What are the types of digital marketing?

As a vital component of a business or a campaign, digital marketing is among the most sought-after strategies for great profits and achievements globally. It is defined as any marketing activity done online, by the internet, and other digital mediums like search engines, or even multimedia like texting and calling. Up to this point, much has been said about the concept of internet marketing, where it comes from, and the problems it solves, in general (  see the article here  ). Now is the time to dive into more details. We might have already noticed that there are a couple of  digital marketing types, not all alike, to mention. Many of which offer different options and tactics to different businesses.

 While internet marketing works for any business, choosing the optimal methods is likely to depend on several factors like the type of the business, the goals and preferences of the company, the budget, and many more. For example, say you have focused on B2B (business-to-business) marketing. The kind of business in which you have interactions with another business. In this case, you might probably want to attract business owners to your website for potential cooperation. Accordingly, to further the marketing, you might consider using the social media that best fits business purposes, such as Twitter or LinkedIn. While if you own a B2C business (business-to-customer) – in which you try to absorb customers' attention to your products with no third parties – and think of using social media as a marketing tactic, you are likely to go for a media like Instagram.

Types of digital marketing

Hearing the term digital marketing, it is plausible that one thinks of online and internet-wise material only. Though digital marketing encompasses the online area, there are also offline types of marketing that are still acknowledged as digital. Not just because they carry a digital quality, but mostly because they too have the very privileges over the traditional type of marketing, more or less. So, it goes like this: 

Offline internet marketing

1- Marketing using electronic devices and product demos:

A huge visual billboard in the downtown of a metropolitan city that makes regular pedestrians take a little peek at whatever's on it is a perfect example of the case. A primary demonstration of a product (commonly known as the abbreviated form Demo) which is depicted to potential customers to allow them to scrutinize that product is not only a way of marketing but a digital kind of that too, given that the product is digital or electronic. In these cases, no connections to the internet exist, and hence they are said to be materials of  offline digital marketing.

2- Marketing using TV advertising:

Billions of dollars go to TV commercials each year. Cable tv is not sensible to be thought of as a promising way of offline marketing. Although it might be in decay, many adults still spend a significant amount of time watching TV regularly. This includes cable or satellite tv and streaming form together. Despite the status, big companies still have their eyes on TV advertising. Just think of a short commercial displayed on a flat LED screen in a sporting event which big brands pay up to millions of dollars for. On the other hand, online streaming service channels have a different story. Since they have a bigger viewership, it is rational that they are invested as a proper channel for marketing.

3- Radio marketing:

Since it was invented over a century ago by the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, Radio remains one of the mediums that a lot of people, young or old, allocate a part of their time to, to this day. Around 90% of Americans, 18 and above, listen to entertaining radio. With the right selection in radio marketing, you can target potential customers to become familiar with your products in an engaging-entertaining radio program.3

4- Phone marketing:

This one is possibly the most highlighted and sought-after among  offline digital marketing. As of June 2021, almost half of the world's population has a smartphone. Plus, phones are targeted more than desktops when it comes to advertising since more people are online on a phone than there are on a desktop. However, as offline phone marketing goes, two apps are always known for communicating with people: Texting and calling apps. While you can call random people on the phone with the prospect of finally finding a customer for your services (also known as Cold Calling), text messaging always works best in the case of phone marketing, regardless of online text messaging or offline.

So far, you are possibly contemplating these items as classic marketing options which are not guaranteed to pay off. Well, you are not to blame. They have been among us for quite some time, and it makes sense when companies choose online forms of digital marketing over them. They are now the real deal whatsoever!

Online internet marketing

1- SEO (search engine optimization):

Imagine a random internet user searching for a product in the Google search bar, and your website is popping on among the first results. Everyone loves that! SEO is undoubtedly an art and a science. Both of which persuade search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing to put your intended contents at a higher rank so that your web page becomes more visible on the search engine results pages (SERPs). It is like magic, right? Truth be told, as much as the idea is astonishing, time and skill need to be allocated toward it to get the desired results. Get a free consultation on SEO now! (in Spanish:  Obtenga una consulta gratuita sobre SEO ahora  ). Now, let's talk about different ways that SEO can be done with:

A. On-Page SEO: It is all about everything that is and can be seen on the page.  On-page SEO  relies on the content.

B. Off-page SEO: This one is all about everything that happens off the page. Let's go through the term backlink real quick. Backlinks are links from a website that will direct you straight to a page on another website. Now, imagine having a number of backlinks to your page on different websites. While everything has happened off-page, the search engine can certainly place you at a high rank.

C. Technical SEO: SEO is not just a part of the front end. There are factors on the back end of your website, like coding and other optimizations, that can enhance your website's loading speed and be very SEO friendly.

2- SEM (search engine marketing): While SEO is an organic strategy, SEM is the paid version of it. It basically goes like this: Whenever someone searches a keyword, ads will show up on SERPs. That is, of course, if you pay for this service.

3- Content marketing:

Content marketing  is both powerful and important when it comes to online internet marketing. It is all about creating and optimizing content in a way that would increase traffic attention and can receive leads and customers. It is itself search engine optimization; The more desirable content you create, the more people are likely to discover them. These contents vary from a range of different things; From blogging and writing to getting more attention to photos, infographics, and whitepapers, which are only a small number of effective contents.

4- Social media marketing:

Promoting your business and the services you give through social media is perhaps the most known tactic for marketing. Facebook is still the biggest social media out there, with a number of almost 2.8 billion active users monthly. Instagram (with roughly a billion users) and Pinterest (454 million users) as the best photo-centered media can help to build your promotion up. And that was only three of those social media. With all these users online, you can get traffic and customers productively.

5- Pay-per-click:

in  PPC advertising  you create an ad, and you pay a fee to the publisher anytime it is clicked on anywhere. While it goes away from being an organic strategy, it is somehow similar to search engine marketing, where you pay for traffic.

6- Affiliate marketing:

When third parties (aka affiliates here) take care of everything for you, and you pay them in return,  affiliate marketing  happens. The best simple examples are blogging, promoting someone else's products, and posting about their services on your own social media.

7- Email marketing:

We all have received emails from companies in which we have been invited to take part in an event, or we have been informed of discounts, offers, or such things. Also, when we get a welcome email or newsletter subscription. Chances are, we would click on the direct link to the company's website. This is pretty much how  email marketing  works.

The few prominent online digital marketing procedures mentioned are, clearly, enough to understand how the online form outranks offline internet marketing by a large margin.

Final thought

When it comes to different  online marketing  sectors, there will not be any questions of which one is the right one (read: the safest one) to invest in, as they all can work out depending on what materials you have in hand and how much you want your business to expand. With all the points being made so far, the amount of time, energy, and money that companies put into online marketing is now logical more than ever. Yes, it is obvious how much it can be profitable. Though, that is only the case when time and effort are dedicated to it. But again, when done so, online internet marketing pays off well!