What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing can be described as “all marketing efforts that use an electronic device or the internet” – Lucy Alexander. As such digital marketing includes a huge array of areas from email spam to social media advertising, and it seems to be expanding into more and more areas of marketing with each passing year.

Love it or hate it, digital marketing is growing in use year on year and does not seem to be slowing down. This has led to business models needing to be changed completely in order to compete. Take radio advertising for example, as their business model was once based upon reaching thousands of people with music and interesting interviews. The introduction of Spotify and other music streaming platforms have given the industry a huge new competitor, that is based completely off of digital media.

I am not saying that the radio industry is dead, far from it. But the amount of people influenced by radio is certainly dwindling, which is why radio has now moved online and started to have online podcasts and broadcasting over the internet. One could argue that radio marketing is turning into a digital marketing segment with their introduction of advertising on an online platform. That exact same could be said for TV (Which Netflix has also been testing advertisements on).

Through this, digital marketing is growing and growing and the usage of it is also on the same level. It does not just mean social media advertising or Google ads like many may think but I would agree with Susanna Gebauer’s article in 2017 that stated that there are 10 different types of digital marketing, but I would give a different view and ranking to it.

Social Media Advertising

Although it is probably the most known form of digital marketing, it is certainly not used correctly by everyone. It takes time and effort and a lot of market research to truly reach the levels of engagement that should be reached. This involves regular posts and full marketing campaigns.

Search Engine Advertising

This is also known as Google Ads for anyone from Ireland as 97% of us use Google as our search engine which essentially means that Google has a monopoly over the search engine use here. Google Ads, as it is now known as, is an obvious section of digital marketing as it is advertising to those searching for something online.

Search Engine Optimisation

SEO is the process of optimising websites to reach the people searching for related content to your business. This does not involve paying Google, that would be Search Engine Advertising. Instead, it is the idea of convincing Google that your website is the

right answer to the searcher’s question.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

This is similar to Search Engine Advertising and can be arranged on the same platform (Google Ads) but it instead shows as maybe a banner ad or an ad on a website that is registered to show ads by Google. These essentially m

ean that the advertiser only pays if the viewer clicks on their ad.

Content Marketing

This is advertising through the use of a good website. This will build a connection with the customer and essentially is just giving useful informatio

n for no direct monetary cost. A website is your modern-day storefront window.

Email Marketing

Although widely used, it is not commonly known as digital marketing, but in fact, it is, and a very reliable one at that. If used badly, it can be seen as spam but if Email Marketing is used well, it can have very strong response rates and build good relationships with customers.

Digital Radio Advertising

This can be more known as traditional media advertising, but with the introduction of podcasts and online radio, these ads would only be heard by those with access to the internet and as such, can be considered as digital marketing instead.

Digital Television Advertising

Very similar to radio advertising, marketing on this is often shown to those who are watching something for free and it can be argued that this includes YouTube video ads.

Mobile Phone Advertising

Becoming more and more prominent and although it certainly can be covered by most of the above sections as they can all usually be seen on a mobile device.  This mobile phone advertising can involve SMS marketing and notification ads.

Influencer Marketing

This can also be distinguished as an offline form of advertising but with the growth of Instagram Influencers and YouTubers, I felt that this is a newer form of digital marketing and involves a post or a tweet promoting a certain brand, usually with the term “sponsored” nearby.

I did not mention digital marketing types such as cost-per-engagement or cost-per-view marketing as they are so alike cost-per-click advertising that I didn’t see much point in adding it in. The terms given to these types of marketing are clue enough as to what they are.

Digital marketing involves such a huge range of marketing that you might actually find it difficult to have a marketing campaign without a digital side to it. Digital marketing is also one of the cheapest forms of marketing and has a very high engagement rate. People are using digital media more and more and a failure to capitalise on this will lead to a failure in marketing for most businesses.