What Is Digital Marketing? A Complete Guide for Small Businesses

• Digital marketing is any promotion of your business you run online or on a smartphone: Think social posts, email, your website, search results, and text messages.
• It fits any budget: You can get started for free or with a minimal budget, so you can grow at your own pace.
• You can learn core digital marketing channels one at a time: SEO, paid ads, email, content, social, mobile, and video, plus automation and AI tools that save you time.
• This guide covers the fundamentals: what digital marketing means, how the channels differ, how to build a simple strategy, and answers to the questions beginners ask most.

Think about the last time you went online. Even if you only browsed for a few minutes, you probably saw a bunch of promotional content. They could’ve been sponsored social media posts, emails from a brand you subscribe to, or commercials before a video on streaming services. All of these are examples of digital marketing.

From a small business perspective, digital marketing has opened up countless new avenues for reaching and engaging your target audience. Regardless of your budget or the industry you’re in, you can use digital campaigns to help grow your business. And more money flows into these channels every year. According to the IAB and PwC Internet Advertising Revenue Report, U.S. digital advertising revenue reached nearly $300 billion ($294.6 billion) in 2025. That’s a 13.9% jump over the year before. For you, that trend is a signal: The attention you want is already online, and even a small, focused campaign can claim a slice of it.

The world of digital marketing is vast, though, and when you’re just getting started, it’s normal to feel a bit overwhelmed. You may even be wondering, “What is digital marketing, exactly?” In this comprehensive guide, you’ll learn about key digital channels and discover how to create a strategy that works for your brand. You’ll get a plain-language definition, a tour of the main marketing channels, and a quick FAQ that answers the questions most beginners ask.

Understanding digital marketing fundamentals

Digital marketing is incredibly versatile, and each channel has its own quirks. However, certain fundamentals are true across the board, so that’s the best place to start when asking yourself, “What is digital marketing?”

The core concepts of digital marketing

So, what is digital marketing anyway? Digital marketing involves promoting your brand online or through mobile devices. Social media, websites, search engines, email, and text messages are all digital marketing channels available for you to utilize.

A couple of decades ago, if you asked someone to name an example of an ad, they would probably have said a billboard, a radio spot, or a TV commercial. Traditional marketing avenues like these are still available, but digital marketing is taking over.

Business leaders love digital marketing because it offers highly targeted audience selection. It’s also easily measurable, so you can improve your campaigns with data-driven decisions. If something isn’t working, you can make real-time adjustments thanks to the flexibility of digital marketing campaigns.

What do digital marketers do?

You might also wonder, what is digital marketing as a profession? Digital marketers develop and run campaigns to promote brands’ products or services through online channels. They may work directly for the brands they’re promoting or for marketing agencies partnered with those businesses.

On a day-to-day basis, digital marketers tackle tasks like:

• Identifying the brand’s target audience
• Setting campaign goals
• Creating content for digital campaigns
• Managing the brand’s marketing budget
• Tracking campaign performance
• Testing different versions of content
• Collaborating with other team members

Generally, digital marketers need to be both creative and analytical to produce compelling content and measure and interpret campaign results. They might specialize in one area of digital marketing or have broader skills across channels. So, you might get two different answers if you ask two different professionals, “What is digital marketing to you?”

Digital marketing vs. traditional marketing

Traditional marketing (such as print ads, billboards, radio, and TV) still works, but it plays by very different rules than digital. Here’s how the two stack up on the things that matter most when your budget is tight:

The biggest difference is measurability. With digital marketing, you can see what’s working and adjust in real time, so your next dollar tends to go further than the last.

You’ll also hear “online marketing” used almost interchangeably with digital marketing. The main distinction: Digital marketing is the broader umbrella, since it also covers channels that aren’t strictly internet-based, like text messages sent straight to a phone.

B2B vs B2C digital marketing

Promoting a business-to-consumer (B2C) brand often looks quite different than business-to-business (B2B) marketing, but there is some overlap. When developing your digital marketing strategy, make sure you consider the specific audience you’re targeting.

Key differences in strategy

The sales cycle for B2B companies is often longer, with more complex decision-making from customers. There will likely be multiple team members involved in the decision, so you need to persuade more than one person to complete a sale. B2B digital marketing often involves creating more in-depth and technical content to account for that complexity.

By contrast, B2C marketing messages aim to appeal to customers’ emotions and engage them on a personal level. These campaigns often try to build stronger relationships with customers by focusing on their individual needs and preferences.

Platforms and channels that work best for each

So, what is digital marketing for a business-to-business brand? If you’re promoting a B2B brand, try marketing channels like:

• Social media (specifically LinkedIn)
• Email marketing to nurture leads
• Mobile marketing to reach customers on their mobile devices
• Content marketing to showcase your expertise
• Pay-per-click advertising for targeted campaigns

Platforms like Google Ads and LinkedIn ads will help you manage these campaigns, as well as third-party platforms like Constant Contact for email and mobile marketing.

On the flip side, what is digital marketing for business-to-consumer companies? For B2C brands, focus on channels like:

• Influencer marketing
• Social media marketing on popular channels like Facebook and TikTok
• Email marketing
• Paid advertising, like display and search ads

Why digital marketing matters for your small business

What is digital marketing, and why is it so important? Every small business can benefit from digital marketing. It’s a cost-effective way to boost your visibility and connect with your target audience. Compared to traditional marketing, digital marketing also offers some unique advantages.

Measurable results and ROI

Digital marketing makes accurately tracking your campaign metrics a breeze. You can measure metrics like click-through rates (CTR), website traffic, conversion rates, and even return on investment (ROI) to evaluate your campaigns. Every time someone interacts with your digital ads or content, you’ll know, and you can use that information to fine-tune your marketing efforts.

Digital marketing is also much more cost-effective than traditional marketing. You can market your business even on a shoestring budget when you use digital channels correctly, while traditional marketing channels often involve significant upfront investment.

Reaching your target audience

Another thing that makes digital marketing unique is the ability to target specific audiences and advertise to the customers who are most likely to be interested in your brand. So, what is digital marketing targeting?

Within most digital advertising platforms, you can target audiences based on factors like:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Interests
• Online behaviors
• Purchase history

For example, if your target audience is people under 30 years old with bachelor’s degrees, you can adjust your digital marketing campaigns to reach customers with those exact characteristics.

You can also use customer data to personalize your digital campaigns, such as retargeting campaigns that show customers the exact products they browsed previously.

The 7 core types of digital marketing

Any type of marketing done online is digital marketing, so as you might guess, there are tons of different forms. However, certain types of digital marketing pop up time and time again, so these core types are a good place to start as you’re considering your options.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

What is digital marketing for search engines? Search engine optimization is all about adjusting elements of your website so it ranks higher in search engine results. The higher your website appears in these results, the easier it is for customers to discover it, leading to more traffic and hopefully more sales.

For SEO, you need to tackle both on-page and off-page factors, such as:

• Improving technical aspects of the website, like site speed
• Getting other reputable sites to link back to your website, also known as backlinks
• Optimizing your website content in terms of structure, readability, and keyword incorporation
• Adding internal links, or links to other pages of your site
• Using header tags, image alt text, and meta descriptions for your website pages

SEO is a long-term digital marketing strategy that focuses on gradually building organic traffic to your website. It’s a continuous process — not a one-time fix that will suddenly have tons more traffic pouring in. However, if you stick with it, SEO can greatly improve your website’s visibility over time.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

With pay-per-click advertising, you pay a fee each time a customer clicks on one of your ads. Since you don’t pay the advertising platform for anything other than clicks, PPC can be a very cost-effective and budget-friendly option for small businesses to reach their audiences.

There are several types of PPC campaigns, including:

• Sponsored search results
• Display ads, promotional images, or videos that appear alongside web content
• Shopping ads on platforms like Google Shopping
• Social media ads
• Gmail ads

Brands bid to determine how much they will have to pay when someone clicks on their ads.

Email marketing

What is digital marketing through email, and is it the right choice for your brand?

Email marketing consists of brands sending promotional email messages to customers. These can be newsletters, order confirmations, new product announcements, or any other type of content the brand uses to stay in touch with subscribers.

An important thing to note about email marketing is that it’s a type of permission-based marketing. In other words, you need each customer’s express consent before you can add them to your email subscriber list and start sending them messages.

Email marketing pairs well with other digital marketing channels. You can integrate email marketing with social media, for example, for even better campaign results. Say a neighborhood bakery emails subscribers a coupon to fill tables on an otherwise slow Tuesday afternoon.

Content marketing

Content marketing often goes hand in hand with SEO. It’s an organic marketing strategy that focuses on sharing engaging, valuable content to attract your target customers.

You have lots of options when it comes to what kind of content to create, too. Types of content marketing include:

• Blog articles posted on your brand’s website
• Social media posts
• Webinars
• Podcasts, like Constant Contact’s Be A Marketer Podcast
• Ebooks and whitepapers

With content marketing, you have the opportunity to showcase your expertise, share valuable information with your audience, and keep your customers engaged. Make sure you tailor your content to your target audience so they want to read, watch, or listen to what you’re sharing.

Content marketing is a long-term strategy for pulling in an audience — give it time to work.

Social media marketing

What is digital marketing on social media? With social media marketing, brands publish either organic or paid content on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. If you have a social media account for your brand, you’re already doing some social media marketing!

These platforms are often the ideal place to engage your target audience and foster a sense of community. You can build brand awareness by consistently sharing posts that resonate with the customers you want to reach. And as you get more engagement on your pages, you’ll be able to drive more traffic to your website and even generate leads.

The key to social media marketing success is developing a strong content strategy and sticking to it. You need to consistently post high-quality content to grow your audience. For example, a local gym could post a short clip of a new class and invite followers to reserve a spot.

Mobile marketing

According to Pew Research Center’s 2025 Mobile Fact Sheet, about 9 in 10 U.S. adults (91%) own a smartphone. So it’s no surprise that lots of brands use mobile marketing to connect with customers. Mobile marketing focuses on reaching customers through their mobile devices, like smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches.

SMS text message marketing is one form of mobile marketing that far too many business leaders overlook. In an SMS campaign, you send promotional text messages to customers who opt in to your contact list.

Since people generally have their phones nearby, these text messages instantly alert your audience and grab their attention. You can then direct them to your product pages or other webpages with a link in the messages.

Video marketing

Video marketing involves brands creating promotional videos to advertise their products or services. These videos can then appear as display ads, social media posts, or ads before or during online videos, among other options.

Currently, one of the biggest digital marketing trends is sharing short-form videos under two minutes long. These quick videos can grab the audience’s attention right away and get their point across quickly, so users don’t lose interest.

Marketing automation and AI tools

Marketing automation lets software handle repetitive tasks for you, like sending a welcome email the moment someone joins your list or scheduling a week of social posts in advance. AI tools take it further by helping you draft copy, suggest the best time to send, or sort your contacts into groups.

For a small team, that saved time is the whole point. According to the LocaliQ Small Business Marketing Trends Report, which surveyed more than 730 small businesses across the US and Canada, nearly 60% of small businesses already use AI for some part of their marketing. If you’re a team of one, handing the busywork to a tool means more hours for actually running your business.

Additional digital marketing channels

You’re absolutely not limited to these seven core digital marketing channels! Explore additional options, such as influencer and affiliate marketing, to find the channels that work best for your brand.

Affiliate marketing

In affiliate marketing, brands pay individuals or companies (the affiliates) a commission to promote their products or services. The affiliates may earn a commission for each sale they generate or based on the number of leads or clicks they drive for the brand.

For brands, a key advantage of affiliate marketing is that it’s performance-based. You only have to pay your affiliates when they produce tangible results for your business.

Influencer marketing

Social media influencers can sometimes be affiliates, but there are other ways to partner with content creators to promote your brand. For example, you might pay these influencers a set fee for them to share a certain number of posts featuring your products or services on their pages.

The appeal of influencer marketing is that influencers have ready-made audiences who are receptive to the content they post. The influencer has already established trust between them and their followers, so promotional content will likely be more impactful than regular digital ads. Just make sure you choose reliable influencers with audiences that align with your target customers.

Public relations in the digital age

What is digital marketing and public relations (PR)? People assume PR is mostly a thing of the past, but public relations still has a key role to play in managing your brand’s reputation in the digital age. Try to earn media coverage in relevant online publications, social media, and local newspapers to expand your reach. Work on building connections with influencers, journalists, and bloggers in your industry.

What is a digital marketing strategy?

Your digital marketing strategy informs all the decisions you make about your digital campaigns. This is your foundation, so make it as strong as possible to help your campaigns succeed.

Elements of an effective strategy

No matter which channels you use, your digital marketing strategy must include these key elements:

• Setting goals and objectives: Decide exactly what you’re trying to achieve through digital marketing. Create goals that are specific and measurable to keep your team on track.
• Understanding your audience: Everything about your campaigns should be tailored to your target audience. To achieve that, you need to understand exactly who they are, what they need, what they like, and what kinds of content would appeal to them.
• Conducting a competitive analysis: Before you launch campaigns, it’s worth investigating what your competitors are doing online. Understand their strengths and weaknesses so you can position your brand as strongly as possible.

Digital marketing KPIs

Digital marketing offers unprecedented opportunities to measure and analyze your campaign results, so take advantage. Track key performance indicators (KPIs) like:

• Conversion rate
• Website/page traffic
• Social media engagement
• Click-through rate
• Cost per click
• Customer lifetime value
• Return on investment
• Cost per acquisition

Set realistic benchmarks for what you want to achieve and monitor your performance over time to ensure it continues to improve.

How to create a digital marketing strategy

Before you start building your campaigns, get a rock-solid digital marketing strategy in place with these steps.

Research and discovery phase

First, research your target audience and competitors to see what’s out there. Start developing ideas for the types of campaigns you might want to run.

Channel selection and planning

Your next step is to choose the channels you want to use. Don’t try to do everything at once. Instead, focus on one or two key channels at first and expand from there. Now’s the time to start planning the content you’ll use in your campaigns, your budget, and other details of your campaigns.

Implementation and execution

This is when you set up your campaigns and launch them. Each marketing platform is different, so take your time learning how to use each one. Remember that digital campaigns are flexible, and you can make adjustments even after your campaign goes live.

Measurement and optimization

Once you launch your campaign, start measuring your results right away. So, what is digital marketing measurement?

Decide ahead of time which metrics you want to track and make sure you’re using tools capable of tracking them accurately. Learn from your results and optimize your campaigns going forward with data-driven decision-making.

Digital marketing tips for small business success

Small businesses make digital marketing work for them every day. With these tips, you’ll be in even better shape to create successful campaigns.

Getting started on a limited budget

If you’re not working with a large marketing budget, don’t worry. Start with non-organic campaigns like PPC or video marketing so you’ll see results faster without a major investment. You can also take advantage of automation and software tools to speed up your campaign development, saving you time and money.

Common mistakes to avoid

There’s always a learning curve when you’re trying something new, but better preparation will help the process go much smoother. Try to avoid these common missteps:

• Not optimizing your content for mobile devices: With digital marketing, your content will be displayed on all kinds of devices, from laptops and desktops to smartphones and tablets. Incorporate plenty of whitespace, use large buttons that are easy to click, and test your content to make sure it loads properly on smaller screens.
• Focusing on quantity over quality: One great ad or piece of content is more valuable than 10 mediocre ones, so focus on creating the best content you can.
• Posting inconsistently: Infrequent posts can negatively impact how often you pop up in your audience’s feeds. Set up a content calendar to ensure you remain at the front of your followers’ minds.
• Not repurposing your content: A blog post can become an email, a social post, and even a digital ad. Don’t be afraid to cover the same topic across different channels and repurpose some of the content you have already created to expand your reach while saving time and effort.

Digital marketing software and tools

You’ll often hear the advice to use software tools to improve your campaigns, but what is digital marketing software?

Digital marketing software includes any software tool that helps you develop, execute, or analyze your campaigns. These tools include:

• Email marketing platforms
• Social media management tools
• Analytics and reporting solutions

When you’re selecting your software tools, opt for ones that integrate with the other programs your brand uses. These integrations will make creating cohesive digital campaigns seamless and efficient.

Getting started with digital marketing today

Now that you know the fundamentals of digital marketing, you can get to work developing a strategy for your brand. At the beginning, focus on campaigns that offer quick wins, like display ads or video ads. You can expand to more channels and types of campaigns as you build confidence.

And don’t forget to add some powerful software to your arsenal. The right digital marketing tools will make it much easier to create effective campaigns, especially when they integrate with other software your company uses. Constant Contact, for example, has 300+ integrations with popular tools like Canva, Calendly, and Shopify to save time and smooth out your workflows.

FAQs

Still have questions? Here are quick answers to the ones new digital marketers ask most.

What is digital marketing in simple words?

Digital marketing is any marketing you do online or through a mobile device. That covers your social media posts, the emails you send subscribers, your website, search results, and text messages. If you’re promoting your business anywhere other than a printed flyer or a radio spot, you’re already doing digital marketing.

How do I start digital marketing, and is it easy for beginners?

Start by picking one channel you can stick with, like email or a single social platform, rather than trying everything at once. It’s very doable for beginners: You don’t need a marketing degree or a big budget, just consistency and a little practice. Set one simple goal, send a few emails or posts, and build from there as your confidence grows.

What’s the difference between digital marketing and traditional marketing?

Traditional marketing reaches people through offline channels like print, billboards, radio, and TV, while digital marketing reaches them online and on their phones. The biggest practical difference is measurement. Digital marketing shows you who clicked, visited, or bought, so you can adjust quickly and spend smarter on a small budget.

What are the main types of digital marketing?

The core types are search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing, and video marketing. Many small businesses also add affiliate marketing, influencer marketing, and marketing automation. You don’t need all of them, so pick the one or two that match where your customers already spend their time.

How much does digital marketing cost for a small business?

It varies widely, but you can start for very little, since email and social accounts cost next to nothing to set up. Most owners increase their spending as they start to see results. According to the Intuit SMB MediaLabs 2025 report, in a March 2025 survey of 1,006 U.S. small business owners and marketing leaders, 9 in 10 (92%) planned to maintain or increase their advertising spending. So start small, then grow your budget as the returns come in.

Do digital marketers make good money?

They can, though pay depends a lot on experience, location, and role. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t track “digital marketing” as its own job category. For the closest official category, marketing managers, the median annual wage was $166,790 in 2025, with employment projected to grow 7% or more from 2024 to 2034, according to data the U.S. Department of Labor publishes through O*NET. Keep in mind that’s a management-level number, so entry-level roles typically earn substantially less while you build your skills.