I still remember when I studied marketing and they explained to me the first definition of marketing I heard. After more than 25 years as a professional and being one of the pioneers in this sector, things have changed a lot to reach the current definition of digital marketing. Stay with me and discover what digital marketing is and its advantages through its techniques, strategies, tactics and examples. Don’t miss it!
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is a subsection of marketing, but it has gained so much weight that it has become the quintessential marketing paradigm. For this reason, let’s first take a look at what exactly marketing is.
What is Marketing, a Personal Definition
Marketing is seeking to promote and serve markets.
More specifically, conduct market research, promote through communications, advertising and public relations, and use distribution channels and customer service.
This philosophy defined marketing in the 1980s when I studied it. Today, it seems perfectly valid, as does a product manager’s philosophy.
I would just trade big data market research and product marketing for design thinking, prototyping, UX and Lean Startup to get marketing and product moving at the speed of the consumer.
What is Digital or Online Marketing
As we have already mentioned, digital marketing, also called internet marketing or Internet marketing, is defined as a form of marketing that uses new media and technological and digital advertising channels, such as the Internet, cell phones or the Internet of Things. With the power of technology, it allows you to create unique and personalized experiences to measure and record everything that happens with the aim of improving the user experience.
Therefore, digital marketing for me is a radical evolution of marketing thanks to the technology that drives us to formulate strategies. These strategies are achieved thanks to personalized products and differentiated messages. Big data and the ability to scale with exponential power compared to traditional media is what triggered the entire revolution in the marketing and advertising industry.
For example, thanks to big data in digital marketing, apps like Netflix or Amazon always know what to recommend us. Or, thanks to email marketing and our customer journey tracking feature, we can follow up with potential customers to re-engage with remarketing or retargeting.
Direct and Interactive Marketing: An Introduction to Digital Marketing
“The most knowledgeable say that direct marketing is that type of marketing that aims to seek answers and establish lasting and mutually beneficial relationships with the customer.”
Direct marketing is a strategic vision of marketing that uses all available communication and advertising media. The objective is to identify prospects and enhance agility and the relationship between the company and the customer. In this way, we are dealing with what we call digital marketing.
In fact, direct marketing found a great ally on the Internet and reached its peak with new technologies. This was undoubtedly the starting point for the development of digital marketing. In addition, the ability to scale and the possibility of creating personalized services tailored to the customer but at a low cost.
Advantages of Digital Marketing
Given the characteristics that the Internet brings to digital marketing, we can clearly attribute the following advantages:
- Global: Once you put your product online, anyone anywhere in the world can access it.
- Interactivity: The Internet is a two-way communication channel, so is digital marketing. In this way, communication between companies and consumers was maximized, especially since the RRSS is inactive.
- Perfectly Measurable: data is no longer based on market research, slow to implement and expensive. Now it is collected instantly by monitoring the actions that the user takes directly on the Internet. Allows the acquisition of personal data, preferences and usability that, when properly analyzed and managed, allow the creation of more efficient procedures.
- Hyper Segmentable: Thanks to the large amount of information collected about Internet users, it is possible to diversify marketing actions much more. We can aim for specific and increasingly specific goals. Today, we segment campaigns by incorporating new hourly geovariables and depending on the access device.
Strategies and Tactics in Digital Marketing
For me, there are three main activities in digital marketing: The first is driving qualified traffic to the web that is carried out by a traffic manager or digital commerce. The second thing is to turn this traffic into actions that the trader would normally work on, also with the knowledge of CRO (conversion rate optimization), albeit in the hands of the UX product design team in the big teams. Finally, there is the work of a digital analyst or web analyst, who measures and determines where the opportunities are and where the problems are. This circle of work is fundamental in digital marketing, but beyond it, there are many other disciplines in which we work to create digital marketing strategies and methods:
- Search Engine Optimization or SEO: SEO is the natural position in search engines like Google. It consists of making improvements to appear as high as possible on these pages.
- Search Engine Marketing or SEM: in this case, it also places our page in search engines or directories, but pays for it. It has become one of the most important digital marketing tools because the consumer uses these mechanisms at the end of the purchase funnel.
- Inbound Marketing: Consists at the heart of the marketing pyramid. Instead of looking for customers with advertising, what he does is make it easier for them to find and get to know him.
- E-mail Marketing: It’s like old mail, but it’s electronic. Widely used as a communication tool with the customer and also to search for new customers.
- Social Media Marketing: Brands now have a digital identity and a voice. Now social networks are its greatest exponent.
- Affiliate or Partner Marketing: The best way to grow is through agreements and collaborations with third parties. On the one hand, there are networks that focus on affiliates and, on the other hand, there are business development work with alliances.
- Remarketing or Retargeting: the ability to re-influence people who have visited your page, business or application.
- Native Advertisement: It is an advertisement that is inserted in the media in a way that does not even look like an advertisement.
- E-Commerce: is the transfer of traditional commerce to the digital world. Means cross-border websites or applications on which the online purchase or service takes place.
- Automated advertising is a method of buying audiences through technologies like DSP that allow you to target the people you want to reach, changing the buying model in traditional advertising. In this way you are outperforming the broker where it is cheaper to influence him. One of the most popular ways to buy is through “Look Alike” audiences, which are users who are most similar to those who buy my product or service.
- Web Analytics: allows you to measure and understand user behavior through graphs and data.
- UX/UI Design: This is about designing the interfaces with which the user interacts. Your experience using the Site and Application must be user-friendly and satisfactory.
- Customer Experience: It’s about creating end-to-end experiences across a prospect’s journey map until they become a customer, whether it’s on social media, web, or in an app.
- Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): We use heatmaps and data to measure and test new offers across the chain to improve your flow and funnel.
- Loyalty NFTs: this is the most modern way of creating relationships between brands and users, creating emotional ties.
- Marketing Automation and RPA
- Data Driven Marketing
- Low Code and No Software Marketing
- Phygital
- Blockchain, NFTs and the Metaverse of Marketing
Digital Marketing Tools
There are numerous digital marketing tools on the market. Some are paid, but many of them are completely or partially free, with which we can get the best results. We won’t see them all, far from it, but we’ll share what you need.
- Web Analytics Tools: Without a doubt, the best example of this is Google Analytics, which is also free.
- Digital Advertising Tools: Today, any individual or SME has access to real business packages that allow them to implement sophisticated 360 digital marketing and advertising strategies. The most important ones are Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
- Design and Prototyping Tools: Design tools like Canva are essential, and designing and designing websites and apps with tools like Balsamiq is so much easier.
- Marketing Intelligence Tools: also in this case, Google Data Studio offers a very complete solution that is easy to connect with Google Analytics. In addition, Power BI or Tableau offer more complete solutions for more complex analysis.
- Email Marketing and CRM Tools: While we are hearing more and more about CDPs, having a good CRM and email delivery system is still essential. It is usually integrated with solutions like Salesforce, SugarCRM or other simpler solutions like Pipedrive and the most popular one is Mailchimp.
- Inbound Marketing Tools: Many CRMs have their own inbound marketing tools, but there are some that are very specialized, like Hubspot or Infusionsoft. Here is a list of the best inbound marketing tools.
- Market Research and SEO Tools: From the free Google Ads Keyword Planner to tools that allow us to investigate the competition and trends of what people are looking for, like SEM Rush and the amount of traffic they are getting, like a similar site, these are essentials in my digital marketing toolkit.
- Landing Page Builders: We often need the flexibility to create specific and specialized landing pages for the specific search objective or campaign we are running. Having a tool like no bounce will undoubtedly give you big advantages over your competitors.
Latest Trends in Digital Marketing
We’re sure we’re facing an exciting new year for digital marketing. The consolidation of Martech, Adtech and Madtech in the world of cookie less measurement and the emergence of the metaverse, NFTs, voice trading or live e-commerce is just a preview of what is to come and you can expand on it in our trending post of digital marketing.
If you want to learn more, we encourage you to train with the most complete digital marketing expert in the business, where you will learn how to attract, analyze, convert and retain customers from the best experts. We also offer you the Tech loves Marketing online bootcamp program, we are waiting for you!
