Digital marketing, sometimes referred to as online marketing, is the promotion of your business through online marketing channels to connect with potential customers using the internet and other forms of digital communication.
The typical online marketing channels used in digital marketing include email campaigns, social media posts and web-based advertising to connect with current and prospective customers.
There are both free and paid forms of digital marketing, some of which you may have seen while you’re scrolling through social media or search engines.
Free forms of digital marketing tend to take more time as they grow your brand organically. It can take days, weeks or months before you begin seeing results. This includes search engine optimisation and social media posting.
There are also paid forms of digital marketing where you typically pay a fee for every click or number of views your advertisement gets. Results are a lot quicker as campaigns are in front of your target audience within 24 hours. Paid marketing can include the ads you see at the top of search results in Google, or the sponsored ads you see on Facebook.
In today’s climate, digital marketing is essential for your business to boost brand awareness. Almost every business or brand has a website or social media presence, whether that is on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Digital content and marketing is so common that your customers will rely on it as a way to learn about your business. Because there are so many possibilities, you can get creative and experiment with a variety of marketing tactics on a budget.
There are a few major benefits of digital marketing:
- You can target only the customers most likely to purchase your product or service
- It’s more cost-effective than outbound marketing methods (i.e. cold calling, cold emails, tradeshows, seminars etc)
- Digital marketing allows you to compete with bigger brands in your industry and gives you the same opportunities to be seen
- Digital marketing is measurable through conversion tracking
- It’s easier to adapt and change a digital marketing strategy when requirements change
- Digital marketing can improve your conversion rate and the quality of your leads.
- You can engage audiences at every stage with digital marketing (i.e. customers who are browsing, customers who are serious about a purchase, returning customers etc)