What Is Digital Marketing?
More than half of all marketing is digital marketing, making it the leading format for advertising, generating brand awareness, creating connections with customers and facilitating product and service purchases. In the last decade alone, digital marketing has grown to dominate the advertising budgets of the majority of companies, whether they sell direct to customers or B2B.
The affordability and flexibility of digital marketing has made it accessible to even the smallest of businesses, which is why it has become a go-to strategy for goal-oriented teams who want to maximize every dollar in their marketing budgets. In this article, you’ll learn about the basics of digital marketing, plus insight into the benefits, types of marketing available and applications across a variety of industries and company sizes.
Table of Contents
The Benefits of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing would not be growing exponentially if it didn’t come with substantial benefits to the businesses that utilize it. Let’s take a closer look at what those are.
Cost Effective
Digital marketing can be surprisingly affordable. The more knowledgeable your marketing team is about digital marketing, the better the ROI. That’s why so many companies choose to outsource their digital marketing efforts to external partners like consultants or digital marketing agencies.
Why is digital marketing so affordable? Here are a few reasons . . .
- Targeting: Ads are targeted to the audience segment most likely to respond instead of broadcasting to all people in the hopes some will notice and reply.
- Scalability: You can flex your campaign to fit your budget and select channels that are the best fit for your business.
- Availability: There is ad space in every corner of the digital world. This high volume translates into lower costs for businesses.
- Trackability: Learn what isn’t working and divert funds to more lucrative opportunities instead of wasting money on ads that aren’t working.
- Low Obligation: In many cases, small businesses can add and remove ads without enormous cancellation fees or other related expenses.
Reach that Levels the Playing Field
The internet has made the world a smaller place, and nowhere is that more obvious than digital marketing. With digital marketing, a small business in Colorado can reach a customer on a completely different continent any time of day or night.
Not only that, your marketing can connect with potential customers anywhere they are online, like a timeline ad that pops up as they scroll through Facebook or a banner ad on their favorite app-based game. Even better, you can target that reach so that you’re only appearing to customers who have an interest in your product or service, or who have other relevant data that makes them more likely to purchase.
Improved Efficiency
Remember the scenario where a tiny business can have global reach? Digital marketing greatly enhances the efficiency of the process. For example, instead of a massive direct mail campaign and all the associated printing and postage costs, why not send a targeted email to a select audience? In addition to the ease of using email or social messaging, digital marketing also allows users more power to manage their ads and campaigns, making them less reliant on reps or vendors to turn an ad off and on or shift the audience for a campaign.
Real-Time Engagement
Decades ago, developing customer relationships required trained salespeople to travel thousands of miles a year, make constant phone calls and connect via postal mail or couriers. Today, you can talk directly to your customers with an instant message. You can video call to talk in person and build relationships. It’s also easy for your customers to engage with you. There are no extra steps between seeing your digital ad and clicking it. Your customers can send you emails to ask questions or comment on your Instagram to get clarification. They can purchase products instantly based off of one convincing YouTube video. Businesses have an exceptional opportunity to build trust in the digital marketplace and engage with their customers regularly when using digital marketing.
Brand Recognition
If you want customers to see your logo and make an instant connection to your products, then you need to get your company in front of them as much as possible. Fortunately, digital marketing makes that easier than ever. The sheer variety of advertising channels gives your business multiple opportunities to develop impressions and foster engagement.
Measurable Results
One of the most stressful aspects of an advertising campaign is finding out if it’s actually working. Digital marketing is measurable and the success of a given campaign over time is trackable. The business intelligence offered by most advertising platforms can tell you how many people clicked on your ad and help you determine if that click turned into a purchase, phone call or any other metric you find useful in guiding the direction of your campaigns.
Tracking and reporting help you detect trends in your ad response too. Are more women clicking your ad than expected? You might have a gap in your business strategy that’s leaving them out. Are you experiencing a higher uptick in responses? Which ad? Why? Do you want to test out two campaigns and proceed with the best performer? Digital marketing can help you track that type of data too.
Types of Digital Marketing
Programmatic Advertising
Pay-Per-Click
Search Engine Optimization
Social Media
Influencer Promotion
Content Marketing
Search Engine Marketing
Who Can Benefit from Digital Advertising?
Digital advertising can work for businesses in a variety of industries. Even small, niche services and products can benefit from utilizing digital marketing as part of their advertising strategy. In fact, with the targeting and specificity available in digital marketing, it may be even more powerful than traditional ad formats.
For example, if you own a business selling parts for specialized equipment, you might rely on trade publications, referrals or purchased listings to generate new customers. Those tried and true methods do pay off, but are they maximizing your potential? Are they helping people who aren’t within six degrees of separation find you? Are they preventing you from connecting with the wired segment of your potential customer base?
Digital marketing helps you stop wasting time casting a wide net and hoping for the best and puts you on a path that targets real potential customers where they are online with a message designed for them. Every industry can find a way to utilize digital advertising and many already use it and simply don’t realize it.
Industries that leverage digital advertising include:
- Entertainment
- Dining
- Automotive
- Healthcare
- Retail
- Education
- Manufacturing
- Tech
- E-commerce
- Aerospace
- Finance
- Real Estate
- Fitness
- Wellness
- Pharmaceutical
Getting Started with Digital Marketing
Get started with digital marketing on your own by delving into search engine resources available in places like Google Ads or Meta. If you’re not sure about venturing into digital marketing on your own, consider partnering with an agency or consultant to help you navigate the process and develop your strategy.
