12 types of Digital Marketing and How to use them
Understanding the strategy of digital marketing, how it works, and the different types of digital marketing that can be used is important in order to successfully achieve meaningful results in your business. One must essentially understand the different types of digital marketing in order to boost traffic, attract a greater number of clients, grow brand awareness, engage their teams or audience in their business.The following section will guide you through the different types of digital marketing, their benefits and objectives, and also when and how to use each of them.
Types of Digital Marketing – How to use them
1. Content Marketing
“How-to” contents are the most commonly searched information by consumers. It is easy to gain consumer’s confidence if your brand agrees to share highly-qualified and useful “how-to” content. This will help your business to take an authoritative position in the market and be the customer’s choice when they need to make a decision. Content marketing means providing answers to your audience’s questions by publishing useful content through blogs, social media, emails, or other channels. It even includes specific formats for mobile devices, like apps and push notifications. There may be different formats for each channel. All these objectives can also be achieved through different types of content too, like blog posts, ebooks, infographics, videos, quizzes, templates, datasheets, and so on. Content marketing follows a funnel in which the top content is quite general, consisting of complete guides, and towards the bottom, the content is more specific consisting of testimonials and demonstrations.There might be various objectives of content marketing but the most common is to convert visitors to leads.
2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO helps to rank your content in the top positions of search engines that will help your audience to find your website if they are actively searching for services your business offers. To apply SEO, you need to know the keywords that the audience you want to reach is searching for, so that you can develop your content around these terms.
3. SMM (Social Media Marketing)
In Social Media Marketing, social media is used to promote a brand, product or content. You can reach a desired audience by publishing your content on social media, or creating ads and paying for them. However, it is very important to choose the right and most suitable social network for your brand, product, service or content. The best part of SMM is that it has the potential to get closer to your target audience and surge interaction. You can also gain validation from your audience when it shares your content. You can also make use of your social networks as a direct communication channel with your audience which is why it is important to keep your audience always updated and monitored.
4. Paid Advertising:
Payment can be made for media that appears on the web by various means. Advertisement can be run by using social media and also by using search engines such as Google and Bing. The paid ads that are made for search engines appear on top of the SERP, before the organic results, with an “Ad” favicon. The most common methods of payment for such advertising are PPC or pay-per-click in which you can buy clicks on your ad, generally, through a bid in a keyword auction; and CPM or Cost-per-Mile which is more advantageous when a short tail keyword is used.
5. Email marketing:
Email marketing is one of the most effective types of digital marketing and a direct channel to communicate with your clients. It can bring significant results to your business, if used strategically. Email marketing can be a success by keeping your subscribers updated with content that is useful and relevant. In this, you can also promote your products and services, provided you respect your audience’s privacy and don’t send spam. Email marketing is an important part of inbound marketing, if automated, helps to lead your customer through the marketing funnel.
6. Instant Message Marketing
Instant message marketing has come to emerge as a boon for marketing strategies. Direct message is now a part of almost all social media platforms, including WhatsApp. Through direct messaging, your clients can get in touch with you and get quicker responses to their queries. According to Statista more than 1.6 billion people were using WhatsApp in 2019, thus showing its power and reach. This type of marketing channel is important for you to be available for your customers.
7. Affiliate Marketing
In affiliate marketing, content producers are hired who function like a sales team for your business. They are commissioned for each conversion they get for a product or service. This is done by creating relevant content in which they mention your product or service using a link, if the audience clicks to buy, you pay the content producers for each sale. The audience in affiliate marketing need not be big, because the audience you need to reach is created by the content producers.
8. Influencer Marketing
Digital influencers are specialists in specific subjects with a big audience who are interested in what they are saying. They usually pick content if it fits their interests and voice. It is in their power to either build or destroy your brand, as they can take a public test of your products and rate them positively or negatively. Many businesses are using influencer marketing in their strategies and getting good results. Though this type of marketing has some risks, the loyalty of the followers of these digital influencers can bring your business a lot of new customers.
9. Mobile Marketing
Google research shows that immediacy is as crucial as loyalty, and nothing is more immediate than seeking solutions to problems with the use of a smartphone anywhere, anytime. Use of mobile marketing is no longer a trend, it must be a reality for brands that seek to be all time side-to-side with their customers.
10. Video Marketing
Video marketing strategies are used to drive results throughout the marketing funnel. Nearly 2 billion people monthly look for videos for entertainment, news, how to do something, content to study, and more. This is a big opportunity to reach new customers. In these videos, people also seek credible reviews about some products or services. Search engines and video are used alternatively by 80% of people to learn more about products and see how others have used them. This is mostly done by 55% of consumers before buying the product.
11. Audio Marketing
Audio marketing might not have the same dynamic which video marketing contains, but formats like podcasts are increasingly being consumed. Podcasts are an authentic phenomenon that is taking the audience of radio listeners, specially keeping their ears on alert when in transit or doing mechanical work like work outs or cleaning the house. Contextuality must be of utmost importance while creating podcasts in order to turn audio marketing into a big sales opportunity.
12. Virtual Reality Marketing
