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Digital marketing is such a huge part of all our lives now that it can be hard to realize where it starts and ends. The average person in the US sees between six and ten thousand ads per day, and advertisements are one of many forms of digital marketing. Content Marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing are all digital marketing strategies used by many companies to sell more products. So what are the types of e marketing and how do we sort through all the noise to find out which type will let us achieve our goals? Keep reading to find out!
No matter how you divide and classify them, there are many different digital marketing types and channels. These are some of the most common and most popular:
This list can be a little confusing because many of these types can work together and be part of the same overall digital marketing strategy. For example, writing compelling content increases SEO, and you can share your latest newsletter on your company's social media accounts. Since exactly how to classify and organize the different kinds of digital marketing can be such a challenge, let’s look at what some of the most common ways they are broken down: platforms and channels.
Another way to talk about digital marketing is with the types of digital marketing platforms companies use. A digital marketing platform is something that connects marketers with consumers online. These platforms allow potential customers to:
Creating a digital marketing strategy is deciding what goals your company has, then planning how to do digital marketing to make them happen. Here is an example of the steps you could use to begin developing a strategy:
This set of steps lets you narrow down which of the types of digital marketing to focus on. Since there are so many to choose from, businesses can usually get the best return on marketing investment by picking just a few that are most likely to connect to their target audience and focusing on doing these well, instead of trying to do every type of digital marketing at once and diluting their effect.
If you are looking for ways to use models to help you plan and execute your digital marketing, you are not short on choice. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of different ways to collect and analyze data to influence digital marketing strategies. Here are just a few of the most popular:
We can't tell you which method to use, or spend all day explaining the nuances of each one. Instead, keep in mind the main idea of all of these is to look closely at how your product or service interacts with customers, the industry, and the inner workings of your business. They seek to find a way to qualify, organize, and codify your observations that can be tracked over time and make it easier to make educated marketing decisions.
Unfortunately, there is no one type of digital marketing that is best for every company in every situation. In general, it is best to combine several different forms of digital marketing to create an overall strategy that allows you to connect best with your customers.
For a brick-and-mortar retail company, this may be paid advertisements for local searches combined with regular postings to Facebook when new products arrive and collecting customer email addresses when people are in the store to email coupons and upcoming events. For a global Software as a Service (SaaS) company, this may be sponsoring online conferences, paid promotion by influencers in the field, and daily posts on a LinkedIn page.
One best practice for everyone, regardless of which type of digital marketing you use, is that most people need to see your messaging at least seven times before they are ready to buy your product. This is called “The Rule of Seven.”
It can be very challenging to get your brand in front of your target audience seven times using just one digital marketing platform or channel - simply because these spaces have so many competing voices. Most brands will have a much better chance of being seen seven times by a potential customer if they use many different approaches.
For example, if you are selling running shoes online, a customer may encounter you in these seven ways:
In the example above, about the seven ways a customer might interact with your brand before they are ready to make a purchase, we looked at digital marketing from the potential customer standpoint. Now let’s go through the same example from the marketer’s standpoint. We’ll then go through another example with a different kind of company, so you can see how the types of digital marketing can work for a wide range of businesses.
Going back to the simple breakdown of the main digital marketing types from the beginning of this article, we’ll break down how our online running shoes store uses each one in their strategy for selling more shoes.
The next of our digital marketing examples will be with a hypothetical app for birdwatchers, that lets them track bird species, alerts them to migration events, and allows them to connect to other bird watchers. They are selling their digital services directly to consumers, instead of a physical product. Here’s how they might use the different types of digital marketing:
Keeping up on all the types of digital marketing is exhausting for anyone. That’s why DemandJump makes it as easy as possible! We show you the exact content to create and how to link it all together to best reach your target audience. Creating content for digital marketing runs throughout all the forms of digital marketing, and knowing which questions your customers are asking will let you rank higher for all of them. Try it for free today!
