Digital marketing

What is digital marketing?

At a high level, digital marketing refers to advertising delivered through digital channels
such as search engines, websites, social media, email, and mobile apps. Using these online
media channels, digital marketing is the method by which companies endorse goods,
services, and brands. Consumers heavily rely on digital means to research products. For
example, think with Google marketing insights found that 48% of consumers start their
inquiries on search engines, while 33% look to brand websites and 26% search within
mobile applications.

While modern day digital marketing is an enormous system of channels to which

marketers simply must onboard their brands, advertising online is much more complex
than the channels alone. In order to achieve the true potential of digital marketing,
marketers have to dig deep into today’s vast and intricate cross-channel world to discover
strategies that make an impact through engagement marketing. Engagement marketing is
the method of forming meaningful interactions with potential and returning customers
based on the data you collect over time. By engaging customers in a digital landscape, you
build brand awareness, set yourself as an industry thought leader, and place your business
at the forefront when the customer is ready to buy.

By implementing an omnichannel digital marketing strategy, marketers can collect

valuable insights into target audience behaviors while opening the door to new methods of
customer engagement. Additionally, companies can expect to see an increase in retention.
According to a report by Invesp, companies with strong omnichannel customer
engagement strategies retain an average of 89% of their customers compared to companies
with weak omnichannel programs that have a retention rate of just 33%. 

As for the future of digital marketing, we can expect to see a continued increase in the
variety of wearable devices available to consumers. Forbes also forecasts that social media
will become increasingly conversational in the B2B space, video content will be refined for
search engine optimization (SEO) purposes, and email marketing will become even more
personalized.

“Digital is at the core of everything in marketing today—it has gone from ‘one of the things
marketing does’ to ‘THE thing that marketing does.’”

 – Sanjay Dholakia, Former Chief Marketing Officer, Marketo

Common problems that digital marketing can solve

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To optimize your marketing strategies, digital is mandatory. Digital marketing can help you
to get to know your audience, learn important data about them, and provide metrics that
will give your marketing team credibility.

 Problem: I don’t know my audience well enough to get started. Getting to know

your audience takes time, and while your marketing team may have developed
audience personas that can be of use, consumers actively spending time online may
not behave in the way you’d expect. You’ll need to test different language with
different targets, keeping in mind that certain descriptors will appeal to different
people and their place in the buying cycle. Attune yourself to your audience and
you’ll build credibility that will set you apart from the competition. 

 Problem: I haven’t optimized my channels for SEO. Regardless of your position

in the marketing process, it’s important to have an understanding of SEO best
practices. In addition to improving search engine ranking, SEO can reinforce and
support your campaign testing and optimization to ensure you’re delivering high
quality, valuable content that your potential customers want. 

 Problem: I don’t have a social media strategy. Regardless of whether you want to

develop an organic social media strategy, a paid social media strategy, or a blend of
the two, it’s important to have some form of social marketing in place. While social
media is excellent for branding and engagement, it can also be a useful channel for
digital marketing advertisement. Find a niche and a consistent voice, be patient, and
as you’re following increases, the impact of your ads will increase as well.

 Problem: My marketing teams are siloed. It’s important to break out of silos to

create nimble, fluid structures. Your customers aren’t sequestered in one channel
waiting for ads, so your marketing efforts must deploy cross-channel functionality
with teams that bring multiple skill sets to the table to engage customers where they
are. Each social network and channel includes different audiences and expectations,

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 so marketing efforts may look completely different for each. This includes tone,
imagery, offers, and even the time of day you post.

 Problem: I’m under pressure from my CMO to report on metrics that support

the bottom line. Digital marketing supports a vast universe of metrics that can be
utilized to determine the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, but these metrics
should be chosen with care. Each case will depend upon your audience makeup and
focus on each channel. Keeping this in mind, start by determining your goals for
each channel and set metrics your CMO will want to see the most.

Components of digital marketing

Digital marketing spans across a massive network of digital touchpoints that customers
interact with many times a day. To properly utilize these channels, you need to have an
understanding of each.

 Paid search. Paid search, or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, typically refers to the

sponsored result on the top or side of a search engine results page (SERP). These
ads charge you for every click and they can be tailored to appear when certain
search terms are entered, so your ads are being targeted to audiences seeking
something in particular. These ads can be extremely effective, as they rely on data
gleaned from individuals’ online behavior and are used to boost website traffic by
delivering relevant ads to the right people at the right time. These ads also involve
retargeting, meaning that depending on the customers’ actions, marketing
automation tools can craft unique, personal cross-platform ads.

 Search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is the process of optimizing the content,

technical setup, and reach of your website, so that your pages appear at the top of a
search engine result for a specific set of keyword terms. Using SEO can drive visitors
to your site when they display behavior implying that they’re searching for relevant
products, which can be a game changer considering that 90% of people searching
haven’t formed an opinion about a brand yet (Status Labs, 2018). While PPC and
retargeting have their place, organic online traffic earned through search engine
optimization has enormous influence on search rankings and, by extension, organic
site traffic. By using keywords and phrases, you can use SEO to massively increase
visibility and begin a lasting customer relationship. SEO is defined as increasing a
website’s rank in online search results, and thus its organic site traffic, by using
popular keywords and phrases. Strong SEO strategies are hugely influential in
digital marketing campaigns since visibility is the first step to a lasting customer
relationship.  
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  Content marketing. Effective content marketing is not outwardly promotional in
nature, but rather serves to educate and inspire consumers who are seeking
information. When you offer content that is relevant to your audience, it can secure
you as a thought leader and a trustworthy source of information, making it less
likely that your other marketing efforts will be lost in the static. In the age of the
self-directed buyer, content marketing gets three times more leads than paid search
advertising, so it’s well worth the additional effort.

 Social media marketing. The key to effective social media marketing goes far
beyond simply having active social media accounts. You must also be weaving social
elements into every aspect of your marketing efforts to create as many peer-to-peer
sharing opportunities as possible. The more your audience is inspired to engage
with your content, the more likely they are to share it, potentially inspiring their
peers to become customers as well.

 Email marketing. After more than two decades, email is still the quickest and most
direct way to reach customers with critical information. Today, successful email
campaigns must be incredibly engaging, relevant, informative, and entertaining to
not get buried in your customer’s inbox. To succeed, your marketing emails should
satisfy five core attributes. They must be trustworthy, relevant, conversational,
coordinated across channels, and strategic.   

 Mobile marketing. Mobile devices are kept in our pockets, sit next to our beds, and
are checked constantly throughout the day. This makes marketing on mobile
incredibly important—two-thirds of consumers can recall a specific brand they have
seen advertised on mobile in the last week—but mobile is also very nuanced
considering its intimate nature. SMS, MMS, and in-app marketing are all options to
reach your customers on their devices, but beyond that, you must consider the
coordination of your marketing efforts across your other digital marketing channels.

  Marketing automation. Marketing automation is an integral platform that ties all

of your digital marketing together. In fact, companies that automate lead
management see a 10% or more bump in revenue in six to nine months’ time.
Without it, your campaigns will look like an unfinished puzzle with a crucial missing
piece. Marketing automation software streamlines and automates marketing tasks
and workflow, measures results, and calculates the return on investment (ROI) of
your digital campaigns, helping you to grow revenue faster. Marketing automation
can help you gain valuable insight into which programs are working and which
aren’t, and it will provide metrics to allow you to speak to digital marketing’s efforts
on your company’s bottom line.

ROI of a successful digital marketing program

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Digital marketing ROI involves much more than the up-front payback of standard banner
ads, organic content marketing is also a major player in the digital marketing space.

 Digital marketing reaches customers beyond advertisements. Seventy percent

of internet users want to learn about products through content versus traditional
advertisements (MDG, 2014). 
 Digital marketing drives content marketing. The top five B2B content marketing
tactics are social media content (92%), e-newsletters (83%), articles on your
website (81%), blogs (80%), and in-person events (77%) (source). 
 Digital marketing is vital for SEO. The first organic search results on Google
account for 32.5% of traffic share for a search term (Chitka)

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