Digital marketing is the least expensive and most effective way to grow a business.

It’s a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing.

It’s the fastest way to interact with your customers.

It’s the most targeted form of advertising available.

It’s a great way to build trust and build your brand.

And it’s quite literally the most measurable and scalable form of marketing available.

Today, we are going to take a step back and answer a very important question – what is digital marketing?

Then we’ll go into the types of digital marketing and walk you through setting up your own digital marketing campaign.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is marketing through the internet.

And by marketing, we are referring to the set of activities used to create, communicate, and deliver value to your customers.

So by using digital marketing, you’re effectively doing this through the internet.

So that’s what digital marketing is, but why should you use it?

Here are the benefits of digital marketing in 5 words.

It’s fast, interactive, inexpensive, targeted, and measurable.

And it does all 5 of these things better than traditional marketing.

What do you think is faster – cold calling 100 people or sending 100 text messages and emails?

How do you interact with a radio ad? Is that even possible?

Meanwhile, your customers can interact with you directly through your social media advertisements.

In regards to costs, a TV ad will cost you about $20 to reach 1,000 people.

On the other hand, social media marketing will cut that cost in half to reach the same person.

And the targeting is not even comparable. Not only can you target demographics, behaviors, and specific geographics, but you can also target custom audiences.

Custom audiences, like audiences of people who recently visited your website or contacted your business.

Last thing here and we will move on – it is measurable.

You can quantify your results. Once tracking is installed on your website, you will be able to see conversion data on your website.

Then you can take a step back and determine what is working, what’s not, and scale your business.

So by now, you know the “what” and “why” of digital marketing, let’s talk about the how.

In order to understand how digital marketing works, you need to first understand the types of digital marketing.

The 6 Types of Digital Marketing

The different types of digital marketing consist of:

Now, while these are 6 different types of digital marketing, they work best when used in synergy with each other.

With that said, let’s walk through a digital marketing campaign together so you can fully understand what it is.

Alright, so for this example we’re going to be looking at Kitu Life Super Coffee, which was just founded in 2015 and has grown by over 11,000% in the last 3 years to rank #18 on the Inc. 5000 list.

Now let’s look at their digital marketing to see how they did it.

1. Website

The first thing you will find is that they have an amazing website.

It clearly shows their product, what makes it unique, and even includes some customer testimonials.

For you to be successful at digital marketing, you must have an effective website design. Your website is the centerpiece of all of your marketing.

So in other words, if you have a crappy website, you will have crappy results from digital marketing.

2. Search Engine Optimization

Once your website is set up, the next logical step is to invest in search engine optimization, which is referred to as SEO.

You will want to make sure people can find your website.

Based on what we can find, Kitu is ranking for over 1,800 keywords and generating over 40,000 visitors, for free, from Google.

For example, they rank for #1 for the keyword “super coffee” in Google.

This one keyword gets searched over 27,000 times per month in the US.

And because they have optimized their website correctly for this search term, they show up first on Google’s organic search results.

This means they are getting thousands of free traffic through Google.

This is accomplished through SEO. SEO is the process of improving and optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results.

3. Content Marketing

The next big piece of digital marketing is content marketing.

Content marketing will help you generate trust once people find your business.

Content marketing is all about creating value. You basically want to provide free information that guides people closer to buying your products.

This can be done through blogging, eBooks, videos, and so much more.

Kitu uses content marketing to answer frequently asked questions that their customers likely have during their buyer’s journey.

4. PPC Advertising

Content marketing and SEO are effective, but take a lot of time to work.

So to speed things up, you might throw in some PPC advertising.

PPC advertising is a fast way to drive traffic to your website, except that traffic comes at a cost.

PPC, which stands for pay per click, refers to paying for every click on your digital advertisements.

These types of ads are most commonly used on search engines.

When we discussed SEO, we discussed that Kitu ranks for “super coffee” organically in the search results.

Here, we can see that they also run PPC campaigns on the same search result. They have a paid ad that appears on the top of the phrase, and an organic listing that appears below the ads.

So basically, whenever someone searches for “super coffee,” they are dominating this search result.

5. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a great way to build brand awareness and trust while directly interacting with your target audience.

It basically consists of creating and publishing small pieces of content consistently.

This content should inform, inspire, or entertain your audience. And in order for it to work, you need to make sure it reaches your audience.

And Kitu’s Instagram page is certainly not lacking this.

They have over 80,000 followers as a result of them consistently posting content that not only reflects who they are, but who their customers are as well.

6. Email Marketing

With all of these digital marketing activities in motion, you’ll likely start generating traffic to your website in no time.

This is good, but to maximize your revenue, you may need to push your hottest leads a little bit to get them to pull out their credit cards and buy from you.

That’s where email marketing comes into play.

Email marketing is perfect for staying in front of interested leads or previous customers consistently.

This is why there’s no surprise that Kitu is offering 25% off their products to acquire the email addresses of people who subscribe to their email list.

We’re not on their email list but we’d imagine they are sending a bunch of emails that educate their subscribers and promote their products.

Quick Recap

Alright, so that’s what digital marketing is all about. Now let’s recap today’s post.

• What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is marketing through the internet.

• Why should you use digital marketing?

Because it’s fast, interactive, inexpensive, targeted, and measurable.

• What are the types of digital marketing?

Website design, SEO, content marketing, PPC advertising, social media marketing, and email marketing.

Keep in mind that as you work to build an integrated marketing strategy, it’s important that you ensure that your messaging is consistent across platforms.

Whether you’re creating new site pages or firing up a few Twitter posts, you should use the same brand voice and tone to help create a more seamless experience for your target audience.

We’re all about small business marketing.

So, if you want to ask for help in any of the digital marketing strategies we’ve mentioned above, please don’t hesitate to contact us today!

The post What is Digital Marketing? Here’s Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog.