Digital marketing includes any marketing effort that uses an electronic device or the Internet. Businesses use digital channels like search engines, social media, email, and other websites to connect with current and potential customers.
A seasoned inbound marketer could say that inbound marketing and digital marketing are virtually the same things, but there are some subtle differences. Speaking to marketers and business owners in the US, UK, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, I learned a lot about how these small differences are observed around the world.
What role does digital marketing play for a company? While traditional marketing can be in print, phone communications, or physical marketing, digital marketing can be done electronically and online. This means brands have far more ways to reach customers, including email, video, social media, and search engines.
At this stage, digital marketing is critical to your business and brand awareness. It seems like every other brand has a website. And if not, they at least have a social media presence or digital ad strategy. Digital content and marketing are so prevalent that consumers are now expecting and relying on it to learn more about brands.
In short, in order to be competitive as a business owner, you need to consider some aspects of digital marketing.
Because there are so many options and strategies associated with digital marketing, you can get creative and experiment with a variety of marketing tactics on a budget. With digital marketing, you can also use tools like analytics dashboards to better monitor the success and ROI of your campaigns than with traditional advertising content like billboards or print ads.
How does a company define digital marketing? Digital marketing is defined by the use of numerous digital tactics and channels to connect with customers with who they spend most of their time online. From the website itself to a company’s online branding assets – digital advertising, email marketing, online brochures, and more – there is a spectrum of tactics that come under the umbrella of “digital marketing”.
The best digital marketers have a clear picture of how each digital marketing campaign supports their overall goals. And, depending on the goals of their marketing strategy, marketers can support a larger campaign through the free and paid channels available to them.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
This is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher on search engine results pages, thereby increasing the organic (or free) traffic your website receives. Channels that benefit from SEO include websites, blogs, and infographics.
There are several different ways you can turn to SEO in order to generate qualified traffic to your website. These include:
On the SEO side: This type of search engine optimization focuses on all the content that is “on the page” when viewing a website. By searching keywords for their search volume and intent (or meaning), you can answer questions for readers and rank higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs) that generate those questions.
Off-page SEO: This type of search engine optimization focuses on all of the “off-page” activities when you want to optimize your website. “What activities that are not on my own website can affect my ranking?” You might ask. The answer is inbound links, also known as backlinks. The number of publishers who link to you and the relative “authority” of those publishers will affect how high you rank for the keywords that interest you. By networking with other publishers, guest posting on these websites (and referring back to your website), and generating outside attention, you can earn the backlinks you need to get your website up on the right SERPs.
Technical SEO: This type of search engine optimization focuses on the backend of your website and how your pages are coded. Image compression, structured data, and the optimization of CSS files are all forms of technical search engine optimization that can increase the loading speed of your website – an important ranking factor in the eyes of search engines like Google.
