03/04/2023
At the beginning of the Millennium who would have known that the internet & technology would become a very crucial part of our lives. One of the many beneficial things this tech age has brought us is digital marketing. Digital marketing is the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the internet and other forms of digital communication, which includes social media, content marketing, mobile marketing and paid advertising.
Digital marketing is broad however the following are the main types of digital marketing:
Content marketing
Content marketing is offering your target audience information on how to solve a particular problem. This information is in line with what your business does for example, if you are a dentist, you can create content on how to take care of your teeth properly. Offering high-quality and useful content gives you an authoritative position in your field and in turn this will make your target audience trust you.
Content marketing can be done through blog posts, social media, e-mail, video and instant messaging.
Email marketing
One of the oldest forms of digital marketing is email marketing. Email marketing is sending promotional material, important information about your brand and keeping in contact with your customers through email. Email marketing works best for communicating with people that are already interested in your brand because they willingly have to give you their email and allow you permission to send emails to them.
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) like content marketing is a free method of digital marketing. Regardless of which digital marketing type your brand prefers, SEO is important for every brand to make use of. You might have a great business with a great product or great content for your target audience, but if your digital presence is not search engine optimised, it will be difficult for your target audience to find you. When optimising for search engines, you make use of keywords that your target audience will use when searching for a product or service you offer. For example, if you are a florist some of your keywords would include florist, flowers, flowers for sale, roses, and roses for sale. The beauty of it is there are many tools (free ones too) that can help you with keyword research. Here you can see which keywords people are using to look for products and services similar to yours.
Search engine marketing (SEM)
Search engine marketing (SEM) is a paid form of digital marketing. It is a type of advert that appears in search engines like Google or Bing when someone is searching for a particular product or service. If a person were to search for mattresses for sale, in the search engine there will be organic results and sponsored results. The organic results will be based on keywords and displayed in ranking order. Sponsored results are based on a bidding system and keywords. You bid for specific keywords and when your ad wins the bid, it will be shown. You are only charged by the search engine if your ad is clicked on (pay per click).
Display ads marketing
Display ads marketing is whereby your ad is displayed on websites, apps and videos. The ad is displayed as a banner which can be in the form of text, image, audio and visual or a combination of any. This type of ad can be shown regardless of whether the person was looking for such a product or service. This makes display ads a great tool for retargeting and creating awareness of your brand.
Social media marketing
This type of digital marketing would win the popularity contest as many people know of it. Social media marketing (SMM) is the use of social media networks to promote your brand to a particular target audience. There are various types of SMM including paid ads, content and influencer marketing. Similar to SEM and Display ads, on social media, you can pay for your ad to be shown to a specific target audience. Content can be used to offer value to people, which will grow your followers and in turn an opportunity to market to them. Lastly, influencer marketing in social media is whereby your brand partners with an individual(s) that have a strong following on social media. Their popularity in their niche makes it a great opportunity to help you market your brand.
Video marketing
How many people remember dial-up Internet? If you do, I’m sure you remember how long it took to load a video. Thankfully internet speeds have improved tremendously over the decades. This has made it easier to make use of video in marketing. Video marketing is a great way to promote your brand because video can be made entertaining, and your message can be delivered the way you intended. You can make use of video through avenues such as display ads, social media, email and video-sharing sites. YouTube, the biggest video-sharing platform, is a great tool for creating videos that promote your brand and share with your audience.
Mobile marketing
One of the most impactful technologies in society in this century is the smartphone. It is projected that in 2023, a world population of 6.8 billion people are smartphone users. Therefore, this brings a big opportunity for digital marketing through mobile. Mobile marketing includes making your ads or website display correctly on a smaller screen, and local ads. Most times when people search for something they need on their mobile, they also take into account how close it is to their current location. For example, if you are a mechanic who owns a repair shop in downtown Dallas, mobile marketing would include a mobile-friendly site and including your business in local ads like Google my business.
Digital marketing is very diverse, however, these are the main types. In future, we'll take a deeper look into each type of digital marketing.
