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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Understanding digital marketing fundamentals<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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?<\/em>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On a day-to-day basis, digital marketers tackle tasks like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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?<\/em>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what is digital marketing for a business-to-business brand? If you’re promoting a B2B brand, try marketing channels like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On the flip side, what is digital marketing for business-to-consumer companies? For B2C brands, focus on channels like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Digital marketing is also much more cost-effective than traditional marketing. You can market your business even on a shoestring budget<\/a> when you use digital channels correctly, while traditional marketing channels often involve significant upfront investment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Within most digital advertising platforms, you can target audiences based on factors like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You can also use customer data to personalize your digital campaigns, such as retargeting campaigns that show customers the exact products they browsed previously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What is digital marketing for search engines? Search engine optimization<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For SEO, you need to tackle both on-page and off-page factors, such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With pay-per-click advertising<\/a>, 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There are several types of PPC campaigns, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brands bid to determine how much they will have to pay when someone clicks on their ads. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What is digital marketing through email, and is it the right choice for your brand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An important thing to note about email marketing is that it’s a type of permission-based marketing<\/a>. 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Email marketing pairs well with other digital marketing channels. You can integrate email marketing with social media<\/a>, for example, for even better campaign results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You have lots of options when it comes to what kind of content to create, too. Types of content marketing include: <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Content marketing is a long-term strategy for pulling in an audience — give it time to work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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!<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Over 90% of Americans own a smartphone<\/a>, so it’s no surprise that lots of brands leverage mobile marketing to connect with customers. Mobile marketing focuses on reaching customers through their mobile devices, like smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches. <\/p>\n\n\n\n SMS text message marketing<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Currently, one of the biggest digital marketing trends<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n No matter which channels you use, your digital marketing strategy must include these key elements:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Digital marketing offers unprecedented opportunities to measure and analyze your campaign results, so take advantage. Track key performance indicators (KPIs) like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Set realistic benchmarks for what you want to achieve and monitor your performance over time to ensure it continues to improve. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Before you start building your campaigns, get a rock-solid digital marketing strategy in place with these steps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Once you launch your campaign, start measuring your results right away. So, what is digital marketing measurement?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Small businesses make digital marketing work for them every day. With these tips, you’ll be in even better shape to create successful campaigns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/a> to speed up your campaign development, saving you time and money. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n You’ll often hear the advice to use software tools to improve your campaigns, but what is digital marketing software?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Digital marketing software includes any software tool that helps you develop, execute, or analyze your campaigns. These tools include:<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe core concepts of digital marketing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What do digital marketers do?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
B2B vs B2C digital marketing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Key differences in strategy<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Platforms and channels that work best for each<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
Why digital marketing matters for your small business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Measurable results and ROI<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Reaching your target audience<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
The 7 core types of digital marketing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Search engine optimization (SEO)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.constantcontact.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/what-is-digital-marketing-ppc.png?w=600\")
Email marketing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Content marketing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
Social media marketing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Mobile marketing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Video marketing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Additional digital marketing channels<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Affiliate marketing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Influencer marketing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.constantcontact.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/what-is-digital-marketing-influencer.png?w=600\")
Public relations in the digital age<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What is a digital marketing strategy?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Elements of an effective strategy<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
Digital marketing KPIs<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
How to create a digital marketing strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Research and discovery phase<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Channel selection and planning<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Implementation and execution<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Measurement and optimization<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Digital marketing tips for small business success<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Getting started on a limited budget<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Common mistakes to avoid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
Digital marketing software and tools<\/h2>\n\n\n\n