What is Digital Marketing and How Does it Relate to Your Business?

Digital Marketing is a component of marketing that revolves around the Internet and web based digital technologies such as computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms. Digital marketing is used to promote products, services and build brands.

This new age marketing approach feels brand new but a lot of the principles of traditional marketing apply. While our team is biased towards digital marketing because it is what we do, we do not suggest overlooking traditional marketing in the environment we live in.?

There are many forms of digital marketing and they all fit into 10 main types.?

1. SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

This tends to bring in traffic from a search engine and is linked to Pay-per-click, aka PPC. With PPC you pay to appear at the top of a search engine for certain keywords but the second you stop paying, you no longer appear.

2. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

This is all about the things you do to make your website rank better in a search engine. There are many things you can do, such as format your content for search engines, target keywords, use descriptive URLs and a whole lot more. This is no quick fix and takes a lot of time before it yields results.?

3. SMM (Social Media Marketing)

This is a great way to connect with your customers and reach new ones through stories. You can tell your story, share your employee’s stories as well as find out and share your customer’s stories too. With Social Media Marketing you use social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, etc to communicate with your target audiences, Although you can pay to get your social media posts seen, Social Media Marketing means much more than paid ads.?

A lot of businesses get an agency to handle their SMM but we recommend that you are part of the process. Even if you get an agency involved you can learn more about what your customer wants versus what you think they want. Use the opportunity to grow into the company you dreamed of by investing time into the community you want to serve.

4. Content Marketing

Content Marketing is also known as inbound marketing. This is all about creating content with a bigger purpose. Rather than simply focusing on the product or service you provide, Content Marketing makes people more aware of the problems you are trying to fix. It involves entertaining your audience/customers and informing them at the same time, it can be educational, it can be motivational, but what it always is, is magnetic. It helps you attract customers to you, as you have created content that they are searching for and which they benefit from.

5. Email Marketing

This is direct marketing, with no interference. It is a great way of marketing as it costs nothing. Once you acquire an email address you can send as many emails to the person as you like, but the key is in getting your email read, and moving the potential customer through your sales funnel.

6. Influencer Marketing

Also known as Affiliate Marketing, this involves partnering with an individual or brand with influence, or an industry expert. The idea is to partner with someone whose audience fits your customer persona. You could also do this to test and see if the influencer's audience is interested in your proposition. Done correctly you can reach quality leads and have a great conversion rate.?

7. Viral Marketing

You may have heard the term, ‘gone viral’ and this is when something is shared rapidly from one internet user to another. It is not something you can predict but some companies build campaigns around this. The important note we would like you to think of when trying to build a viral campaign is, “Does the user need your content to explain the narrative?” In other words, does someone need to see your video to understand the story? If the answer is yes then you may have a viral campaign on your hands.?

8. Radio Advertising

Radio used to be broadcast through radio waves hence the name but nowadays, especially in the first world, everything is digitised and so it now falls under Digital Marketing. Why would a radio station go digital? Simply because they can reach a wider audience.

9. Television Advertising

TV, like radio, is becoming digitised despite a number of national broadcasters taking their time to adapt. So like radio, TV, now falls under Digital Marketing. We think it is still overpriced as the budget to produce and broadcast a single TV ad is similar to an SME’s social media campaign for a whole year. And in our opinion, in most cases it yields less results than a solid social media campaign where you can build a community, connect with your community and receive live feedback from your community.

10. Mobile Advertising

Mobile marketing encompasses all the above mentioned marketing options and more. With the amount of time people spend on their mobiles, it is no wonder business are focusing most of their budgets here.

Now that you've got an overview of these 10 forms of digital marketing, which one do you think could be most relevant to your businesses digital transformation journey? Which one do you think applies to your target audience most effectively? Which one seems most doable? Comment below with any thoughts or questions we can help you with.

_________

We believe digital transformation is key to creating the kind of Zambia we want to see. So we're creating content to help Zambian businesses on their digital transformation journey. If you found this article valuable, please share it and make sure you're following us for our weekly digital transformation content. To your success!

Article by Jerome Arab