Digital marketing, the portion of marketing that happens online or via other electronic channels, continues to expand, evolve, and gain importance for all types of businesses. While more traditional marketing like television, radio, print, and others still have their places in a marketing plan, they are less important than they once were. Many often exist primarily to increase brand recognition and support an organization’s digital marketing.

Digital marketing, from websites and social media to email campaigns, delivers more for each dollar spent than other media because they reach audiences where they are. More people turn to the Internet for information and shopping, and more professionals and companies look for potential business connections and partnership opportunities online than ever before.

Results from digital marketing can also be more easily measured and evaluated than some traditional channels. After that evaluation, digital marketing can be changed incrementally to improve the results.

What is Digital Marketing    

According to Forbes, “digital marketing is conducted via digital avenues, including social media, websites, search engines, email and text messaging.” Here are seven digital marketing channels:

  1. Websites: A company’s website should anchor all other digital and traditional advertising.
  2. Search Engine Optimization: SEO works on a website to make it more interesting to search engines. The goal is for SEO efforts to help your website rank as high as possible on search engine’s results pages.
  3. Email: Email usually has the highest ROI of all the digital channels. Email messages can be targeted, measured, adjusted, and measured again to increase their effectiveness.
  4. Texting or SMS: Text messaging through a service like SMS or short message service works better in consumer industries and has the advantage of being outside the internet. Messages go through cell towers to smartphones.
  5. PPC Advertising: With PPC digital ads through Google, Bing, and others, the advertiser pays every time a person clicks on the ad. These ads help drive traffic to your website.
  6. Content Marketing: Creating and distributing useful information to a target audience helps promote a company brand, build relationships, and position a company as an expert in an industry. Some examples are podcasts, blogs, newsletters, videos, courses, and informational emails.
  7. Social Media: Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, & LinkedIn play bigger roles in some industries than others, but even professional services companies need a social media presence. These channels can support branding and help with recruiting.

Why Digital Marketing Works

A company must get its marketing message to as many potential clients or customers as possible to succeed. Digital channels can increase your company’s visibility for less money than other channels. Digital marketing can also be more easily customized to appeal to different target audiences. They can then be evaluated and adjusted to improve results.

Today, companies must compete with many more advertising messages than in the past. Everyone faces more choices daily from more providers than ever, so companies must build a strong brand and be seen as professional experts. Digital marketing can help marketers do both.

Digital marketing also reaches people where they are today. According to the research experts at Statista, “As of January 2023, there were approximately 311 million internet users in the United States. Meanwhile, around 246 million were social media users.”

Advantages of Digital Marketing

  • Financial Advantages: Many digital channels cost very little, and the return on investment tends to be much higher than in traditional marketing. For example, email campaigns and posting on social media are both inexpensive or free and can potentially boost profits tremendously.
  • Measure Results: Many types of digital marketing automatically measure key performance metrics, like the number of impressions, CTRs, cost per conversion, overall conversion rates, etc.
  • Adjust to Improve: Making a small change to an email, text, or social media post is fast and simple, so perfecting a company’s marketing is easier than with more traditional marketing.
  • Increase Brand Recognition: People must see your logo and engage with your company repeatedly to build brand recognition and loyalty. There are almost unlimited digital opportunities to generate brand awareness.
  • Reach Management: You can use digital channels to reach a specific target audience, a region, or the whole world, depending on your goal.
  • Engagement through Customization: Digital marketing lets you create compelling, specific content that will appeal to and be useful to your client or buyer persona or personas.

Successful Digital Marketing Strategies

To create a successful digital marketing strategy, companies should start by deciding on a goal, defining a target market, and identifying its buyer persona. Knowing very specifically what you want to accomplish, what your sales funnel looks like, and how success will be defined will help make the rest of the process much easier. Your buyer or client should also be clearly defined. If, for example, you know clients are typically 20 or 30-somethings, your messaging and channel choices will be different than if clients were 60 or 70-somethings. Education levels, gender, and buying habits can all be considered within the marketing strategy.

Next, choose a few specific channels to try, making sure to coordinate them. Start with a professionally created website and search engine optimization. Then, track, measure, evaluate, and improve. Marketing departments can track and evaluate results from digital campaigns more easily than other marketing. Digital marketing analysis tools continue to improve, and the knowledge gained is critical to constantly improving marketing efforts. Slight changes easily made in many digital media can yield better results. For example, changing a couple of words in an email marketing effort may increase open rates.

Digital marketing will continue to grow in importance over the next decade because Millennials and Gen Z rely heavily on digital media. The new trends and innovations like artificial intelligence and more advanced use of videos will continue to improve Internet users’ experiences. Consequently, a company with a strong online presence and a smart digital marketing strategy is poised to succeed in today’s noisy and competitive marketplace.

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