Digital marketing promotes your brand via online channels. Explore the different types of digital marketing, why it’s important, and real-life examples.
Digital marketing helps brands connect with their audience through various online platforms. With almost 30% of business taking place online (a figure that’s growing by the year), it’s more important than ever to lean into digital marketing if you want to stand out and generate sales.
This year, 46.2% of marketers are planning to increase their digital marketing spend in a bid to grow revenue, build trust, and secure more online sales. Learn more about how digital marketing works, why it is important and how to create a digital marketing strategy to help grow your business.
Reference: https://www.shopify.com/blog/digital-marketing
Spending on digital advertising worldwide is expected to hit $667 billion in 2024. The most common marketing goals for businesses include increased brand awareness, sales, engagement, leads, and revenue—all of which can be achieved with a digital marketing strategy.
Digital marketing vs. traditional marketing
Digital marketing is carried out online or via digital channels, while traditional marketing tends to use offline channels, like billboard ads and TV campaigns. Digital marketing is often more cost-effective than traditional advertising methods, since you can employ free or low-cost internet tools and media. There’s no hefty price tag that comes with full-page magazine spreads or limited placements on a billboard.
Digital marketing for B2B
Business to business (B2B) digital marketing is the act of promoting your products or services to other businesses or organizations. The most common digital marketing strategies for B2B brands are email marketing and social media marketing. The rise of AI has encouraged brands to think outside the box in 2024 and experiment with multiple strategies, like automated personalization and influencer marketing.
Digital marketing for B2C
Business to consumer (B2C) digital marketing promotes a product or service to a consumer rather than another business. Ecommerce brands usually fall into this camp, using tactics like social media marketing, paid advertising, and search engine optimization (SEO) to capture the attention of shoppers who are researching products.
Why is digital marketing important?
Today’s competition means it’s impossible to stand out without using multiple strategies to attract and nurture potential shoppers. Digital marketing can be the catalyst for getting your products in front of the right people, but that’s not the only benefit. Here’s why digital marketing is important.
Grow your business
More conversions mean more revenue. Digital marketing not only attracts shoppers but educates them on why they should buy from you and ultimately guides them toward a sale.
A thought-out digital marketing plan will give you key insights into how well your campaigns are performing (use a marketing plan template to get started). Make sure you set goals and track your KPIs to determine how well your efforts are paying off.
Increase return on investment (ROI)
Tracking and analyzing the results of your digital marketing strategy will help you identify where you’re having the most success. You can use this information to optimize your efforts, decrease the cost of new customer acquisition, and make sure you’re putting your money where it matters.
Improve your global impact
It can be tempting to throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. However, a successful digital marketing strategy requires an understanding of your audience so you can serve them the right content on the right platforms at the right time.
Organic strategies like social media marketing and SEO can help you stand out against big-name brands that have millions of dollars to invest in advertising, and give you a competitive edge globally.
13 types of digital marketing
A well-rounded digital marketing strategy encompasses multiple channels. Generally speaking, most brands use a combination of social media, email, and SEO, among others. The specific channels that work for your brand largely depend on your target audience, your budget, and your business goals.
Here are 13 popular and effective digital marketing channels to promote your online business.
- Social media marketing
Social media marketing allows you to engage with existing customers and build relationships with new ones. Social media is a collective term for the major platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, as well as niche sites like Houzz and Twitch. Some of the main social media marketing platforms to check out include:
Facebook, with its 3.04 billion monthly active users
TikTok, with 1.56 billion monthly active users
Instagram, with more than 2 billion monthly active users
X, which has 41.5 million daily active “monetizable” users in the US alone
Pinterest, which reaches 498 million monthly active users
Snapchat, with a total of 406 million active daily users
You can create organic social posts on each of these networks. Organic social posts are updates you post to your brand’s page without any paid promotion. It’s typically best to go with a mix of engaging and promotional content with organic posts, skewing more toward engaging content. Too many self-promotional posts may lead to unfollows.
Perfume brand Dossier posts relatable content on TikTok to connect with its followers and demonstrate its personality.
Reference: https://www.shopify.com/blog/digital-marketing