Introduction to Digital Marketing Types
Two decades ago the concept of digital marketing was an irrelevant perception to consumers and marketers. But as the users of the internet are increasing rapidly day by day, the popularity of digital marketing is also mounting gradually and now it becomes an effective tool to reach the target customers who expend more time before the screen either on desktop or laptop or tablet or smartphone. To sustain and survive in a competitive digital marketplace, it turns into a must-have for all types of businesses. Digital marketing is considerably inexpensive than the old marketing concept including print marketing and advertising on TV and radio. To stay up and stand out from the crowd of digital competition races, the marketer needs to implement various types of marketing tactics in the digital platforms.
What is Digital Marketing?
The concept of digital marketing indicates all types of marketing activities performing through electronic devices or the internet or digital channels. It is not only restricted to online marketing actions, but it also depends on some traditional marketing doings. Though it is a debatable point about which concept will be more effective to reach the target customers, yet the combination of both the concepts may assure a successful campaign of products or services.
Different digital marketing channels are available to stay afloat in the high competition of the market. But it is the sole decision of a marketer or business owner to choose any particular channel or combination of two-three channels rather than navigating all types of processes. Because of the limited budget, small businesses cannot afford to invest more money in different channels for the growth of the business.
Various Types of Digital Marketing Channels
Digital marketing includes numerous kinds of marketing channels to do business. These channels are very much effective for promoting products or services and the considerably easiest way to grasp the target customers.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization or SEO is one of the important tools which helps to enhance online visibility in search engine results. Google, Bing, and yahoo are popular search engines through which a user can get specific search results on the basis of keywords, user’s location at the time of searching, and also browsing history. To appear in the first page of search engine results (SERP) and to attract more traffic to the website, it is necessary to optimize the content for specific keywords or the mixing up of inbound and outbound links. The marketer needs to follow the changes of search engine algorithms and take decisions or update strategy accordingly. Nowadays, every business organization improves its content for search engines to survive in the competition of the market.
2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search engine marketing is another way of enhancing traffic and it gives paid service to provide space to advertise a product or service. The marketer can purchase advertisement space that appears on the user’s search engine result page. The popular paid search services are Google AdWords and Bing Ads. These search engines provide a platform to display an advertisement by charging some predetermined amount. SEM is considered an effective model as it shows an advertisement to the target customers. Because most search engines follow a pay-per-click or PPC advertising method where search engines charge a company on the basis of the number of times their advertisement is clicked.
3. Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Today people are spending more time on social media platforms to connect with their family members and friends as well as getting current news or following their interested topic. But this social media is also used as a digital marketing channel where marketers get high exposure to connect to the consumers and promote their products. Especially B2C companies gain the highest advantages of SMM. There are a plethora of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and so forth. These social media platforms collect data of user’s interests, likings, and personal factors like age, location, etc. This information is used to create ads for promoting products or services to appear in selected demographic’s newsfeed. Besides that, sharing quality content in social media is an excellent way of involving consumers. There are different processes of social media marketing like Facebook ads, paid twitter service, hashtag campaigns, and influencer marketing.
4. Content Marketing
The content marketing concept generally comprises any content regarding products or services available in online, tweets, blogs, and YouTube videos. This is an indirect way of digital marketing approach where a business house delivers a quality piece of content to generate sales online. The users may find the content useful and informative while browsing the web. The main purpose of content making is to provide information of various queries related to the product to the customers who interrelate with the content by reading, sharing or commenting on it. This ongoing process of marketing is also used to build brand recognition, faith, equity among customers. The marketer must aware of the language of content before preparing any content.
5. E-mail Marketing
Though it is an old model, yet it is a successful model in digital marketing strategy. Here, the marketers update their customers regularly about products, services and company’s customers’ related policies through email. It nurtures a sociable relationship with those email subscribers who help to increase brand trust and brand loyalty. Even they are considered as active buyers and the companies earn those valuable subscribers by its content and products or services.
6. Viral Marketing
Viral marketing means creating a funny or trendy kind of post, newsletter, video, meme or a short type of content spreads across the web like a virus in a short span of time. It can generate havoc impact within a short period but to make it successful the marketer needs to spread similar types of newsletters or content or video across multiple channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blog posts, etc.
7. Affiliate Marketing
This performance-based digital marketing denotes the process of paying for conversions. Basically, the blogger or e-commerce websites use affiliate marketing where a person makes a partnership with a company for generating traffic to the business and he or she gets a commission for this job.
8. Influencer Marketing
Here the marketers choose social media platforms to promote a company’s product or services.In the digital marketing concept, various new types of marketing ways including mobile phone advertising, pay-per-click advertising, instant messaging marketing, radio advertising, television advertising have come up. That is why the marketers need to consider their business pattern before implementing any digital marketing option which will produce the best business result.
Recommended Articles
This is a guide to Digital Marketing Types. Here we discuss what is digital marketing channels and its types which includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO), E-mail Marketing, and Content Marketing, etc. You may also look at the following articles to learn more –
- Marketing Mix
- Digital Marketing Tools
- Email Marketing Interview Questions
- Social Media Marketing Interview Questions
