer or affiliate a commission on the sale. It’s best practice to create UTM links so sales can be tracked and attributed to the proper individual. There are platforms such as Mavrck or Upfluence that help you set up and manage your affiliate programs and campaigns.
The Importance of Digital Marketing in Growing Your Business
To be successful in digital marketing, it’s essential to develop a comprehensive strategy that outlines your objectives, target audience, messaging, and tactics. Your digital marketing strategy should be tailored to your unique business needs which will be different for every company. If you’re new to digital marketing, it’s generally a good idea to talk with someone about your business goals. If you’re looking for a resource, junebird creative is a marketing agency that specializes in digital marketing and WordPress websites. Schedule a free discovery call to talk about your business goals and discuss what a marketing roadmap could look like for your company.
Digital marketing is crucial for any business looking to grow and succeed in today’s increasingly competitive landscape. By using the right digital marketing tactics, you can reach your target audience, increase engagement, and drive sales.
Taking the time to develop a comprehensive digital marketing strategy will help you achieve your business goals more effectively. By measuring your results and continuously improving your tactics, you can stay ahead of the competition and grow your business for years to come.
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Article by Christine Hehre Tierney, owner & creative director, junebird creative
Hi, I’m Christine, founder of junebird creative and a Certified StoryBrand Guide. Want to know what breaks my heart? Watching good companies throw away dollars on random acts of marketing rather than spending time developing a solid marketing strategy.
I help small and start-up businesses figure out what types of digital marketing they need to do, where they need to show up and play, and how to talk so their audience will listen. When you feel confident with your marketing strategy and implementation plan, you will be free to do what you need to run and grow your business.
