Digital Marketing, The Ultimate Starter Guide

By now, you have probably heard about digital marketing and how businesses are implementing digital strategies. You are curious about the online world and how you can take advantage of it to boost your business. Digital marketing is a vast field of study.

In this guide, you will learn about marketing, the online side of it, and the different types of digital marketing as of today.

If you are wondering, “What is digital marketing?” continue reading…

The Beginning of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing boomed around the 1990s. The development of the internet allowed companies and people to sell and promote their products and services through online platforms. Following, thirty years later digital marketing is an industry worth around $100 billion.  So, what does this data reflect? Clearly, digital marketing continues to be used all around the world because it works efficiently.

Furthermore, marketing is a field that is constantly updating itself and full of innovation.

Therefore, let’s understand what it is, how it works, and what you can do with it.

Concept of Marketing

To understand digital marketing you must first understand what marketing is.

Let’s start by defining what marketing is. Marketing has been evolving so much that its definition has changed or has been modified every 3 years!

Its current definition is:  “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” – American Marketing Association (2017).

Marketing Basics

First, marketing involves various activities such as researching, promoting, distributing, analyzing, and selling products and services. 

Second, some of the main goals in marketing consist of attracting, acquiring, and, retaining customers by satisfying their needs and wants. Remember, it is important to understand the difference between what a customer needs and wants.

Third, this process is generally visualized in a marketing funnel. 

Marketing Mix / 4 P’s

The marketing mix or the 4 P’s of marketing are the main factors to focus on when pursuing marketing objectives. 

Product: The term product in this case encompasses both products and services that are offered. 

Price: The price is the value that the product has in the market, AKA what the customer will have to pay to acquire the product. 

Place: Place refers to the distribution of the product. Where the customer has contact with the product. 

Promotion: These are the tactics that influence the customer to purchase a product. 

Now that we have a better understanding of what marketing is let’s talk about digital marketing.

Digital Marketing

What is digital marketing? 

“Digital Marketing is the use of digital or social channels to promote a brand or reach consumers. This kind of marketing can be executed within social media, search engines, internet, mobile devices, and other channels.” – American Marketing Association

Types of Digital Marketing

DM encompasses different types of marketing or strategies.

Some of them are the following:

Social Media Marketing: 

Social media marketing consists of promoting your brand and engaging with your target audience through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and TikTok. You can achieve this organically (free) or by paying ads. 

Learn more about: What is Social Media Marketing? The Complete Starter Guide. It’s a 12 minute read that will give you a complete starter overview on social media marketing.

Social Media Ads (paid):

On the other hand, as mentioned before you can pay for ads on social media platforms. Paying publicity on social media will help increase your brand awareness and reach your target audience quickly.   

Content Marketing:

Content is everything your customer comes in contact with. That includes blog posts, images and videos, emails, infographics, etc.

Content marketing consists in creating, publishing, and distributing content to your targeted audience. One main goal of content marketing is to develop brand awareness. 

Online Branding:

Branding is what identifies a specific brand. This is their name, logo, colors, design, tone of voice, etc. Branding helps consumers distinguish products and services and in the end it reinforces brand loyalty.

How can a customer be loyal to you if they can’t recognize you?

Online branding is the digital approach to branding. One main goal of online branding is to maintain and strengthen your brand identity through digital platforms.  

Affiliate Marketing and Influencer Marketing:

Promoting your business through a person or brand. There are many channels to do this through social media, websites, YouTube videos, etc.

When implementing affiliate marketing focus on the quality of the followers and their engagement with the “influencer” and not the number of followers this account has.

One main goal of affiliate marketing is to increase sales and brand awareness. 

Email Marketing:

This strategy allows you to contact your leads through email to turn them into customers. Email marketing was one of the first forms of digital marketing, and it continues to be highly effective.

To achieve successful email marketing campaigns you must have an email list (database) and send targeted emails to your potential customers.  

SEO Marketing:  

SEO stands for search engine optimization. This is the process of increasing your visibility in search engines (such as Google) with the end goal of growing traffic to your website.

Implementing SEO allows your customers or potential customers to reach you faster.

SEO is ORGANIC, this means you don’t pay for the place your site has on a search engine.

Some SEO practices you can implement on your website are: adding main keywords in your content, writing unique titles, uploading optimized images, and publishing high-quality content. 

SEM Marketing:

The abbreviation SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. SEM is a PAID strategy. This means you pay for the place you have on a search engine.

For example, when you search something and you see the top results have an AD box, that means the site is paying to be at the top. 

Mobile Marketing:

Consists of reaching your target audience through their phones.

This could be through SMS, social media, apps, geolocalization, etc.

It is important to note that mobile marketing hosts around 60% of digital media time.

Mobile marketing can encompass other forms of digital marketing. Such as social media marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, etc. This is because it is through their phone that customers receive the information.

All in all,

To sum up, digital marketing is a world of its own. There are many different types of marketing included inside of the digital world. Such as social media marketing, influencer marketing, email marketing and, many others. They all have many advantages for your business.

Last but not least, before implementing any strategy, it is crucial to understand your business. Including your audience, your goals, your budget, etc. This will guarantee the best results.

Good Luck!

If you are interested in working with me feel free to contact me, I’m sure we will make a great team!