Types of digital marketing: a comprehensive guide

Businesses are constantly striving to connect with their audience in meaningful ways.

 Digital marketing has emerged as a powerhouse, offering numerous avenues for brands to engage, attract, and retain customers.

From social media to search engines, the digital marketing landscape is vast and continuously evolving.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll dive deep down into the various types of digital marketing, exploring each method's purpose, benefits, and best practices.

Types of digital marketing:

• SEO

• CONTENT MARKETING

• EMAIL MARKETING

• PPC

• SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

• AFFILIATE MARKETING

• INFLUENCER MARKETING

• VIDEO MARKETING

• RETARGETING & REMARKETING.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Think of SEO as the magic ingredient that helps your website stand out in the busy online crowd. It's like planting seeds in a garden and making sure they grow tall and healthy.

With SEO, you tweak and optimize your website so that search engines like Google can easily find it and show it to people looking for information or products related to what you offer. So, in simpler terms, SEO is about making your website shine bright like a beacon in the vast sea of the internet.

Currently, there are many speculations about SEO and its reliability after emergence of AI. Many SEO'ers say it's already dead.

Google has recently rolled out major Updates, deindexing many websites and many lost a huge amount of traffic.  While SEO will look things in the past , it’s still one of the pillars of digital marketing. There are many top SEO tools that will help you in many ways. It is also very helpful to know the SEO requirements needed to increase your visibility and increase traffic.

 SEO aims to improve a website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) through organic methods.

Benefits

• Higher visibility

• leads to increased website traffic,

• brand credibility,

• and ultimately, more conversions.

Best Practices

Keyword research, on-page optimization, quality content creation, and building backlinks are essential SEO strategies.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is like storytelling for your business. Instead of just shouting "Buy my stuff!" at people, you create interesting and helpful content that they actually want to read, watch, or listen to.

It could be blog posts, videos, podcasts, or social media posts that entertain, educate, or solve problems for your audience.

By sharing valuable content, you build trust and credibility with your audience, making them more likely to become customers in the long run. So, content marketing is all about connecting with people by sharing stories and useful information, rather than just pushing sales pitches.

Benefits

•  Establishing thought leadership,

• Building brand trust,

• and high customer engagement

• Increased loyalty.

Best Practices

 Understand your audience's needs, create diverse content formats (blogs, videos, infographics), and maintain a consistent publishing schedule.

Social Media Marketing

After SEO, social media marketing was always the second place to get audiences and traffic. But that trend may change and social media marketing will eclipse SEO.

Social media marketing is like throwing a party for your business on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn. It's about using these platforms to connect with your audience, share content, and engage with them in meaningful ways.

It's about being social, authentic, and relevant to your audience's interests. Through social media marketing, you can increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, and generate leads or sales by leveraging the power of social networks.

So, in simple terms, social media marketing is about using social platforms to connect, and interact with your audience , promote products/services , and build brand awareness to achieve your business goals

Benefits

• Increased brand visibility

• customer engagement

• lead generation, and opportunities for customer feedback.

Best Practices

Choose the right platforms for your target audience, create engaging content, leverage paid advertising, and actively interact with your audience.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a form of digital marketing where you first collect your customer’s email.

After getting their emails, you are making them aware your products, services, discounts and other useful things. 

The biggest stumbling block is getting customer emails. Customers usually don’t give their emails cheaply, so you have come up with some proposition to get the customers contact information, like email, name and etc.

There are countless email marketing tools that will help you collect your customer’s emails.

Purpose

Sending targeted messages to a subscriber list to promote products/services, share updates, and nurture customer relationships.

Benefits

• Direct communication with subscribers

• High return on investment (ROI),

• Automation.
  

Best Practices

Segment your email list, craft compelling subject lines and content, optimize for mobile devices, and analyze metrics for continuous improvement.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

PPC advertising allows businesses to bid for ad placement in search engine results, social media platforms or on websites, paying a fee only when the ad is clicked.

PPC platforms, like Google Ads and Facebook Ads, offer PPC advanced options.

 Advertisers can target their ads based on factors such as keywords, location, demographics, interests, behavior, and more. This allows for precise targeting, ensuring that ads are shown to relevant audiences.

Benefits

•  Immediate visibility,

• Targeted Advertising options

• Measurable Results

• Highly Scalable

.

Best Practices

Conduct thorough keyword research, optimize ad copy and landing pages, set a clear budget and bidding strategy, and regularly monitor and adjust campaigns.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is partnering with affiliates who promote your products/services in exchange for a commission on sales generated through their referrals.

 Though affiliate marketing has many types and affiliates get rewards on different conditions set, they have one common goal; to find audiences.

Benefits

•  Cost-effective, as you only pay for actual sales

• expands reach through diverse affiliate networks,

• and incentivizes brand advocates.

Best Practices

 Choose affiliates aligned with your brand values; provide them with marketing materials and support, track performance metrics, and offer competitive commission rates.

Influencer Marketing

This can sometimes overlap with affiliate marketing. Most influencers are affiliate marketers. They have in influence on their fans or audience and can sell products or services in exchange of huge bunch of commissions.

 As a businessperson, collaborating with individuals with a strong online presence (influencers) to promote products/services to their followers is a huge advantage.

It's sometimes risky as bad influencers can have a devastating effect on your business credibility. Be wise when you are collaborating with influencers.

Benefits

•  Reaches specific niche audiences

• Authenticity and Trust

• Increased Brand Awareness
  

Best Practices

Identify relevant influencers aligned with your brand, establish clear objectives and expectations, foster genuine partnerships, and measure campaign effectiveness.

Video Marketing

Video marketing is a type of content marketing, but slightly different.

It’s about utilizing engaging video content to educate, entertain, and connect with audiences, often shared across various digital platforms.

Benefits

• Higher engagement rates

• improved brand recall

• the ability to convey complex messages effectively.
  

Best Practices

 Create compelling and relevant video content, optimize for SEO, tailor content to different platforms, and incorporate calls-to-action to drive action.

Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing targets audiences on mobile devices through channels such as apps, SMS, and mobile-optimized websites.

Benefits

• Reaches consumers on-the-go,

• Offers personalized experiences,

• Leverages location-based targeting.

Best Practices

Optimize website and content for mobile devices, leverage mobile apps and push notifications, adhere to mobile-friendly design principles, and respect user privacy preferences.

Remarketing/Retargeting

Many customers visit your website, search through products or services available, and then leave without any leads. These customers should be your goal next.

Remarketing/Retargeting is targeting users who have previously interacted with your website or app but haven't completed a desired action (e.g., making a purchase).

Benefits

• Increases conversion rates by re-engaging interested users,

• Remarketing generates high ROAS.

• Remarketing encourages repeat visits.

Best Practices

Define specific remarketing goals, segment audiences based on behavior, personalize ads and messaging, and set frequency caps to avoid overexposure.

Wrapping up

Digital marketing has different types; taking advantage of many of these types can increase your business visibility, leads sales and income. There are slos great IA tools that you can leverage to boost your digital marketing capabilities like email marketing tools, analytical tools and graphic design tools.