What Is Digital Marketing?

Digitization has not only changed our lives, but society as a whole: communication and consumption have moved considerably to the Internet. Activities that took place offline only a few years ago are now an integral part of the online world. Users spend more than 12 years on the Internet twice as much as 12 years ago. Traditional offline marketing has significantly decreased in effectiveness and importance, and marketers have been faced with the challenge of adapting to new events. Your answer: digital marketing. But what is digital marketing actually?

The foundations of digital marketing:

Digital marketing is the name of the program: it includes all the marketing activities that take place online. Online is not only for the but for all processes that are managed via IP data lines. In most cases, however, the company's own website is the foundation, while the communication channels can be e-mail or social media. In order to attract potential customers, work with the Google search is essential. So you go to where your customer is - on the Internet. And so lay the foundation for the contact with him.

But digital marketing goes even further

Digital marketing, however, encompasses a much wider range of methods and material elements than you might think. As a rule, you will have a sense of how best to use your target group (or better personas) and your goals.

I would like to list some possibilities for methods as well as for materials.

materials

1.     Your own website
2.     A company blog with regular blog posts
3.     Self-developed e-books and white-paper
4.     Video or audio content, such as how-tos, webinars, ...
5.     Appealing Infographics
6.     Interactive tools like graphics, maps, quizzes or games
7.     Social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram etc.)
8.     Online reporting via PR, in social networks or reviews
9.     Online brochures and lookbooks
10. Materials of branding such as logos, colors or fonts

Which elements you choose depends of course on the type and orientation of your customers - do you want to reach, where and in which way?

The last question is the method of digital marketing that allows you to design, improve or spread your marketing.

methods

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

Keywords and more and more topics with the help of SEO optimization, your site helps to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results and thus to increase the organic traffic on your website massively.

Content Marketing:

Content marketing is dedicated to the planning, creation, and dissemination of content, which is a value added for your target group and makes you the problem solver yourself. In addition, you can use a content strategy to promote your SEO optimization.

Inbound marketing:

The inbound methodology works with the entire sales force - the content just described converts the potential customer into a lead, a customer and finally a promoter.

Social Media Marketing:

In this marketing form, you use the social media, among others. Distribute your content, make your company, product, or brand known and inspire users to generate leads for your business.

Pay-per-Click (PPC):

From Google AdWords, you've probably already heard - for each click on your ad, you pay a fixed amount. As more and more Internet users no longer distinguish between paid ads and organic search among the search engines, this is an additional way to lead visitors to your website. In addition, this is also one of the few online advertising opportunities, which also works at short notice and is, therefore, suitable for campaigns.

Marketing Automation:

This is a software to simplify your marketing activities. Recurring actions such as sending e-mails or posting in social media can be automated with the software, as the name implies. With marketing automation, however, you can also send entire workflows such as successive emails, which are triggered by certain actions of the lead. In this regard, I recommend you HubSpot.

Email Marketing:

The e-mail marketing describes the sending of digital messages with which you can build or strengthen customer contact. And even if it is always said that email marketing is dead, then this is not true. The opposite is the case.

Online PR

The online PR aims to reach the reporting of a company, its products or services. This can take place on blogs, in online versions of print media or in social media.

What is the difference between digital and inbound marketing?

At first sight, you may notice many similarities. There is, however, a significant difference between the two marketing from. Inbound marketing is, logically, exclusively concerned with inbound methods, ie, those which in the first step are based on finding the company's website by the user and whose conversion to the lead, the customer and ultimately the promoter have the goal. Digital marketing, on the other hand, also includes a number of building blocks for outbound marketing, in addition to the inbound methodology. Thus, such measures are presented to the user "unasked", such as a banner ad on a website. Digital marketing, in a simplified way, thus represents a concept that can be subordinated to both inbound and outbound marketing.

Conclusion:

Certainly, you are already implementing measures in the area of digital marketing and are thus on a good way to secure the future viability of your company. However, I can only point out that you can coordinate all digital measures to successfully master the marketing and marketing of digital.

In the event that you are considering whether and how you can use digital marketing, I hope that with this article I could explain to you a little insight as well as the one or other method with which you will soon start in digital marketing. And since this article has only touched on the subject, I would like to ask you to answer further questions. Please feel free to contact me.