1. What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing, also called web marketing, internet marketing, or online marketing, refers to all the marketing strategies that a business executes using the internet and other digital channels to reach its actual or potential customers. Your company’s digital marketing efforts can include everything from paid online channels like SEM (search engine marketing) and non-paid online channels like SEO (search engine optimization).

2. Why digital marketing is important to your business

Does your company really need digital marketing to grow? In short, absolutely. Here are 8 reasons why:

1. It levels the playing field for small business owners. For small businesses, competing with the big guys isn’t exactly easy. For example, if you run a mom-and-pop diner, it’s impossible to buy more TV spots than IHOP. But here’s the thing: Digital marketing lets you level the playing field, no matter how big your competitors are. With the right digital strategies, you can build a massive social media following, rank at the top of Google, or sell tons of products via email.
2. You can target your ideal audience. When you invest in traditional marketing like magazine articles or TV ads, you can target your audience to an extent. After all, you know who usually reads the magazine or watches the TV show. But what if you really want to zero in on your audience and optimize your budget? It doesn’t matter if your ideal audience includes stay-at-home parents or high-powered CEOs. You can find and target your ideal buyer using digital marketing tactics, even if your audience is small or has niche interests.
3. You reach customers where they are. Fewer people than ever before are reading magazines and newspapers or listening to the radio. In 2018, newspaper circulation in the United States reached its lowest level since 1940. Local news audiences have declined for more than a decade. Instead, your customers are spending more time online. In fact, 90% of American adults use the internet, almost 70% use Facebook regularly, and nearly 75% use YouTube routinely. Digital marketing channels allow you to target users by demographics, interests, and even devices. That means you can connect with the right person at the right time, making the most of your marketing efforts.
4. It allows you to easily track and monitor your campaigns. Tracking results from traditional ad campaigns isn’t easy. You might know how many times your ad appeared. Yet it’s impossible to know how many people actually responded to your newspaper or TV ad. When you launch a digital marketing campaign, you can track virtually any detail. With a few clicks, you can find out how many people clicked on your ad and whether they bought something. You can even target the same group of people with another ad.
5. It's easy to scale and adapt. When you find a digital tactic that works for your business, you can easily scale it. After all, you aren't tied to a TV ad or committed to direct mailing months in advance. That means you can spend a bit more in digital and get exponential results, adapting to your needs as they evolve. But how do you find what works? You can rely on analytics tools to measure your results. Because you’re in complete control of your digital efforts, you can test out new ideas at any time. If you like the results you get, you can scale them up. If they don’t work out as well as you’d hoped, you can stop them before spending too much.
6. Your competitors are already doing it. No matter your industry, there’s a good chance your competitors already have a head start with digital marketing. In fact, 70% of marketers are already using content marketing, and almost 75% are using social media. Almost two-thirds are investing in SEO, and nearly half are using email automation.
7. Builds brand reputation. Whether your company is new or seasoned, it’s important to increase brand awareness continually. Digital campaigns can introduce your brand to relevant customers and help you establish a positive reputation with loyal customers.
8. Expands reach. No matter the size of your business, you need to expand your customer base continually. Digital marketing can reach customers across the nation and around the globe so you can expand to new markets and even trade globally.

3. Types of digital marketing

Digital marketing includes over a dozen channels, each with its own strategies and tools that you can use to help you meet your business goals. To help you understand these channels and how they can benefit your business, here's an explanation of some of the most common—and most effective—types of digital marketing

Content marketing

Content marketing refers to the creation and promotion of all types of content, whether it's written, audio, or visual content. Content marketing assets include blog posts, case studies, videos, podcasts, and more. A successful content marketing strategy attracts and guides customers through every stage of the sales funnel. How can your business benefit from content marketing? You can build trust. When you create helpful content that solves customers’ problems, you gain credibility. Over time, you can establish trust, which can lead to sales. You can improve brand awareness. The more high-quality content you create, the more chances you have to introduce your brand and rank with search engines.

Email marketing

This channel connects with customers directly in their email inboxes. An email marketing strategy can include everything from sale announcements to monthly newsletters to remarketing messages. An email service provider (ESPs) like MailChimp or ConvertKit can help small businesses execute these strategies more efficiently, but email marketing specialists may also use other tools or methods to craft a profitable strategy. The secret of email marketing success is writing compelling headlines and high converting copy that makes people want to take the next step. The more relevant your emails are to what potential customers need, the better they will work to build your relationship with them, so they think of you when they're ready to buy. How can your business benefit from email marketing? You can get an impressive ROI. Email marketing has an average ROI of 3800%. That means email can generate $38 in revenue for every $1 in ad spend. You can keep the costs low. Email marketing lets you get right into inboxes, so you don’t have to pay for an ad every time you want to connect directly with customers.

Social Media Marketing

There are almost 2.8 billion social media users worldwide, around one-third of all internet users. That means you can't ignore social media for marketing your business. Social media is a great tool to give customers a personal connection with you. In addition to the huge audiences, most social media sites have the added advantage of analytics, giving you more data about your audience's composition and preferences than ever before. In short, social media is a major vehicle for business growth. With social media marketing, you can connect with customers on their preferred platforms. You can use YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, or other social media platforms to grow a loyal following and sell products. How can your business benefit from social media marketing? You can build relationships. Social media is ideal for making connections and growing a community. Over time, social media can help you improve customer loyalty. You can offer customer service. Since social media allows for public commenting and private messaging, you can rely on this channel for simple, cost-effective customer service.

4. Digital marketing examples

Anheuser-Busch

When the pandemic hit in 2020, the closure of bars and stay-at-home orders drove an e-commerce alcohol rush. In response, Anheuser-Busch teamed up with alcohol delivery service, Drizly, to launch a strategy using Facebook's Collaborative Ads. Being that Anheuser-Busch doesn't have a strong direct-to-consumer presence, Collaborative Ads enabled it to direct users to a retailer's website (Drizly). It was compliant with alcohol sales regulations and enabled the targeting of specific users by age, location, and preferences. Drizly saw an increase in shoppers that peaked in Q3 of 2020 with a 700% increase in sales over January and February. As for Anheuser-Busch, year over year, Bud Light had a 28% increase in purchases and Michelob Ultra saw an 11% lift.

Slack

Slack helps more than 12 million daily active users to stay connected. Its cloud-based instant messaging platform has become a go-to solution for remote work collaboration, enabling you to ditch confusing email threads for well-organized channels. But how did it take off? Slack made three key moves before officially launching: It created the "Slack Wall of Love" on Twitter, which still exists today, and is a place where users sing praises about the tool. This created a strong form of social proof. It had well-known companies use the tool and displayed testimonials from them on a landing page. It created articles positioning the tool as the "email killer" and partnered with a PR firm to get them published in relevant tech publications (online and offline). Fast Company, TechCrunch, and The Verge were all on the list. Once users began adopting the software, Slack continued to act on its promise of delivering an amazing customer experience. The software was easy to use. If you quit, you could get money back for any unused credits. And, it had a fast response time to customer service issues. These tactics, along with a strong product-market fit, took the company from 15,000 users in 2014 to 12+ million in 2020, earning it the title as the fastest-growing business app in history. It also continues to show significant year-over-year revenue growth.

Air bnb

Airbnb has over seven million listings worldwide and over 150 million users. The key to Airbnb's digital marketing strategy lies largely in user-generated content (UGC) where people share photos and videos of their homes available for rent on Airbnb as well as homes they rent while on vacation. Then, Airbnb reshares that content and tags the original person who posted it. This helps to promote their listings and provides travel inspiration for followers. It also becomes highly impactful when influencers like Mariah Carey are the original content creators. Airbnb began hosting famous people such as Lady Gaga, Wiz Khalifa, and Drake to boost brand awareness. Its Instagram account currently has over 4.7 million followers and gets thousands of engagements on each post. Key takeaway: You don't always have to