Digital Marketing is the set of strategies focused on promoting a company or brand on the Internet. The difference with traditional marketing is that it uses digital channels, which allows for the analysis of results in real-time.
Knowing what digital marketing is and how it works, as well as how to take advantage of its different channels, is essential to being a competitive brand, so let’s see what its main keys are.
What is digital marketing, and what is it used for?
Digital marketing (also called online marketing) is a system that allows a brand’s products or services to be promoted over the Internet, using online channels and tools strategically to help achieve the company’s overall business objectives.
It emerged as a result of the transition from Web 1.0 (made up of static content controlled by companies, similar to traditional media) to Web 2.0, in which users can interact and their voice begins to be important. However, the concept began to be used for the first time in the 1990s.
It marked a change in the way companies use technology to promote their business. Before it came into being, almost all the information consumers received about products and services was controlled by the companies that marketed them. It was, therefore, very difficult to ensure that the information received was impartial and took into account the interests of the consumer and not just those of the company.
In the age of digital marketing, however, the consumer has become an active agent in the entire purchasing process and even has influence in previous stages, such as the development of new products. It is estimated that 60% of the purchasing process has already been completed by the time the consumer comes into contact with the seller since the latter has become accustomed to doing their own research.
In this sense, brands have to accept that there is a certain loss of control over the messages published about their products and services, and they have to be willing to interact with users instead of giving monologues.
Advantages of digital marketing
- Measurable results. In traditional marketing, it is very difficult to attribute results to specific campaigns and accurately identify what is happening. In contrast, in digital marketing, we have practically real-time data on each user action. This makes it possible to keep exact control of the most relevant metrics for our business and measure the return on investment of each of our campaigns.
- Immediacy. By being able to measure results in real-time, we can also implement actions in a very short period of time. This allows us to correct course if something is not working and to adapt quickly to any unforeseen events.
- More precise targeting. Traditional TV, radio, print and outdoor advertising is aimed at a narrow audience, but a company’s products are usually only of interest to certain types of customers, which leads to wasted impressions and budget. With digital marketing, however, we can target ads with great precision to reach exactly the target audience.
- Knowing your customers. Online marketing allows companies of all kinds to maintain a continuous dialogue with their customers. It is no longer necessary to carry out expensive market research to find out what they think: we can ask them directly or even monitor their conversations with other users about the brand. All this knowledge helps us to adapt our offer and our campaigns to hit the nail on the head.
- Expanded reach. With digital marketing, a business’s reach is no longer limited to its immediate surroundings, but we can reach users anywhere in the world. Combine this with the ability to sell online, and the potential for growth is enormous.
- Less intrusiveness. Traditional marketing is based on “bombarding” the user with advertising impacts, while in digital marketing, the user can choose whether to interact with the brand or not.
- Loyalty. Close relationships with customers can now be developed and nurtured through repeated impacts, which helps us foster brand loyalty.
- Profitability. Online marketing is within reach of companies of all sizes.
There are channels and strategies for all tastes, and it is possible to start having an online presence for free or at very low costs.
Objectives of online marketing campaigns
Just like traditional marketing campaigns, online marketing can have very diverse objectives. In this section, we will focus on the most common ones according to their typology.
If we focus on objectives related to brand recognition, we find that the most common are increasing visibility and improving reputation. In the area of lead generation, brands often resort to lead nurturing, which consists of cultivating customer relationships through valuable and personalized content.
Finally, if we look at the goal of increasing sales, brands often turn to digital marketing to obtain a higher ROI and promote cross-selling and up-selling.
However, we also see a lot of online marketing being used as a strategy to build customer loyalty and improve engagement.
Digital marketing campaigns can be launched on different channels, and depending on that, some tools or others will have to be used.
On the one hand, Google Ads and Google Analytics are two of the most widely used tools when it comes to running search campaigns. Google Ads is Google’s advertising platform where you can launch your campaigns and measure some results, and Google Analytics is a more in-depth measurement tool that you can link to Google Ads and thus have more in-depth analyses of your advertising results.
If you want to launch campaigns on social media, the platforms themselves have their native ad tools where you can develop your campaign and also measure many key performance indicators. However, you can combine the data collected by these tools with the information provided by external tools such as Sprout Social and Hootsuite.
The seven key strategies of digital marketing
1) Content marketing
Content marketing involves the creation of texts, audio, videos, interactive elements or other formats with the aim of educating, informing or entertaining a brand’s potential customers.
Typically, content marketing does not seek to generate immediate conversions, but rather to attract users who are in the early stages of the purchasing process. These users tend to look for information related to their problems and needs. The brand provides it with this information in order to make itself known and ultimately obtain the data of the user potentially interested in its products or services (lead). Subsequently, it will send them increasingly specific content focused on the specific solution offered by the brand.
Therefore, we see that the content must be different depending on the phase of the purchasing process in which we find ourselves, being more generic at the beginning and more specific the closer the customer gets to conversion.
2) Email marketing
Email marketing consists of sending a message directly by email to users who are part of the brand’s database.
This channel stands out for its great versatility, as it can be used for all types of campaigns and actions: sending promotions or discounts, training potential customers, requesting donations, launching loyalty campaigns, and much more.
Its great strength is the customization it allows. Since we are sending messages one by one, we can tailor each email to each user’s unique situation and personalize elements at an individual level, for example, the recipient’s name or the last product they purchased.
For this strategy to work, we need to segment the database properly, group users based on their characteristics and behaviour, and send them messages that adapt to their needs at any given time.
3) Social networks
Social media has been a part of online marketing since the 2000s when sites like Orkut and, later, Facebook began to become popular.
Today, social media has billions of users, making it a key channel for brands looking to communicate with their audiences. In addition, by holding a large amount of data about the users who use it, social media allows for highly targeted advertising campaigns.
A very important aspect of digital marketing strategies on social media is to properly identify which are the most interesting networks based on your target audience and the type of products and solutions you sell. For example, LinkedIn is the star site for companies dedicated to B2B marketing, while TikTok is one of the most powerful networks to reach a young audience.
It is also very important to be aware that social media is a place for conversation and interaction and that the brand has to be able to adapt its tone of communication to reach users.
4) SEO
SEO, or “search engine optimization”, consists of a series of techniques aimed at improving the positioning of a brand in search engines such as Google. The objective is to appear among the first results when a user performs a search that reveals that they might be interested in our products or services.
In general, SEO is an investment that pays off in the long term. However, once a brand is positioned, it can reap the benefits of free visits to its website for a long time.
Within SEO, we must distinguish two main types of techniques:
- On-page SEO: actions aimed at improving our website, for example, organizing information correctly, writing clear titles, optimizing images, etc.
- Off-page SEO: actions aimed at improving the reputation and authority of our website in the eyes of search engines, mainly by getting other related sites to link to ours.
5) SEM
SEM, or “search engine marketing”, consists of placing paid advertisements on search engines. In this way, we can generate traffic to our website among potentially interested users in the short term. In return, we will have to pay a certain amount to the advertising platform each time a user clicks on an advertisement to visit our website.
SEM and SEO can be seen as complementary strategies since, in both cases, we are interested in creating a well-structured website that is relevant to user queries. In addition, we may be interested in positioning certain content using SEO and using SEM for others.
6) Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a strategy that involves encouraging customers, content creators and/or media outlets to recommend your brand in exchange for a reward for each product or service sold through their own channels.
It works through unique tracking links that interested parties place on their social networks or websites. This way, you can track where each new sale comes from and, thus, assign commissions correctly.
This strategy is very interesting for expanding the reach of brands and boosting their sales. In addition, less is invested than in other strategies because it is only paid for results, with the most common being that the affiliate is paid a part of the total sale.
Affiliates are also interested in participating in this strategy, as it is a way to generate passive income.
7) Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing involves working with social media content creators to promote your brand for a fee. By creating a reach and impact among their audience, influencers help brands increase sales and boost awareness.
In influencer marketing campaigns, the type of content, length, and compensation can vary greatly from deal to deal.
In recent years, this strategy has gained a lot of strength, and many brands have opted for it due to the good results it brings them.
